Detailed Analysis of iPhone 4 Signal Strength Dropoff

[Rot'nApple]

Ok, dude. That's just ridiculous. They clearly did it for function. If it was form they would have just slapped a useless piece of metal around the end.

Now, obviously, they made mistakes. (VERY much so!) I'm not excusing Apple. They did this wrong. But it was a mistake in the pursuit of function over form.

You can't just say the opposite of reality and hope people believe it.

Yeah, but Steve still likes his things to look "pretty"!

I can remember reading or hearing a story (wish I could find) regarding Steve asking engineers when designing a Mac computer or whatever model they were working on, to make it so those ugly loose wires or hangy things, whatever it was, were out of the way and the engineers objected and how Steve said at the intro of Apple's Cinema Display that 'the back of Apple's monitors look better than some of the competitor's fronts!' So, I can see with this man, the issue of vanity taking over form, function and performance! Let's just hope he hired some non linguine-spine engineers that don't have a problem saying, "Uh, Steve, you want it pretty or you want it to work?"

 

[Rot'nApple]

Hmm... And my 3G is dying. Don't know what to do, really just a crappy transition experience all around. If it weren't for all these issues I'd have no problem upgrading asap.

Isn't there a return policy? Who knows, you might be pleasantly surprised by the iPhone 4 and if not, you'd probably know in a day or two that you can't take it back?

 

[Komiksulo]

What level are they referencing their dB to?

 

[mr.steevo]

... and how Steve said at the intro of Apple's Cinema Display that 'the back of Apple's monitors look better than some of the competitor's fronts!'

That was the introduction of the iMac.

s.

 

[chrisdpratt]

Confirms to me that I'm staying with the 3GS until Apple builds another phone that doesn't require a case to make calls with. My 3GS is naked when I'm using it... why should I have to buy a case just to make calls with an iPhone 4? Apple really did a dumb thing here in the name of good looks.

Did you not read the article at all? The report says clearly that the iPhone 4 has the best reception of any phone on the market. That's a pretty strong statement. This is so because the antennae is on the outside of the phone. As with anything in life there's upsides and downsides. One of the downsides of this design is that there's greater attenuation of the signal. However, since this attenuation is *easily* canceled out by simply hold your phone slightly different or putting a case on it (and getting to keep that awesome reception), overall it's a plus. Really, people, seriously. Perfection does not exist in this world. Would it have been better to have awesome reception and no attenuation of signal right out of the box. Sure. But, take what you can get.

 

[Tilpots]

Frustrating!

s.

It is. I'm hoping to get a bumper and pray it fixes the issue, but it feels wrong that I'm forced to spend $60 bucks to make me and my wife's phone work. She also got a phone with a bad mic, so we're having to replace that one, too. And did I mention the Facetime issue with our ported numbers? I spent 4 hours on Friday and 1 yesterday working with high level Apple and AT&T reps getting it fixed (without restoring the phone to default). That's another big issue that isn't making much noise yet, but affects 10's of thousands of users, from what both companies have told me.

Even with all this, I think the phone, once all these issues are finally worked out, will be/is great. It's just such a pain in the ass to jump thru all these hoops to get my phones working. I know many people aren't
experiencing all these issues and I'm happy for them. But for those of us with the troubles, they're real and they're very annoying.

 

[Darkroom]

If this is not LOLable then I don't know what it is:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/30/apple-hiring-iphone-antenna-engineers-for-some-reason/

at least they're trying, in some way, to correct the problem. they get points for that. but yes, it's hilarious.

 

[lshaner]

Anandtech points out that in their testing they found the iPhone 4 antenna is indeed improved over the 3GS

And how does the iPhone 4 compare to the iPhone 3GS when the 3GS is running iPhone OS 3.x?

 

[RoboCop001]

I'm in Toronto on the Rogers network with my 3G, and except for one or two parts of the city, I constantly and consistently have 5 bars.

Hmmm... well here's hoping that Rogers cell sites are strong enough that signal issues won't be much a problem when I get my iPhone 4.

