I'll just agree with you. I'm far from an Apple fanboy, but my i4 has been flawless. One of my friends got his i4 on release day and he has all sorts of issues. I got mine late last week and it's been perfect. I think there were some bad batches that got our for the early orders. The pressure to get them all ready for release led to some sloppiness somewhere along the manufacturing line.
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Users Continue to Experience Problems With iPhone 4 Proximity Sensors
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I'll just agree with you. I'm far from an Apple fanboy, but my i4 has been flawless. One of my friends got his i4 on release day and he has all sorts of issues. I got mine late last week and it's been perfect. I think there were some bad batches that got our for the early orders. The pressure to get them all ready for release led to some sloppiness somewhere along the manufacturing line.
The quoted snippet is not part of any Apple statement, which the article is referring to by using:
"The statement continued, ...“"
And while I do understand the sentiment of people here, because it can be annoying when you are hit by some software bug, but it won't help anyone, nor change anything when people scream from rooftops. Not a bit.
I would say: Just relax and wait for Apple to release iOS 4.0.1 – because it will resolve a number of bugs, including this one – or visit your local Apple store, to have your iPhone checked for hardware failures.
Don't want to visit the Apple store, again, then at least call (AppleCare) and let them know about it... because that is the only way to have things changed/speed up.
I agree that people complaining about minor glitches and demanding absolute perfection can be annoying to no end. Stuff like "I'm on my 7th iPhone because the first three had backlight leaks at certain angles, the 4th had scratches on the bottom of the packaging, the 5th had one folded page corner in the 'getting started' pamphlet and the 6th was suspiciously flawless" always makes me roll my eyes.
But these are pretty damned serious flaws. An iPhone without a dependable proximity sensor is useless, and an antenna design that makes you bridge the antennas and kill the signal by just holding the phone in a way that millions of people always held their phones, makes about as much sense as swim trunks that mustn't be used in water.
Another data point
I returned my iP4 today for the proximity sensor issues. Running about 45% of my calls either muting, going to speakerphone, etc. This is a problem. Maybe not all folks are having it but a lot more have it than should. Coupled with the antenna issue, which I have because I live in a weak signal area AND the fact that I am not convinced Apple can, or will, fix the issue within the 30 day grace period, convinced me that I should return it.
The iPhone 4 is a great device. A screen to die for, great apps, facetime, mobilme sync, the list goes on. But for me, it isn't a great phone.
I really wanted to like this phone, I just can't.
I returned my iP4 today for the proximity sensor issues. Running about 45% of my calls either muting, going to speakerphone, etc. This is a problem. Maybe not all folks are having it but a lot more have it than should. Coupled with the antenna issue, which I have because I live in a weak signal area AND the fact that I am not convinced Apple can, or will, fix the issue within the 30 day grace period, convinced me that I should return it.
The iPhone 4 is a great device. A screen to die for, great apps, facetime, mobilme sync, the list goes on. But for me, it isn't a great phone.
I really wanted to like this phone, I just can't.
Same here. I would love to survey these people and see just how much bad karma or generally unpleasant and sociopaths these people are who complain about this. These people have had this to coming back to them for a long while.
I can see the line now "iPhone 4, for those with only good karma, there's and app for that!"
Perhaps all these complains are on jail-broken phones? Perhaps there is a process to screw up the IO of a jail-broken phone.
The kernal thread could go like this.
if(SysJailBreakDetect() == true)
{
[karam_dog on];
}
else
{
Same here. I would love to survey these people and see just how much bad karma or generally unpleasant and sociopaths these people are who complain about this. These people have had this to coming back to them for a long while.
Perhaps all these complains are on jail-broken phones? Perhaps there is a process to screw up the IO of a jail-broken phone.
The kernal thread could go like this for a process called "karma_dog" that detects jail-broken phones and other abusive uses of an iPhone 4.
if([karma_dog kJailBreakDetect] == true)
{
[karma_dog ON];
}
else
{
[karma_dog OFF];
}
I think a couple people are misconstruing what I'm saying.
I'm not saying that some observations don't turn out to be true. But 5 or 50 or 500 anecdotes out of millions of users does not make a "catastrophic" problem... and acting like a child before Christmas, vehemently refusing to wait before all the facts are gathered, doesn't help. I see a trend that's going to destroy the Apple you know and love.
