Steve Jobs denies iP4 reception issues!

[br0adband]

I never said the bumper was created because they knew about the issues all along - I've been participating in this thread and the other superhuge one (Jobs says Signal Strength a "non-issue") since they started so, that's several thousand posts a lot of you have missed but I've read every single one so far in both these threads and many others.

What I said in the past across multiple posts and threads and I now repeat for people new to this situation is this:

- That the issue(s) people are noticing are indicative of a design flaw
- That Apple discovered it way too late into the prototyping phase (pre-fabrication of the actual product, but prototypes were still in testing)
- That because of such a late discovery they couldn't really do much about it and needed a solution to prevent the primary cause of the signal degradation noted: skin-on-metal contact
- That the working theory is that they did almost all their testing with iPhone 4 prototypes inside cases to mask them and protect it from prying eyes which precluded them from skin-on-metal contact during all that testing
- That at some point the device would have had to be removed from the fake case/mask/etc and actually held in someone's hand (field trials, perhaps, who knows)
- That at that time the discovery was made that signal reception and degradation was occurring in degrees that couldn't be accounted for simply because "we're pretty far from a cell site."
- That someone with some common sense put two and two together and realized that considering they're dealing with microwave energy transmission, skin-on-metal contact is wicking away that energy in quantities the phone can't adapt to quickly enough (the software issue) to recover/maintain given levels of service
- That a solution was desperately required since the phone was practically done by that point and they couldn't just scrap the entire process and design
- The solution presented itself in the form of the bumper that was quick to create, quick to manufacture (make a mold, pour in some rubber, done), cheap as hell, deadly efficient by design, and practically - note: practically solves the skin-on-metal potential 100%

And by "practically" I mean it is the most elegant solution to preventing skin-on-metal contact - even I couldn't come up with a better solution except coating the metal but that's not going to make a cent of profit like the bumper can, an absolutely INSANE amount of profit.

That's my theory, all rolled up into one list of thoughts.

Makes perfect sense to me. Anyone else?

 

[BobVB]

Of course there are people with no issues because they are in areas with such strong signals the phone doesn't even need an antenna - have reproducible drops at home, had 5 bars that wouldn't budge where I went to dinner last night.

People who don't need an antenna for a good signal will never have a problem with the new phone or so seldom they'll blame AT&T for dropping it.

This is a hardware problem and a software problem - software will be easy and a free bumper would be a nice 'sorry about that' for the antenna.

Just glad my BT works well so I don't have to touch the phone during calls for the most part.

 

[wentwj]

Right here. I didn't even have to go back and look. The statement is false, not everyone can duplicate the issue. Thanks, Mann.

The people that can't reproduce the issue are few and far between. Now, are they just not coming here? Maybe, but a lot of people originally couldn't reproduce the issue (I was one), and then were able.

There are obviously more variables here. Maybe not all phones are affect, maybe it has to do with the type of signal, maybe it has to do with how many cell towers the phone can latch on to, maybe it's skin moisture or inherent conduciveness of your apparently skin. Who knows. But there IS a real issue.

 

[arn]

This is simply not true - I have yet to reproduce the issue.

I can reproduce it in some locations, and not in other locations.

arn

 

[wentwj]

I never said the bumper was created because they knew about the issues all along - I've been participating in this thread and the other superhuge one (Jobs says Signal Strength a "non-issue") since they started so, that's several thousand posts a lot of you have missed but I've read every single one so far in both these threads and many others.

