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My iPhone 4 signal issues are gone...
- Thread starter jav6454
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I had reception issues upon getting the phone June 23rd. It went from full signal to nothing, repeatedly. I immediately went out and found a rubber case with a clear backing from BestBuy that I've been using. I've done regular syncs, power down/power ups to clear the memory, and I took off the case today. I did not have any reception problems at all. I must have given it the death grip at least 5 minutes and I maybe lost one bar the whole time. Strange isn't it?
Anyways, I ended up putting a black Apple bumper on it until some more cases are developed. But apparently my issues are gone, for now.
Any news on a software update? The SIM card thing was brilliant by the way. Good work to the guys that figured that out. I'm too much of a chicken to pull mine out since mine seems to be working at the present time.
Nonetheless I'm very disappointed in Apple - a company I regard highly and am proud to own products from. This kind of engineering, distribution, and disregard to a defective product is totally unacceptable. Apple needs to smarten up, and I mean now. I expect a hell of a lot more from them.
Anyways, I ended up putting a black Apple bumper on it until some more cases are developed. But apparently my issues are gone, for now.
Any news on a software update? The SIM card thing was brilliant by the way. Good work to the guys that figured that out. I'm too much of a chicken to pull mine out since mine seems to be working at the present time.
Nonetheless I'm very disappointed in Apple - a company I regard highly and am proud to own products from. This kind of engineering, distribution, and disregard to a defective product is totally unacceptable. Apple needs to smarten up, and I mean now. I expect a hell of a lot more from them.
I have the iphone 4 and I show 4 to5 bars of signal here at home and I have the signal drop issue everybody's talking about.
I tried to in/out the sim. Nothing changed.
I tried to to tape the side of the sim to isolate it from the tray. Nothing changed. (I tried this 2 times)
I tried to in/out the sim 10 more times. It has never worked.
I still have the dropping signal issue and this has not fixed my problem AT ALL.
(side note: I do get little signal in some other areas (work for example) where my 1st gen iphone never used to get anything, if I don't touch that part of the iphone4)
I tried to in/out the sim. Nothing changed.
I tried to to tape the side of the sim to isolate it from the tray. Nothing changed. (I tried this 2 times)
I tried to in/out the sim 10 more times. It has never worked.
I still have the dropping signal issue and this has not fixed my problem AT ALL.
(side note: I do get little signal in some other areas (work for example) where my 1st gen iphone never used to get anything, if I don't touch that part of the iphone4)
Not so, I'm certain! Like any company -- ANY -- their public front is completely oriented to the many positives of the product, and is, completely rightly, never going to highlight a problem such as this. Behind the scenes, however, there is undoubtedly an intense scrambling to understand everything about this phenomenon, and to make decisions about it: accept it, firmware/software, recall for repair (genius bar tweak or worse), etc., as well as whether or not to accelerate a rev B rollout to the point that they stop manufacturing and bring on a possible shortage while they retool.
I would not want to be in Steve's line of fire on this one.
Cheers
I agree - I mean to put things in perspective, this is a complicated issues since the reports from people have been incredibly varied and the potential sources are many and complicated to understand. Anything with a radio is really complicated to diagnose since they tend to work so differently from person to person. Replicating this problem consistently has got to be something that Apple engineers are desperately trying to pin down. Lots of people have chimed in with possibilities, but none of them mean anything to Apple - they have to identify things for themselves since they know their own device. Heck, we dont have any real hard numbers of people who are suffering problems outside of self-reported polls.
The problem also has to do with the people clamoring for answers and wanting them yesterday. Officially the phone has only been for sale for about 6 days to one week. People didnt start reporting issues widespread until the weekend if I recall right. Apple isnt some miracle worker that can just magically fix issues like this overnight. It will take some time. And regrettably no company is going to make any official statement until they know exactly what they are up against and have some solution. Thats just the way you run a company. You never put yourself in a position where you admit liability for things that you do not have to. There are lots of potential things happening here. Apple isnt going to cop to things that are not their problem unless they have to. Not to mention that companies really hate being ambiguous since that just makes customers more antsy with their demands.