I also don't experience any signal loss no matter how much I cover up the phone, but still, the 3G antenna is not the same as the iPhone 4 antenna so I'll just have to wait and see.

Anyone with an iPhone 4 have a similar situation and are now experience signal issues after getting the new phone?

 

[citrate]

Did you not read the article at all? The report says clearly that the iPhone 4 has the best reception of any phone on the market. That's a pretty strong statement. This is so because the antennae is on the outside of the phone. As with anything in life there's upsides and downsides. One of the downsides of this design is that there's greater attenuation of the signal. However, since this attenuation is *easily* canceled out by simply hold your phone slightly different or putting a case on it (and getting to keep that awesome reception), overall it's a plus. Really, people, seriously. Perfection does not exist in this world. Would it have been better to have awesome reception and no attenuation of signal right out of the box. Sure. But, take what you can get.

Yes it's the best but only when the antennas are not being bridged. Holding naturally the iPhone 4 is the worst by a fair margin. I guess people only see what they want to see.

 

[Casey4147]

I'm with Rogers here in Canada.

I've never had any reception issues related to the hardware itself. If I'm way out in the woods, in the middle of nowhere in Northern Ontario, I *might* lose a couple of bars, but I'm afraid I can't relate to all this signal strength talk. My 3G signal is always at full bars, wherever I go throughout the course of the day, no matter how I hold it. I have a 3G, so who knows, the iPhone 4 might be a different experience.

I live in Amherst NY, a city near Buffalo, and my family were driving along Lake Ontario and Niagara River on the weekend, on the American side. Both our iPhones suddenly switched from AT&T to Bell (mine) and Rogers (my wife's) in the Lewiston area, and wouldn't switch back to AT&T until we were through Niagara Falls and heading into Wheatfield/North Tonawanda. Does that tell you something about AT&T's network?

 

[egret]

Is it really that difficult for people to adjust the way they hold their iPhone? Is it physically and mentally hard to do it? All I did was move my grip up an inch as not to cover the bottom left of my iPhone and no more issues. It took a couple days for me to get used to it but now it's natural for me to hold it that way.

Instead of b!tching about it, I adopted.

I eat food with a fork most of the time. Sure I can use a fork to eat a sushi but it's best if I eat it using a chop stick..

OMG....I was beginning to believe i was the only person on earth who actually had NO PROBLEM "slightly" adjusting the way i held my phone.

From the wailing and crying and kvetching of the hysterical people on these forums you would think they are being required to stand on one foot with one arm tied behind their back while sticking tin foil in their ears to make their phones work.

Is it really that hard to make a "slight" adjustment in the way you hold an object????REALLY??????

 

[Rot'nApple]

That was the introduction of the iMac.

s.

Thanks, I knew he said it about something...

Don't get me wrong. I love my Apple products and I've been blessed that they work great, while looking great and never had to really bother Apple about any of them...

Well except for that stupid hockey puck mouse that came with my Blue and White G3 Mac Tower, back in what 1999... that gave me carpal tunnel almost. Guess there was a certain correct way of holding that too!

 

[tmarks11]

Wrong! Signal strength measured in dB is non-linear. The way they mapped the 5 bars is entirely correct!

So what that really means is that 5 bars to 4 bars represents 99.9901% of the band. Who cares.

The log 40% (or 99.99901%) is meaningless unless you compare it to how other phone manufacturers interprete 5 vs 4 vs 3 bars. Is Apple trying to make the iPhone 4 reception look better then other phones by inflating the size of the 5 bar band? Anandtech doesn't really claim that, and provides no compatison with "traditional" signal dispalys.

There is no real industry standard for what each bar means.

 

[Compile 'em all]

Always field test your products in their final form. I wonder if all of the prototypes were being tested with that disguised case around it (to make the iPhone 4 look like a 3GS). I bet this reception issue never surfaced as a result.

This is poor engineering, poor execution, poor public relations. This is where "Form over Function" can not be justified.

I'm suspecting the same. To keep it undercover all realworld testing was done with the protective cover on. If true, this would be one of the biggest apple fails of all time.