What I said in the past across multiple posts and threads and I now repeat for people new to this situation is this:

- That the issue(s) people are noticing are indicative of a design flaw
- That Apple discovered it way too late into the prototyping phase (pre-fabrication of the actual product, but prototypes were still in testing)
- That because of such a late discovery they couldn't really do much about it and needed a solution to prevent the primary cause of the signal degradation noted: skin-on-metal contact
- That the working theory is that they did almost all their testing with iPhone 4 prototypes inside cases to mask them and protect it from prying eyes which precluded them from skin-on-metal contact during all that testing
- That at some point the device would have had to be removed from the fake case/mask/etc and actually held in someone's hand (field trials, perhaps, who knows)
- That at that time the discovery was made that signal reception and degradation was occurring in degrees that couldn't be accounted for simply because "we're pretty far from a cell site."
- That someone with some common sense put two and two together and realized that considering they're dealing with microwave energy transmission, skin-on-metal contact is wicking away that energy in quantities the phone can't adapt to quickly enough (the software issue) to recover/maintain given levels of service
- That a solution was desperately required since the phone was practically done by that point and they couldn't just scrap the entire process and design
- The solution presented itself in the form of the bumper that was quick to create, quick to manufacture (make a mold, pour in some rubber, done), cheap as hell, deadly efficient by design, and practically - note: practically solves the skin-on-metal potential 100%

And by "practically" I mean it is the most elegant solution to preventing skin-on-metal contact - even I couldn't come up with a better solution except coating the metal but that's not going to make a cent of profit like the bumper can, an absolutely INSANE amount of profit.

That's my theory, all rolled up into one list of thoughts.

Makes perfect sense to me. Anyone else?

No, I think that's crazy talk. If apple KNEW about the issue there's NO way they'd release such a huge flaw to the public and as a suggested fix sell a $30 bumper. A lot of people are already pissed off, and if that was there solution a significant number will never buy an apple product again. They have much more to LOSE on that strategy than they could possibly hope to gain. It's a really flimsy conspiracy, and I simply don't see it. Everyone is going to be pissed.

Whereas adding some coating to the metal, would cost next to nothing, and this entire uproar (assuming that's what the ultimate issue is), would have been completely avoided and we'd all be talking about how crazy the demand is the iPhone4 rather than this nonsense.

NO! You don't know that. Many many more have been sold than there have been reports of issues. Let's say there were 50,000 reports of cell issues with iPhone 4 (there haven't been, not even close, but for the sake of argument, we'll just say), even with 50K reports of iPhone 4 reception issues, THAT's not even MOST. It's still a fraction. 50K is significant, I'd say, but it's not all, nor is it nearly all.

But we have a large sample size. You don't conduct science like this by studying EVERY individual device. We have thousands of reports of people with issues. Now, you COULD say that they are all coming here because they have the issue, but I've now seen several people (myself included), who originally couldn't get the issue to happen and then, could.

That is enough to conclude, in my opinion, that a large percentage of phones are affect, since we have a large sample size, and even those who didn't have the issue, and thus didn't come here because there was a problem, were eventually able to reproduce the issue.

Now that says nothing about the source of the problem, or exactly the factors, but there IS an issue, with a significant amount of phones.

 

[br0adband]

Careful, wentwj, you keep that up and you're gonna get a call from Apple's marketing department with a job offer and a lifetime supply of Kool-Aid...

As to the coating vs bumper thing: Apple is in business to make a profit, period. That is the one true reason, as it is for most any business. Coating? Maybe 20 cents per iPhone, doesn't do anything in terms of profit.

Bumper? Maybe 20 cents to manufacture, sold for $29 USD. That's 14,400% profit.

14,400% profit.

Which would you choose if your primary goal was maximizing profit? Two workable sustainable solutions: one offers zero profit, one offers 14,400% or potentially more. A hardware recall to get a coating would COST more, so the decision was probably made to go with the bumper for pretty obvious reasons.

 

[wentwj]

Careful, wentwj, you keep that up and you're gonna get a call from Apple's marketing department with a job offer and a lifetime supply of Kool-Aid...

As to the coating vs bumper thing: Apple is in business to make a profit, period. That is the one true reason, as it is for most any business. Coating? Maybe 20 cents per iPhone, doesn't do anything in terms of profit.