I am sure that Apple is working on these complicated issues, and it isnt as if customers are screwed. Every iPhone owner is still covered for a full year. Apple knows that and can deal with these things and make things right - as soon as they realistically do that.
We all want more details, but Im guessing right now Apple cant tell us much that would be really useful that we dont already know. What is certain is that they are not being blissfully aware. Right now they are coming out of a 1.7 million unit release - their iPhone division has lots going on right now and they are probably swamped with trying to actually sell enough units.
Your right about most of this... But i think that the ONLY reason steve told "there's nothing wrong" is so the sales would not go down. and that there most likely working on a fix for it. but this isn't a small time company that would update you on every single thing they do. i think this has been blown out of proportion a little bit. Apple dont got the balls to sit there and not do anything about it cuz they know those law auits are gonna start fliying in lol... But people need some PATIENCE. really. it will happen, just they need to figure out the problem. So guys, be patient.....
P.S. i myself am i HUGE apple fan (only for iphones) and i wanted a iphone real bad. but guess what? i decided to wait it tou till there is a correct or atleast decent fix. so just relax
There are lots of possibilities, Steve's emails are too curt and short to really derive any real information leaving up open to so much speculation and to read in between the lines. That's just Steve being Steve. I never take his emails as the official word of Apple - especially when it comes down to technical matters. He's a human being. Smart in many ways, but he can still be wrong. Now maybe Steve happens to be a GSM expert and nobody knows it, but when it comes to technical answers, I always leave a buffer for "Steve doesn't know what he's talking about" or the like. His answers don't give us much to go on and are at best based on his sphere of knowledge. We don't know what he knows or doesn't - thats' why I don't get technical information or official statements about a company from one sentence emails from their CEO (especially when they are one on one private conversations). I get them from public press releases that usually have more details. And lets face it. Steve Jobs is not the only voice at Apple and is not the sole spokesperson. Just because he might make an ignorant or incorrect statement about one series of emails (and I think that is a strong possibility) doesn't mean much to me and is not the official policy of the company.
Saying "Apple doesn't think of this as a problem" is simply not an accurate statement. All we have is one sentence without much context surrounding it. Steve's emails are interesting, but like any CEO, he is not going to be loquacious and putting himself in too much of a position of anything. He is very protective himself.
Interesting find.
When I bought my iPhone4 on roll out day, the first thing I asked the Apple rep was to grab one of the remaining black bumpers having read the possible issues about reception on the interwebby. Since owning it, I've seen some signal strength dropping issues, but nothing to cause a dropped call. On the contrary, my 3GS constantly dropped calls at my home, which is something I haven't found with the new v4.
As a test, I pulled off the bumper, released the sim card and saw the new large contact version. I see where positioning could lead to shorting out if it's in contact with the new metal frame. I also noticed that the contact surfaces were dull, as if tarnished or covered in some manufacturing residue.
I did the following things.
I covered the side of the sim card with magic tape. About an eighth of an inch, and trimmed the excess off the edges with an exacto blade.
I polished the contacts with a soft pencil eraser repeatedly cleaning off any possible oils on the eraser with a cloth.
I cut a business card to fit the sim card slot of the iPhone and folded that strip in half to double the thickness. Then I carefully ran it into and out of the slot to clean the contacts.
I put it back together, started it up, reset the network settings, and did not replace the bumper.
On a table, I have 5 bars.
Holding the iPhone in my sweaty left hand on the bottom, purposely going against the recommended position, I held tight.
5 bars at first and after a minute, it drops to 4 bars and then 3. No loss of service though.
The bumper is back on, for I've never owned a phone without a case.
My only point is that nothing I did seemed to harm anything and with the bumper, I now have no loss of signal strength. There might be something to the sim card being part of the issue.