It's very probable that the blogosphere, with its tendency to jump on things to be first to report... or I should say first to regurgitate... will put more pressure on Apple to start designing or refining products by committee. That isn't how they've done things since Steve Jobs came back. The iPod, iPhone, iPad, iMac in particular were designs that arose because of what Apple thought was cool that they believed, firmly, they could get us to drool over. Guy Kawasaki said this years ago... everything else is just process and details, but the core of why Apple is successful now is because they make cool stuff they think people will want, based on what they themselves think is cool.
But when there isn't time to quell complaints by quietly taking a focused effort at refining issues, when the blogosphere puts pressure every second of every day on Apple... two things happen:
Apple feels pressured to do something. If you're going to do something, why not do it right. That is a design engineering mantra that emanated out of the Colleges of Art and Design in California in the 1970's. But now, there's less focus on doing things right, but rather doing things quickly... whether it's fixing a product to quell the firestorm of comments, or waiting to get ALL the facts before igniting a firestorm of comments on your blog.
What's happening is a LOT of goddamned noise, and many half-baked hypotheses about what the problem is, what it isn't, etc. and a clock ticking away on the 24/7 news cycle waiting for when Apple's going to give us our fix... literally and figuratively.
This anticipation led to bad design choices in the first place, and it's going to lead to bad design fixes... and it's going to force Apple, in the interests of trying to maintain growth and shareholder and fanboy satisfaction, to start designing products by committee.
Thus, the very reason you buy Apple products is inevitably going to be obliterated by that very zeal which causes expectations to be high, resulting in "catastrophic" meltdowns of confidence when they make one mistake.
I can't say "Let Apple do their freakin' job" because it's a free country. Blogs can do what they want... but make no mistake. Macrumors doesn't exist to help Steve Jobs make a better product. They exist to stir up **** so they can increase pageviews and thus ad revenue.
All I'm saying is that the SENSIBLE thing to do would be to keep quiet until the actual problem is well documented, well understood and officially acknowledged... but journalism isn't the business of bloggers. It's the business of professional journalists.
From the letter: "We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars..."
That doesn't mean reception problems to you?
Clearly you know what the author meant...placing a finger over the "death grip" spot.
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/24/steve-jobs-describes-iphone-4-signal-strength-a-non-issue/
"In a followup email, Jobs then expanded with this explanation:
Gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.
Steve Jobs has been known to respond to emails and we were able to log into Samcraig's email account to verify the authenticity of the emails, so we believe these are real.
Update: This has been confirmed as an official statement from Apple."
Actually I found it to be a bit insightful. Don't know HOW credible it is, but claims that:
"This viewpoint also helps Strand Consult put the boot in for all of iPhone numerous fans in the media. For example, it points out that during a period where the global mobile market has grown by 1.1 billion users, Apple sold only 51 million mobile phones.
In other words, Apple’s rivals have sold over 3.4 billion phones. As Strand so succinctly puts it, “The truth of the matter is simply that the iPhone is a niche phone targeted at a niche segment.”
I thought I'd include it for those who say that the iPhone 4 has sold well and will keep selling. That may be true, but this offers some reason as to why.
The entire point of my initial post was simply that this hasn't died down just yet. I'm by no means a fanboy of any kind (whether it's Apple, Droid, etc.) I, like many others, mean no harm. I'm just a guy who wants a functional phone is all. And while many of you just point to Apple Retail Store and say "there's the return window", that's not good enough for those of us who still love Apple and still want their product(s).
This is why I always wait for rev E...
Thou, Sir, are a genius.
If you want to be even smarter, wait for rev Z.
Proximity sensors doesn't detect your face is near the phone and the touch of the ear passes weird command to iPhone4...
My iPhone 4 hasn't arrived yet but I currently own the 3GS and previously owned the 2G; I have had similar problems on both devices were I would be on the phone and then go to terminate the call and would be in my address book or another application would be running, I can even hold my 3GS a certain way and my signal bars will drop, I guess what am saying is that all the issues people are having with iPhone 4 I have experienced all along, maybe not as severe but I have had them none the less.
Sound like more software issues. Can't say after going to the Apple store and playing with the phone that I couldn't tell there was anything wrong with them, not even the side problem.
Of course this is at an apple store, but have to wonder if its about Foxcomm and all the issues they had there lately that there are bad batches running around.
Either way waiting till end of month before I touch this issue with a new purchase. Can't wait, but I will wait.
had this problem many times to were when i would try to hang up i would be in my address book or trying to activate facetime.. so yeah its a problem..
so now the prox senser is bad, reception issues, wiggly home button...
any body has n e thing else for the list LOl..
