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Contrary to what many sites are reporting, bumpers do not "fix" the reception issues.

B

BruiserBear

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 24, 2008
591
547
After hearing Apple announce that you have 30 days to return the iPhone 4 without a penalty, I decided to buy one on Friday. Of course I picked up a bumper with the phone.


Unsurprisingly I was easily able to drop my signal completely by holding the phone the normal way I would in my house. So I put on the bumper and did some testing.

Contrary to what many sites are reporting, what Apple says, and what many Apple fanboys will suggest, the bumper cases DO NOT completely "fix" these reception issues. They do dramatically improve the problem, but on several occasions over the weekend I noticed that when I was in a weaker signal area, I could still stop or dramatically slow down my data/phone signal by covering the phone's left corner too much with my hand.

So while the bumper does help to minimize the left corner antenna problem, it by no means eliminates it. The flaw still exists, and a case does not truly render the problem unimportant. In lower signal locations, you will still see the phone losing it's proper 3G service if you hold it in certain ways.
 
I recently bought a bumper. I noticed it loses all bars when I'm holding it that way as well. Luckily I only hold it that way to surf the web. So it doesn't bother me. Although I do find it interesting that they claimed it fixed the issue and apparently at least for me it doesn't. I also bought the Griffin reveal case and for some reason it doesn't do that. But that case is horrible in my opinion.
 
FWIW my iPhone 4 with a case still has better signal quality than my friends' 3G and 3GS with cases.

At some point you have to stop blaming the phone and just blame the fact that you're in a crappy signal area.
 
Where?

Where did you find one? You say you just decided to buy one Friday... well where were you able to just walk in off the street and purchase one? I have been to every radio shack, wal-mart, best buy, at&t store, and apple store within a 150 mile radius and they laugh me out of the store when I ask if they have an iphone4. I call B.S. on you.
 
derek4484 said:
Where did you find one? You say you just decided to buy one Friday... well where were you able to just walk in off the street and purchase one? I have been to every radio shack, wal-mart, best buy, at&t store, and apple store within a 150 mile radius and they laugh me out of the store when I ask if they have an iphone4. I call B.S. on you.
Click to expand...

The OP doesnt seem impressed so maybe you could buy it off him at a reasonable discount? ;)
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A293 Safari/6531.22.7)

The problem here is that there are two different issues.

There's the issue of de-tuning the antenna by "bridging" the (poorly) insulated gap.

Then there's the issue of covering the antenna with a dense, fleshy water-filled sack. That can be demonstrated with any cell phone. (just search)

A case or bumper can only fix one of those problems.
 
TruckdriverSean said:
The problem here is that there are two different issues.
Click to expand...

Yes. Thank you.

The bumper fixes the "iPhone 4 Problem" of touching the metal and bridging the gap. That is a unique iPhone 4 problem. The bumper fixes it. It does NOT fix any cupping, squeezing, or covering issues that can occur on any cell phone. They are a different problem.

So the thread should be titled: Bumper fixes unique iPhone 4 problem but does not magically fix problems all cell phones have

Well, yeah. No surprise there.
 
derek4484 said:
Where did you find one? You say you just decided to buy one Friday... well where were you able to just walk in off the street and purchase one? I have been to every radio shack, wal-mart, best buy, at&t store, and apple store within a 150 mile radius and they laugh me out of the store when I ask if they have an iphone4. I call B.S. on you.
Click to expand...

I had previously put myself on an Apple store reservation list. They emailed me on Friday morning to let me know the phone had come in. So I decided to take the plunge.

TruckdriverSean said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A293 Safari/6531.22.7)


The problem here is that there are two different issues.

There's the issue of de-tuning the antenna by "bridging" the (poorly) insulated gap.

Then there's the issue of covering the antenna with a dense, fleshy water-filled sack. That can be demonstrated with any cell phone. (just search)

A case or bumper can only fix one of those problems.
Click to expand...

Small White Car said:
Yes. Thank you.

The bumper fixes the "iPhone 4 Problem" of touching the metal and bridging the gap. That is a unique iPhone 4 problem. The bumper fixes it. It does NOT fix any cupping, squeezing, or covering issues that can occur on any cell phone. They are a different problem.

So the thread should be titled: Bumper fixes unique iPhone 4 problem but does not magically fix problems all cell phones have

Well, yeah. No surprise there.
Click to expand...

While you are both correct there are two different problems, you are wrong to suggest that all phones suffer from similar problems.

Yes, all cell phones lose some signal strength when being held, but the iPhone 4 loses a lot more than most when simply being held in a hand. This was proven by Anandtech's review of the phone, where they did extensive testing and showed that the iPhone 4 lost far more signal than even a 3GS when simply held in a hand.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2

No need to minimize the problem fellas.
 
gloss said:
FWIW my iPhone 4 with a case still has better signal quality than my friends' 3G and 3GS with cases.

At some point you have to stop blaming the phone and just blame the fact that you're in a crappy signal area.
Click to expand...

At some point you have to stop thinking that everyone is seeing the same results as you. I never had a problem at home with my 3G or 3GS. Now with my iPhone 4 in the same location I get dropped calls without a bumper and terrible call quality with one. I didn't come on here to complain (I've done enough of that already) but you need to understand that just because it's ok for you doesn't make it the same for everyone else. I've had 8 different phones (that I can rememeber) in my current house dating back a good 10 years and the iPhone 4 is by far the worst phone for signal IN MY AREA.
 