Bumper? Maybe 20 cents to manufacture, sold for $29 USD. That's 14,400% profit.

14,400% profit.

Which would you choose if your primary goal was maximizing profit?

You're thinking WAY to short term. Apple would get a SIGNIFICANT amount of negative PR if they had a problem with the iPhone4, that can only be fixed with a case, and then charged for a case.

There would be a HUGE amount of lawsuits, and lost sales like crazy. It's not like this phone is going to be out for a month, this is their design for a year. No one will buy this if it's not fixed. So if they start producing fixed versions in a month, then we'll all get our phones swapped out, problem solved. But if the solution is "Buy our case, or it's unusable", a lot of people won't buy.

You're right it's all about profit, but it's not very difficult to see that Apple would LOSE money this way. I'm not saying Apple doesn't think about profit, I'm just saying there is NO way Apple would profit with this conspiracy. There would be lawsuits, they'll have to give them away for free, and everyone will be upset. There'd be no reason for them to not just push back the launch and apply some cheap coating on the problem area.

 

[cutthroughthebs]

Steve should emplement a time bomb in the phone for people who have nothing better to do than create data clog with their up you ass texting and social activities! I really don't care what your doing @ the moment and if you do... join at the cranium and open up the networks please!!!! They need to put a cap on bandwidth too. It's slow for us who really need it and the ones who's parents pay the bill, saturate the network with their up your ass actoins.

 

[wentwj]

Good. In your opinion. Won't argue what your opinion is. You should know what your opinion is. Just don't start calling it certain. Because if one thing is certain about these reports... is that very little is certain.

Well yes, I'm of the opinion that very little can be known to 100% certainty (if anything), but that's neither here nor there.

To suggest that a large degree of reports, on a forum designed for Mac fans, nearly all of whom can reproduce an error with a simple procedure, is not indicative of a problem, is a little screwy.

So you're suggestion is that ALL of these reports, the videos that show signal dropping when you touch a kill zone, are all people in horrible reception, and it just happens to get worse touching that area. That the five bar signal is just wrong, and really the reception is already dead to begin with, for ALL of these people?

If you want to say more study should be done, sure fine, good, but wouldn't the evidence that DOES exist point (fairly strongly) to there being an issue?

 

[br0adband]

You're thinking WAY to short term. Apple would get a SIGNIFICANT amount of negative PR if they had a problem with the iPhone4, that can only be fixed with a case, and then charged for a case.

There would be a HUGE amount of lawsuits, and lost sales like crazy. It's not like this phone is going to be out for a month, this is their design for a year. No one will buy this if it's not fixed. So if they start producing fixed versions in a month, then we'll all get our phones swapped out, problem solved. But if the solution is "Buy our case, or it's unusable", a lot of people won't buy.

You're right it's all about profit, but it's not very difficult to see that Apple would LOSE money this way. I'm not saying Apple doesn't think about profit, I'm just saying there is NO way Apple would profit with this conspiracy. There would be lawsuits, they'll have to give them away for free, and everyone will be upset. There'd be no reason for them to not just push back the launch and apply some cheap coating on the problem area.

Steve Jobs and Apple don't care what you think, nor do they care what I think, or anyone else for that matter. They only care about what they think, and what they think is it, end of discussion from their perspective. They're right, we're wrong. They're smart, we're just stupid consumers. They know the one true way, we are lost sheep that will never be content unless they lead us on that path to their way.

Think I'm wrong?

"Just avoid holding it in that way." -- Steve Jobs

What more proof do you need, honestly?

 

[appleoracle]

Not that it matters, but I'm a phi beta kappa CS graduate. My science kicks the crap out of your science, because my science is pure science[...]

Please stop posting until your fever is gone.

 

[wentwj]

Steve Jobs and Apple don't care what you think, nor do they care what I think, or anyone else for that matter. They only care about what they think, and what they think is it, end of discussion from their perspective. They're right, we're wrong. They're smart, we're just stupid consumers. They know the one true way, we are lost sheep that will never be content unless they lead us on that path to their way.

