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Steve Jobs denies iP4 reception issues!

I don't want to jinx myself but I have perfect reception. 5 bars all day long.

Much better than my 3G. I'm using the Incipio black case right now, had it naked earlier and still had 5 bars.
 
Journojulz said:
The products released under of his stewardship of apple will be his legacy.

...just as you and I will be judged by what we have left behind.
Click to expand...

I would not want to be judged as being someone who pulled a fast one on his customers to disguise a major design flaw in one of my products. I for one would never do that, no matter what kind of problems it would create in the short run, its the long riun that counts and thats not what hes doing here.

He's a cheat.
 
Someone posted this in another thread and it's the most thorough test of the reception issue I've seen yet…

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

This guy manages to trick his iPhone 4 into showing numerical signal strength instead of bars, which is really key to understanding what is going on.

For me, the main points can be summarised as:

  • Loss in signal strength is far worse in the iPhone 4 when used without a case and holding naturally — almost twice as bad as the Nexus One, and ten times worse than the 3GS.
  • Using the iPhone 4 within a case DOES improve things dramatically, actually performing better than the Nexus One. (Anyone still not convinced why Apple designed the ‘bumper’?)
  • So long as you don’t short the antenna, the iPhone 4 actually performs better than previous iPhones at the same signal strength, since ‘the new baseband hardware is much more sensitive’.
No surprises for me with those first two points. At least the third is a sign that Apple didn’t get it completely wrong.

Finally, the author sums up Apple’s dilemma nicely in this paragraph:

’Add in an external antenna you’re essentially forced to touch and bridge to another adjacent antenna while holding, and the signal attenuation is even worse. The fact of the matter is that either the most sensitive region of the antenna should have an insulative coating, or everyone should use a case. For a company that uses style heavily as a selling point, the latter isn’t an option. And the former would require an unprecedented admission of fault on Apple’s part.’
​
 
kalsta said:
  • Loss in signal strength is far worse in the iPhone 4 when used without a case and holding naturally — almost twice as bad as the Nexus One, and ten times worse than the 3GS.
Click to expand...

Don't touch the antenna.

  • Using the iPhone 4 within a case DOES improve things dramatically, actually performing better than the Nexus One. (Anyone still not convinced why Apple designed the ‘bumper’?)
Click to expand...

Don't touch the antenna, and as long as you don't it'll work fairly well.

  • So long as you don’t short the antenna, the iPhone 4 actually performs better than previous iPhones at the same signal strength, since ‘the new baseband hardware is much more sensitive’.
Click to expand...

Don't touch the antenna, and as long as you don't it'll outperform previous iPhones because now the antenna is longer, not blocked by circuitry or housing, and matching more precisely the given wavelengths necessary for cellular communications and thereby improving performance over the simplistic foil-type internal antennas so common to every cell phone that exists on the market today and for the past 10 years.

You're right, no surprises there at all. As long as you don't touch the antenna, of course. :p
 
atomicbatteries said:
I would not want to be judged as being someone who pulled a fast one on his customers to disguise a major design flaw in one of my products. I for one would never do that, no matter what kind of problems it would create in the short run, its the long riun that counts and thats not what hes doing here.

He's a cheat.
Click to expand...

A world class con man.
 
Journojulz said:
Its cutting edge design - not a week old in the wild.

Whining that initial flaws on what is looking like the benchmark phone for the next 2 years have not been hammered out within a week of launch makes you seem equally churlish.
Click to expand...

Statements are fine....BUT

When Apple CEO makes statements that their goal is to make the BEST products in the world... and we get this happening in a very mature moile phone market... well is kind of a big error that realy should not have been overlooked, given Apples attenton to detail...

They are scoping for a software fix because hardware is set in stone... alternately they may slip in iPhone 4.1 late this year or early next...
 
Thex1138 said:
Statements are fine....BUT

When Apple CEO makes statements that their goal is to make the BEST products in the world... and we get this happening in a very mature moile phone market... well is kind of a big error that realy should not have been overlooked, given Apples attenton to detail...

They are scoping for a software fix because hardware is set in stone... alternately they may slip in iPhone 4.1 late this year or early next...
Click to expand...

Like someone pointed out in some other thread: this isn't the first iPhone, Apple should have their you-know-what together enough to be able to cover all this before actual release. As many have speculated, it seems - note I'm saying plainly and clearly that it seems like some of these problems could be related to issues or problems discovered too late in either the prototyping or the actual testing of production level units to backtrack and scrap not only the design but the devices themselves.

I would have seen them delay the initial launch of the project for a month, two, however long it took and released the product they make it out to be (again, not everyone has problems but many many people do, I'm one of them). I'm not quite so happy about being a beta tester, to be honest.

I've been doing beta testing for decades with many different companies, this is pretty much the first time ever that I've bought a cell phone that doesn't work as a cell phone. Sure it does almost everything else extremely well, but as a phone? Forget it...
 
br0adband said:
Like someone pointed out in some other thread: this isn't the first iPhone, Apple should have their you-know-what together enough to be able to cover all this before actual release. As many have speculated, it seems - note I'm saying plainly and clearly that it seems like some of these problems could be related to issues or problems discovered too late in either the prototyping or the actual testing of production level units to backtrack and scrap not only the design but the devices themselves.

I would have seen them delay the initial launch of the project for a month, two, however long it took and released the product they make it out to be (again, not everyone has problems but many many people do, I'm one of them). I'm not quite so happy about being a beta tester, to be honest.

I've been doing beta testing for decades with many different companies, this is pretty much the first time ever that I've bought a cell phone that doesn't work as a cell phone. Sure it does almost everything else extremely well, but as a phone? Forget it...
Click to expand...

Yeah I totally agree.. which is why I wonder how this could have slipped by QA... probably had something to do with cutting short field testing because thedude lifted the prototype from the testing engineer...and the other couple of leaked prototypes in the US and Vietnam. Distracted Apple from their project delivery road map.
 
Spoke to Apple Care this morning, I've had the dropping of calls and data connection problem without trying the 'grip of death', just during normal calls when I switch to my left hand. Also get it if I'm holding the phone in my left hand with the phone facing me, while texting or browsing the web.

I informed her that I've bought 3 of these handsets and all of them displayed this problem. She was very sympathetic and mentioned that the Bumper would be a good solution without ditracting from the look and feel of iPhone 4, ok, great for a short term fix. Wasn't until the end of the conversation that she requested my card details :eek: After spending £1800, to expect me to pay for a fix to a problem that they've created themselves is a disgrace !

Expaliend my frustration at the sitaution and that there would be no way that I would be paying to resolve this issue but she would not budge an inch. Very dissapointing.
 
Ouch, just ouch, like £1800 of pain there. :(

Sorry to hear of your troubles, just know that you're not alone, even if that doesn't mean much at all. We're all hoping something happens at some point, the sooner the better, even if it's just Apple or Steve Jobs coming forward with a statement, whatever.

Something is better than absolutely nothing and so far, we've been given nothing of any consequence that may alleviate any of our issues.
 
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