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May want to read that anandtech write up again.
 
BruiserBear said:
I had previously put myself on an Apple store reservation list. They emailed me on Friday morning to let me know the phone had come in. So I decided to take the plunge.





While you are both correct there are two different problems, you are wrong to suggest that all phones suffer from similar problems.

Yes, all cell phones lose some signal strength when being held, but the iPhone 4 loses a lot more than most when simply being held in a hand. This was proven by Anandtech's review of the phone, where they did extensive testing and showed that the iPhone 4 lost far more signal than even a 3GS when simply held in a hand.

No need to minimize the problem fellas.
Click to expand...

Anandtech's review was done without a case. The attenuation problems displayed are exacerbated hugely by the fact that your hand bridges the gap between the 3G and GPS/WiFi antennas. A case prevents this, and therefore neutralizes the 'extra' degradation that this design flaw causes. With a case, the iPhone 4's reception much stronger than the 3G/3GS, and the review notes this.

Read better.
 
citrate said:
At some point you have to stop thinking that everyone is seeing the same results as you. I never had a problem at home with my 3G or 3GS. Now with my iPhone 4 in the same location I get dropped calls without a bumper and terrible call quality with one. I didn't come on here to complain (I've done enough of that already) but you need to understand that just because it's ok for you doesn't make it the same for everyone else. I've had 8 different phones (that I can rememeber) in my current house dating back a good 10 years and the iPhone 4 is by far the worst phone for signal IN MY AREA.
Click to expand...

That's fine, I suppose, but I just spent all weekend camping in the boonies and was able to test the phone in a truly fringe coverage area, and the iP4 came out ahead. Seeing as this is more in line with Apple's own design claims and most of the reviews on the matter, I think perhaps your particular phone might be having more issues than usual.
 
WalMart has the 16gb

derek4484 said:
Where did you find one? You say you just decided to buy one Friday... well where were you able to just walk in off the street and purchase one? I have been to every radio shack, wal-mart, best buy, at&t store, and apple store within a 150 mile radius and they laugh me out of the store when I ask if they have an iphone4. I call B.S. on you.
Click to expand...

I may be too recent a joiner to believe but I will attest that at least one Walmart actually has the 16gb in stock - but only the 16gb. I'm guessing nobody is thinking to look at Walmart and/or the demand for 32gb is greater. I was buying a quick patch cable and noticed the boxes behind the counter - the guy at the electronics counter confirmed they were the real deal.
 
derek4484 said:
Where did you find one? You say you just decided to buy one Friday... well where were you able to just walk in off the street and purchase one? I have been to every radio shack, wal-mart, best buy, at&t store, and apple store within a 150 mile radius and they laugh me out of the store when I ask if they have an iphone4. I call B.S. on you.
Click to expand...

All the Walmarts in my area have at least 3 or 4 in stock. I had 2-3 Walmarts receive 20-30 in stock. lol..
 
gloss said:
Anandtech's review was done without a case. The attenuation problems displayed are exacerbated hugely by the fact that your hand bridges the gap between the 3G and GPS/WiFi antennas. A case prevents this, and therefore neutralizes the 'extra' degradation that this design flaw causes. With a case, the iPhone 4's reception much stronger than the 3G/3GS, and the review notes this.

Read better.
Click to expand...

This
 
The progression acceptance of iPhone 4 reception problems:

There's nothing wrong (because Apple says so)
Hold it differently and it will be fine (because Apple says so)
Use a case and it will be fine (because Apple says so)
Apple says wait for the software fix.

Sooner or later either Apple will finally acknowledge the problem or people will stop believing Apple on the matter.
 
Small White Car said:
I'm not minimizing, I'm just unaware that anyone claimed the bumpers fixed those problems. You're complaining that the bumpers don't do something that I thought everyone knew they didn't do.
Click to expand...

I'll partly agree here because the Bumper is not said to stop the phone from losing any signal. The Bumper is supposed to stop excessive signal loss from touching the left corner. So, you may still see some attenuation, which shouldn't be a concern.

The problem is though I'm still getting more dropped calls on the iPhone 4 in my home with a case than I ever had on the 3GS with or without a case.
 
gloss said:
FWIW my iPhone 4 with a case still has better signal quality than my friends' 3G and 3GS with cases.

At some point you have to stop blaming the phone and just blame the fact that you're in a crappy signal area.
Click to expand...

Really, so how do you explain my 3G data never dropping in my house using an iPhone 3GS? Yet I was easily able to make it happen with an iPhone 4, with a bumper ON.

TruckdriverSean said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A293 Safari/6531.22.7)

May want to read that anandtech write up again.
Click to expand...

You might want to do the same.

gloss said:
Anandtech's review was done without a case. The attenuation problems displayed are exacerbated hugely by the fact that your hand bridges the gap between the 3G and GPS/WiFi antennas. A case prevents this, and therefore neutralizes the 'extra' degradation that this design flaw causes. With a case, the iPhone 4's reception much stronger than the 3G/3GS, and the review notes this.

Read better.
Click to expand...

Wrong. Look at the chart near the bottom of this page. The iPhone 4 performed worse than the 3GS in every single test, including with a case on the iPhone 4. Get your facts straight before you come yapping about it.


http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2
 
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