Think I'm wrong?

"Just avoid holding it in that way." -- Steve Jobs

What more proof do you need, honestly?

Alright, well I guess you can have your own flavor of kool-aid then, that's fine. I just don't see how you possibly think anyone, Apple especially, would think this would "profit" them.

If that's how it plays out, and the solution is to buy Apple's $30 case, expect large numbers of returns, and reduced sales, and horrible brand image. Also expect no problems getting on the servers to pre-order the iPhone5, because no one will want to get an iPhone on day one for quite a while.

Apple cares greatly what we think, they desperately want us to keep thinking their products are 'cool' and 'magical'. I have confidence that they will desperately try to fix this.

Anyway, enjoy your kool-aid then, I'll enjoy mine.

 

[cutthroughthebs]

Well yes, I'm of the opinion that very little can be known to 100% certainty (if anything), but that's neither here nor there.

To suggest that a large degree of reports, on a forum designed for Mac fans, nearly all of whom can reproduce an error with a simple procedure, is not indicative of a problem, is a little screwy.

So you're suggestion is that ALL of these reports, the videos that show signal dropping when you touch a kill zone, are all people in horrible reception, and it just happens to get worse touching that area. That the five bar signal is just wrong, and really the reception is already dead to begin with, for ALL of these people?

If you want to say more study should be done, sure fine, good, but wouldn't the evidence that DOES exist point (fairly strongly) to there being an issue?

Dude, most of the posters here can barely pay ther rent let alone own a Mac! Most of these posters weren't even born yet when the Mac llci came out let alone know anything about being a die hard Mac user!

 

[wentwj]

Calling someone an idiot is an exceptionally weak argument.

Further, I have answered all of cmaier's arguments, and some more than once, and sufficiently destroyed them with mere logic.

No matter how strongly you feel about something, that's not what gives it it's truth value. In fact, feeling strongly about something makes you singularly worthless when evaluating the truth of what you are saying. We already know you are biased... so your evidence, your arguments, are suspect.

I'm not biased, btw. I do have an orig iPhone. I do think it sucks. I will not be purchasing an iPhone 4. However, I think Gizmodo created this **** storm for Apple out of nothing. All cell phones have always shown this effect. Maybe it's worse on iPhone 4, but just showing the effect on another phone strongly suggests that this uproar is all hogwash. So to speak.

But I will suspend judgement until after some independent and unbiased reports appear.

Wait, you don't even have an iPhone4? Meaning you haven't even tried to reproduce this issue? Man... At the very least leave the discussion on this issue to those with devices.

 

[br0adband]

All cell phones have always shown this effect.

Really? 'cause I've owned dozens, well over a 100, cell phones in my decades and the only way I've ever been able to negate their functionality as a cell phone with one fingertip is by using that fingertip to turn them off.

Gotta watch those broad generalizations there, bub, they'll come back to bite you in the keister when you least expect it.

Not one cell phone I've ever had in my lifetime has ever degraded to even a small degree of how badly/quickly the iPhone 4 sitting here on my desk can and does with a fingertip, not one.

</rehash_done>

 

[iphonetester]

I'm amazed by all this endless discussion without any use. The device is out there, we see the problem, now what?

I have been thinking, the software update can potentially solve the issue. I'm not aware how both antennas are positioned, but there are two basebands. I'm wondering if software fix can be such that it is possible to switch GSM antenna to the other baseband if the signal loss is encountered?


Any thoughts on this?

 

[br0adband]

I'm not biased, btw. I do have an orig iPhone. I do think it sucks. I will not be purchasing an iPhone 4.

Pot, meet Kettle, Kettle, meet Pot...

 

[appleoracle]

Seriously, I am sick and tired of reading all of this.