"Fix" still working 24hrs later.
The tape on the SIM tray "fix" still has my iphone4 at 3-4 bars when idol which is better than 1-2 bars before the "fix".
What I did not notice yesterday is that during a call the bars drop to 1-2.
Go figure.
No dropped calls before or after "fix" though.
The tape on the SIM tray "fix" still has my iphone4 at 3-4 bars when idol which is better than 1-2 bars before the "fix".
What I did not notice yesterday is that during a call the bars drop to 1-2.
Go figure.
No dropped calls before or after "fix" though.
It worked for me...
I tried the fix. It worked really good. All I did was Turn off. take it out. Wait five or so minutes put it back in and reboot. Now I get 3+ bars in deathgripmode
I tried the fix. It worked really good. All I did was Turn off. take it out. Wait five or so minutes put it back in and reboot. Now I get 3+ bars in deathgripmode
Caution...
I'm happy to hear that tinkering with the SIM card improves reception issues for iP4 users, however we need to caution ourselves as this is not really a "fix".
Bridging the antennas or just covering them is still causing people to lose reception, albeit at a more acceptable level. Same problem, different scale.
For those of you that haven't read this article: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2 --- I suggest you do so. It won't explain the SIM card phenomenon, but does explain how/why your mileage may vary.
The bottom line remains the same - there are design/software flaws that need to be addressed by Apple in some form.
I shouldn't have to say this, but those of you berating consumers here for taking issue with having to avoid holding the phone in a VARIETY of plausible ways are being ignorant. Apples to oranges, but someone summed it up well by saying, "It's like being sold a car that shuts the engine off when you hold the steering wheel the wrong way."
We deserve a fix on this issue, and I do not feel that the "case-or-bust" solution is satisfactory for a product of this magnitude.
I'm happy to hear that tinkering with the SIM card improves reception issues for iP4 users, however we need to caution ourselves as this is not really a "fix".
Bridging the antennas or just covering them is still causing people to lose reception, albeit at a more acceptable level. Same problem, different scale.
For those of you that haven't read this article: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2 --- I suggest you do so. It won't explain the SIM card phenomenon, but does explain how/why your mileage may vary.
The bottom line remains the same - there are design/software flaws that need to be addressed by Apple in some form.
I shouldn't have to say this, but those of you berating consumers here for taking issue with having to avoid holding the phone in a VARIETY of plausible ways are being ignorant. Apples to oranges, but someone summed it up well by saying, "It's like being sold a car that shuts the engine off when you hold the steering wheel the wrong way."
We deserve a fix on this issue, and I do not feel that the "case-or-bust" solution is satisfactory for a product of this magnitude.
I don't have a photo but what you can try is a very thin piece of scotch tape on the thin indented side of the SIM tray.
This either helps stop a SIM tray to SIM card contact issue or helps seat the SIM better in the tray for improved contact with the phone.
Call from a LANDLINE
Don't you know that you aren't supposed to call At&t from the phone that is having technical difficulties? How are they supposed to trouble shoot the phone if your on it?
Don't you know that you aren't supposed to call At&t from the phone that is having technical difficulties? How are they supposed to trouble shoot the phone if your on it?
Maybe you're in an area with "low signal strength." Bahahaha... I think it's funny that people think Jobs is arrogant to have answered in that manner. Perhaps you ARE in an area with low signal strength? Perhaps the media is making more of a deal out of this than is warranted?
I live in a basement and I own the iP4 and have full bars regardless of how I hold the phone. This is before I removed the sim card. I removed the sim card to see if I would get any worse signal and to see the position of the metal contact stamp. It was off center. Whoever thought of that was a problem solver and a thinker. Perhaps maybe At&t should test that theory out since they have the capabilities to make new sim cards. I mean that is the least they can do for their customers, considering they are screwing them on internet usage and the whole pre-ordering fiasco.
Just a thought. And I am still an Apple customer regardless of what the minority says about Jobs!