 

[jweinraub]

Problem caused by Apple being so secretive

One of my friends and I were trying out FaceTime and when it occurred to him how this signal problem happened. When Apple was field testing the phone, they were using it in the 3G enclosure to simulate the 3G phone. So naturally, that enclosure became a psuedobumper causing enough insulation from the phone and the user's hand to prevent this problem from even showing. If Apple had done better testing they would of seen this problem earlier, and solved it then.

 

[ark561]

Does anyone know how to enable numeric signal strength reporting on 3Gs? Does this require a jailbreak?

You can call *3001#12345#* which will put the phone into signal test mode. In the upper left hand corner, the numeric value will be displayed.

I was able to do this on my 3GS (it has 3.1.2) but this does not appear to work on iPhone 4. I'm not sure if this is doable with any os above 3.1.3.

 

[marcfogel]

From the wailing and crying and kvetching of the hysterical people on these forums you would think they are being required to stand on one foot with one arm tied behind their back while sticking tin foil in their ears to make their phones work.

Only in San Francisco & New York City

 

[citrate]

OMG....I was beginning to believe i was the only person on earth who actually had NO PROBLEM "slightly" adjusting the way i held my phone.

From the wailing and crying and kvetching of the hysterical people on these forums you would think they are being required to stand on one foot with one arm tied behind their back while sticking tin foil in their ears to make their phones work.

Is it really that hard to make a "slight" adjustment in the way you hold an object????REALLY??????

You should be able to hold the phone naturally, otherwise it is flawed. You shouldn't have to make changes to compensate for a faulty product.

 

[-=XX=-Nephilim]

at least they're trying, in some way, to correct the problem. they get points for that. but yes, it's hilarious.

Yeah

Wonder why this site doesn't report such news...

 

[Anuba]

This tuning change really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, especially those that grew up with the "rabbit ear" TV antennas.

Heh... yup, there was just one key difference... with rabbit ear antennas, reception improved when someone was holding them. With the iPhone 4 it's the other way around.

 

[viewfly]

This agrees with what I've been saying for a while; that the bar scale is skewed to the low end, and therefore some see the effect and others not.

It is also hard to replicate sometimes.

But I don't think Apple designed it only for looks...they were trying to get the improved performance of an external antenna( remember those whips and stubbies?) without having something sticking up in such an ulgy fashion.

They should have given more thought to covering the metal those with a coating.

I'll be fine with this.

 

[egret]

Did you not read the article at all? The report says clearly that the iPhone 4 has the best reception of any phone on the market. That's a pretty strong statement. This is so because the antennae is on the outside of the phone. As with anything in life there's upsides and downsides. One of the downsides of this design is that there's greater attenuation of the signal. However, since this attenuation is *easily* canceled out by simply hold your phone slightly different or putting a case on it (and getting to keep that awesome reception), overall it's a plus. Really, people, seriously. Perfection does not exist in this world. Would it have been better to have awesome reception and no attenuation of signal right out of the box. Sure. But, take what you can get.

You are wasting your time using common sense and logic around here.

 

[FFArchitect]

Few are questioning that the natural reception is better. There's enough evidence all over that for many, simply touching it in a specific area -- not holding it tightly, or "death gripping" it (to convey holding it in some ridiculous fashion) -- brings the reception down to an unusable state.

BTW, the "death grip" label points to the effect crippling the phone, not to holding it tightly.

Also, it isn't a "potential problem" for these people. It is a legitimate problem for them.

We're Apple fans through and through, but it's remarkable how so many take a legitimate issue that affects people who made a purchase based on using that product in a completely reasonable manner and make it a personal issue instead. These people aren't lying. They don't want the issue to be true. They are looking for answers, wanting help and if anything, want the phone to be a true success.

 

[ruckus]

I really didnt want to use a case with this one.

I agree with you there. As a matter of principal, I may need to return this thing before my 30 days are up. I love the phone, but too often I'm setting low signal or "Searching..." on my screen, and I live in a 5 bar area.

I'm going to give it 25 days from when I got the phone to decide, we'll see if Apple has any good ideas.