Can everybody who does not exactly understand how the iPhone 4 GSM antenna, SKY77541, SKY77542 and the iPhone 4 firmware interact please shut up when it comes to explaining?

- every iPhone 4 has this issue. Which is an issue, not a non-issue. That you are unable to reproduce it, for whatever reason, is not the fault of others.
- It's not a "problem" of touching an antenna. That "problem" is well known to every RF engineer.
- It's a problem of detuning an antenna by changing one of its core attributes - its length - and what the SKY ICs and the firmware do. Scaling is the magic word here.

 

[wentwj]

I'll say it again, I fight for truth, not Apple. I'm pointing out the fallacies. It's what I do. I don't need a new phone to pinpoint a fallacious argument. And btw, with this statement, you have joined the others now in ad hominem.

Once again I must direct you to the argument:

By the evidence offered, except in bb's case, we can't make any conclusions. If we had 100 bb reports, I think that is a good enough sampling, then we could begin to say maybe something is going on. But random reports of calls dropping is meaningless.

So... attack that paragraph... and ignore everything you feel about me.

Your assumptions are all flawed. We don't need to march a hundred cell phones under the same tower to tell anything. Then that'd just leave us questioning if the issue was with phones being CLOSE to a tower.

What we need, is a wide variety of conditions, and then to consistently alter a SINGLE variable and see if it has a predictable outcome. If it does, than that single variable is the likely cause of said outcome.

In this case, we have nearly that. We have a presumably random geographical and biological distribution (though I'd wager it trends to the male spectrum). And what we've seen is the VAST majority of people are able to drop their signal significantly by touching the kill zone.

We also have, at least one if not more, people who have done so in a strong signal area (I live right near cell towers, and also can reproduce the issue). This issue is NOT the same as general cell phone reception dropping.

I fail to see what the large experimental problem is with it. What you're suggesting as the possible reasoning, that everyone happens to be in horrible signal zones and just pushes it over the edge, is such a statistical anomaly in this situation that it should be given little thought, and the evidence we have against it (from people under cell towers), should nearly discount it entirely.

 

[br0adband]

I'm retired so I've got plenty of free time to participate, most folks don't so, you can't really expect them to sit around and do lengthy forum posts about their "seemingly" defective phones, for whatever reason the defect exists or can be fixed.

The truth is this phone is defective by design, whether intentional or not - I don't believe Apple made it defective on purpose, and I've never said as such. It's defective by design because the actual design IS defective with respect to the antenna structure. I could care less about all the bells and whistles of this device (which are fairly nice but there's competitive products that work just as well - and certainly better considering my situation), but it's not enough considering it's a hand-held cell phone that doesn't work as a cell phone when it's in my hand.

And the same holds true for many others, most of them too busy to sit at their computers and report on it, probably a great number of them actually returning the phones, to be honest.

I know personally of 27 people in my circle of friends spread across the US that purchased the iPhone 4 either with a pre-order or were lucky enough to get one during first day retail sales. As of about 4PM today (Pacific time), 23 of them have experienced this issue (both the software and the hardware one as I explained in an earlier post because they're two different things) and 17 of those 23 have already returned their phones for replacements.

I expect tomorrow to hear from at least 3/4 of those 17 friends that the replacement phones are having exactly the same problem(s).

That enough truth for ya?

Are ad hominems really so hard to recognize?
et tu, bb?

You might as well put "ad hominems suck and so does the iPhone 4" in your sig as I had to since you're repeating it so much. Makes things easier for people...

 

[iphonetester]

Seriously, I am sick and tired of reading all of this.

Can everybody who does not exactly understand how the iPhone 4 GSM antenna, SKY77541, SKY77542 and the iPhone 4 firmware interact please shut up when it comes to explaining?