So, you can't access the Field Test mode any more, but if you read the Anandtech review, where they give actual signal strength readings, they tell you that you CAN get the numeric signal strength meter in the i4. You have to do a trick with an old 3GS that is JB'd, but it supposedly works. How else would they have been able to get the numbers?
What they did is:
Enable numeric signal strength on your iPhone 3G
Anybody try this? It would be great if you did to see real numbers, not "bars" esp. for those of you who either never had the issue or are now seeing it "fixed".
I just discovered something interesting about the SIM tray. With all the talk about the SIM card making contact with the SIM tray, I figured I'd do some testing with my multimeter. Turns out that there's a non-conductive coating on the lip of the SIM tray. If you look closely you'll notice that the lip where the card sits is a different color than the rest of the tray. I noticed that the very edge of the lip might have been loosing it's coating so I used electrical tape on my SIM card to be absolutely sure that it wasn't coming into contact with the tray. The problem persists. I really wish that it would have fixed the problem, but at least we know that Apple had enough forethought to incorporate that potential problem into their design.
Reminded me that the cheap bastards didn't give us that SIM tool this time around!
I'm not really sure why you quoted me and followed with this. You'd have to be blind to not realize by now that the phone has a problem that needs to be fixed. But when I couldn't hold a call longer than 5 minutes for two years and now I can with this phone when it's in a case, it's an improvement and no one is going to make me take it back. At least not for another iPhone.
I did mention elsewhere that I'm more concerned with the culture at Apple that let this go out the door with such a glaring and serious problem that took me minutes to run into. First it was the video problem in the Macbook Pro, then it was a wifi problem in the iPad, then it all the artificial limitations of the iMac and now this. Apple products are expensive, more expensive than like products from other companies, and I always assumed that a premium was paid because the quality of Apple products were that much higher. My Macbook Pro will need to be replaced within the year, do I replace it with another overpriced, average quality Apple product or do I save myself the money and get something that will actually work as expected for a reasonable price? It all depends on how this plays out.
Anyone tried insulating the sim?
Has anyone tried insulating the Micro-sim from the side walls? i.e. cutting a thin piece of tap and putting in over the edge of the sim.
i tried it but not sure it helps.
its clear the signal issues are just from a short of the external antenna, this is only the case however when the contact is over short distance (i.e. when cupped in the palm over the break of the antennas), doesn't seem to cause a short over a longer distance such as from one finger the another (i.e. holding the phone with index finger at the top and thumb at the bottom). this could be fixed then by apple reducing the power of the antenna to reduce the short? (not a electrical engineer so don't quote me, just brain storming)
anyways i use the Invisible shield max, and i just cut with a scalpel extra bits to cover the sim slot and and i don't get any signal drops even in death grip mode. (the strip down the left side over hangs the metal as well which helps from the death grip)
hope this is useful.
Has anyone tried insulating the Micro-sim from the side walls? i.e. cutting a thin piece of tap and putting in over the edge of the sim.
i tried it but not sure it helps.
its clear the signal issues are just from a short of the external antenna, this is only the case however when the contact is over short distance (i.e. when cupped in the palm over the break of the antennas), doesn't seem to cause a short over a longer distance such as from one finger the another (i.e. holding the phone with index finger at the top and thumb at the bottom). this could be fixed then by apple reducing the power of the antenna to reduce the short? (not a electrical engineer so don't quote me, just brain storming)
anyways i use the Invisible shield max, and i just cut with a scalpel extra bits to cover the sim slot and and i don't get any signal drops even in death grip mode. (the strip down the left side over hangs the metal as well which helps from the death grip)
hope this is useful.
Didnt see 65StangBoy's comment. have tried somthing similar and didnt work as well.
That's too logical... =p
Got a genius bar appointment tomorrow.
Mine sometimes shows 5 bars but won't have internet. =/ Does not seem to be affected by the grip.
You have no access to a paperclip? I've had mine since the 2007 iPhone.