No wonder people where jumping of the building.
can't imagine who no one cared about quality at foxcomm. Apple may need to rethink what their doing, could hurt their image.
One failure of logic here is thinking "it's not happening to me, so it's happening to a minority of users". I'd like to see your study on how you came to this "minority" figure. The most likely scenario is that when this happens to most people they think "Oh Em Gee that's, like, soo weird!", then don't ever think of it again. Like many issues, most go unreported because either the user doesn't understand whats happening, or they don't care to make a fuss about it. Trying you pull figures out of a fan site's forum is a severe mistake.
Most people here are either 1. Here to complain, or 2. Extremely loyal fans. The people complaining here typically are here because they are seeing this issue, they aren't making it up, no matter how good most apple products are.
See, here's the case: Apple put an antenna on the holding surface of a phone, a bad move to start. The second mistake is that they did not insulate the antenna at all, another iffy decision. Neither of these would have been deal breakers by themselves but then apple decided the place another conductive surface right next to said antenna. This is an engineering flaw that never should have gotten past the first prototyping phase.
This software fix is stated by apple to only fix the signal display issues, changing it from a "logarithmic"-like display to a more linear. The only thing that's going to change is it will tell you how much signal you're really losing when you bridge your antennas when currently it still appears you have full signal if you really have anywhere above 40%. Apple has been lying about signal strength as they changed it intentionally ~2.0 because they were telling people that their phones were artificially telling people they had low signal. So apple is just doing a reversal on something that once made them look better.
This fix will not and can not fix the actual problem. Unless they go about a different method and have the phone switch frequencies fast enough to a band that isn't so affected by this particular phenomena, I don't see a real software based solution.
FWIW I freaking love the iPhone 4 despite it's shortcomings. The display is just incredible, voice quality on it is far improved. The earpiece volume is now finally High enough to hear in a crowded room. But this one problem is at the device's core, and it needs to be remedied not denied.
Based on that fix solution, I wonder if maybe it has something to do with some setting not transferring during the update from OS 3 to 4?
I'm glad I did the smart thing and waited...This seems like all of issues that keep arising are more so "hardware" related than a "software." Sure they can put in place some sort of "mask" to cover things up, much like the bumper case, but they should have figured all of this out before hand.
Again, I am glad I waited. However, I am pist at myself for upgrading to iOS4! My 32gb 3GS runs like a dog! It was faster, much faster, when jailbroken.
It blows my mind that that community of devs can get things right while apple is screwing things up with all of that money and talent at their disposal.
Again, I am glad I waited. However, I am pist at myself for upgrading to iOS4! My 32gb 3GS runs like a dog! It was faster, much faster, when jailbroken.
It blows my mind that that community of devs can get things right while apple is screwing things up with all of that money and talent at their disposal.
Something Apple could easily avoid by taking control of the story at an early stage and defusing the situation, but instead they stick with their antiquated policy of adamantly stonewalling the world rather than communicating with it. Normally they get away with that, but on this extremely rare occasion they didn't – however, it actually took the joint forces of all major news organization in the western hemisphere to make Apple come down from their ivory tower and issue an official comment on the matter of the reception problem.
All they have to do is test their damn products thoroughly instead of letting the customers beta test their odd and quirky designs, but the problem is that the company can't test anything properly due to their tradition of surreal secrecy. Anything they release has only been tested in a vacuum inside a vault inside another vault guarded by terminators and laser cannons and the testers then had their memories erased by Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith.
1. Enough with the stonewalling. If a sizable number of users report a problem that's known to the company, acknowledge it immediately and let everyone know a fix is in the works. Otherwise users will turn to eachother and vent their frustration and confusion collectively for weeks on end, and since speculation is all you leave them with that's exactly what they'll do, and the threads will keep growing and growing on the support forum and elsewhere.
2. Enough with the secrecy. Be reasonably secretive like other companies and stop ****** bolting stuff to tables. Focus the efforts on thorough field testing instead. Let your own employees know what the hell is going on with product development so that they don't make asses of themselves when people call in and say "hey, I think I've found some kind of iPhone prototype".
Apple aren't victims, they brought this on themselves.
I also wonder how much the Iphone 4 sales have increased Apple's phone user base, and how many simply replace older Iphones that are now in the toxic waste dumps.
I took my phone in for this and the reception issue on Saturday. Apple replaced it with a new one however this phone is worse at dropping calls and I've had a bumper on it since day two.
FWIW a reset was recommended rather than an update. Then a restart. I did that and my 3G runs fine.