- every iPhone 4 has this issue. Which is an issue, not a non-issue. That you are unable to reproduce it, for whatever reason, is not the fault of others.
- It's not a "problem" of touching an antenna. That "problem" is well known to every RF engineer.
- It's a problem of detuning an antenna by changing one of its core attributes - its length - and what the SKY ICs and the firmware do. Scaling is the magic word here.

So you are saying, software fix possible?

 

[Sustainability]

I'll say it again, I fight for truth, not Apple. I'm pointing out the fallacies. It's what I do. I don't need a new phone to pinpoint a fallacious argument. And btw, with this statement, you have joined the others now in ad hominem.

Once again I must direct you to the argument:

By the evidence offered, except in bb's case, but we still can't make any valid conclusions. If we had 100 bb reports, I think that is a good enough sampling, then we could begin to say maybe something is going on. But random reports of calls dropping are meaningless.

So... attack that paragraph... and ignore everything you feel about me.

It would be random if we had 100s of youtube videos of iPhone 4's dropping calls while sitting on a table by themselves. That would definitely indicate that there are unseen variables at work which could point to the signal strength of a tower being a cause.

However, what we do have are 100s of youtube videos showing iPhone 4's dropping calls only when the gap is bridged by a finger or a coin. This is showing that there is a direct relationship between the act of bridging the gap and calls being dropped.

Am I saying that every phone has this issue? No, because I have friends that don't have the problem (I don't own one myself because I am interested in seeing how this all works out), but I also have friends that most definitely have the problem.

Coupling the personal experiences I have with those friends and the countless (annoying, and repetitive) youtube videos of this very issue leads me to believe that there is an issue with the phone resulting from a hardware/software malfunction.

 

[zoman504]

Well... everything you've just laid out here is basically saying, if I may paraphrase, "we have random reports... its all we have... let's just use those because they support my argument that something is wrong, and maybe these reports aren't ideal in the scientific sense, but lets just say they are"

Yeah. I'll stick with true knowledge. You can keep your half-truths. IF you have a better test, let's hear it. We need to eliminate as many variables as possible, and NOT simply say the variables don't mean anything. We can eliminate the variables, so we should.

You don't even own an iPhone 4 lmao, gtfo of here with your lame ass.

 

[wentwj]

Well... everything you've just laid out here is basically saying, if I may paraphrase, "we have random reports... its all we have... let's just use those because they support my argument that something is wrong, and maybe these reports aren't ideal in the scientific sense, but lets just say they are"

Yeah. I'll stick with true knowledge. You can keep your half-truths. IF you have a better test, let's hear it. We need to eliminate as many variables as possible, and NOT simply say the variables don't mean anything. We can eliminate the variables, so we should.

What I'm saying is that your suggestion would not be a good indicator if this issue. You want to make all the tests identical, thus increasing the number of variables we are testing. If all we had were reports of people standing directly under a cell tower outside in sunny weather, we wouldn't know if the cell tower was causing the issue, the proximity to it, the weather conditions, or what.

If what we have are tests in various random environments, all introducing the same variable, and getting the same results, what we have effectively done is isolated the variable we wanted.

I'm more convinced by what we have, than by what you WANT us to get to. For the record this isn't the conclusion I want. I'm a HUGE apple fan, I'm an iPhone developer who depends on over half my income coming from iPhone Apps, the LAST thing I want is a major issue, however I've seen it first hand, I've seen various reports that match what I see. Given the evidence I think the conclusion is blatantly obvious.

What your suggesting is like saying you can't believe gravity works on all objects because we've seen it work everywhere in "random reports". Instead you'd want us to march 100 objects out under a cell tower to "isolate" the variables and confirm that gravity works there, before we even start considering it as a theoretical principal. Science!

 

[br0adband]

Science!

"Now, we just need to find a causal link between the mention of 'Science' and the mention of that 13 lb bowling ball earlier, link those with gravity and dropping the bowling ball, then we can get a working hypothesis:

Stupid people = Never convinced by truth when swayed by belief.

EUREKA!!!"