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Was antennagate overblown?

thermal said:
Now that we've had some time to reflect and get a feel for our iPhone 4's, do you think 'antennagate' was overblown or accurately depicted a design flaw?
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Overblown. I don't know a single person, myself included with any problem and I have 26 iPhone 4s registered to my developer profile. If the "issue" was as big as people claimed it was surely one of those phones would have experience issues.

Its trendy to hate Apple.
 
thermal said:
Now that we've had some time to reflect and get a feel for our iPhone 4's, do you think 'antennagate' was overblown or accurately depicted a design flaw?
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It's a very real manufacturing defect that up to this day Consumer Reports still won't recommend iP4. Answer: No
 
Without a doubt it was overblown.

Nothing better than a big hoopla over nothing. People still bought the phone and are STILL buying it.
 
JD914 said:
It's a very real manufacturing defect that up to this day Consumer Reports still won't recommend iP4. Answer: No
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No offense but consumer reports is not this great trusted reliable source that people think it is. Sure they have good recommendations sometimes but they get it wrong a lot of the time too.

I remember back when I worked at Circuit City part time in 2000ish people used to always come in with their consumer reports magazine and they only would buy what consumer reports said was good. At the time the magazine was recommending the worst digital cameras out there, including a sony camera we sold that had a 100% return rate. At the time, Circuit City employees were still on commission so every time a return happened, we would lose money. Unfortunately for me I worked in the camera department and would try my best to sway users away from the junk consumer reports recommended into stuff that was actually good.

Consumer reports is an average publication at best.
 
chrono1081 said:
No offense but consumer reports is not this great trusted reliable source that people think it is.
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Apple took Consumer reports seriously, so seriously that they held a press conference when Consumer Reports gave iPhone 4 a failing grade. Consumer Reports is an industry institution and when they talk companies listen. Despite your opinion of them, they are a well trusted and reliable source.
 
JD914 said:
Apple took Consumer reports seriously, so seriously that they held a press conference when Consumer Reports gave iPhone 4 a failing grade. Consumer Reports is an industry institution and when they talk companies listen. Despite your opinion of them, they are a well trusted and reliable source.
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indeed, plus consumer reports is a private company that does not take money from ANY corporation. they have nothing invested in the products they test. they pay the same price you pay for the products and they do the tests using not one persons opinion but several.
 
JD914 said:
Apple took Consumer reports seriously, so seriously that they held a press conference when Consumer Reports gave iPhone 4 a failing grade. Consumer Reports is an industry institution and when they talk companies listen. Despite your opinion of them, they are a well trusted and reliable source.
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No they arent. Like I stated before, they have recommended **** in the past, despite YOUR opinion of them they aren't a great reliable source.

Also, Apple held the press conference to show there was no antenna gate. Please go watch it if you don't believe me it will show you statistics like how many people actually called in for a replacement on the iPhone 4.


But please, don't take my word for it. Go work in something like electronics retail, and see what consumer reports recommends compared to what actually sells well and doesn't have problems.

Better yet, go work in IT and have your boss buy computers and printers based on consumer reports ratings and you have to fix the trash they recommend.
 
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chrono1081 said:
No they arent. Like I stated before, they have recommended **** in the past, despite YOUR opinion of them they aren't a great reliable source.

Also, Apple held the press conference to show there was no antenna gate. Please go watch it if you don't believe me it will show you statistics like how many people actually called in for a replacement on the iPhone 4.
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apple is never wrong. few companies ever admit fault.

anyhow, more than just consumer reports reported issues with dropped calls and the like for the iphone4 and after apples conference they tried other phones and found that while they were affected by this "antennagate" none were as severe as the iphone 4. the other phones didnt drop calls.

again they have nothing invested in reporting their findings. NOTHING. they arent here to make friends, or enemies. they just report.
 
Overblown? Totally! It was dead in the water, as soon as Steve offered full refunds or free cases.
I never heard a thing about it as soon as that event was over.

JD914 said:
Apple took Consumer reports seriously, so seriously that they held a press conference when Consumer Reports gave iPhone 4 a failing grade. Consumer Reports is an industry institution and when they talk companies listen. Despite your opinion of them, they are a well trusted and reliable source.
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Perception is everything. Once the situation reached the regular press and tv news, that was also the time for Jobs to act.
 
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Let the past go. Presently Apple is still selling a phone that does not reflect their best efforts, and engineering expertise. It's a flawed phone period.

Apple would be well served to build a new model and release it early. Get this one into the history books and replace it with the best phone they've ever built.

A phone that makes strong, clear calls. Stop the finger pointing and blaming the carrier. If my BlackBerry Bold and Samsung Captivate can make great calls on the AT&T network, so could a well made iPhone.

Sell us a phone that is not made of glass, but rather one that has a level of durability greater than the present model. No one makes better looking products than Apple, I'm sure they can come up with a new look even if only slightly different in form factor.

Give us a great new iPhone and _then_ watch sales _really_ skyrocket!
 
I personally always thought it was completely blown out of preparation. Mainly because if it was on ANY other phone people wouldn't care. But because it's a problem with the iPhone, everyone has to talk about it. Too many bloggers made money off of the whole thing, and it just spread around like cancer. Although, it doesn't sound like it affected the sales too much, seeing as how they sold something like 14 million. People always over-alalyze Apple's products. So this wasn't really anything new to me to begin with. I thought of the whole thing as just something to hate on more than a real issue.
 
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I guess the proof will be in the pudding if we see the exact same form-factor for the next iPhone. And I mean same inside and out. I look forward to ifixit's teardown to see if Apple has changed their attennae wiring. If it's changed, then no, it wasn't overblown.
 
kas23 said:
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I guess the proof will be in the pudding if we see the exact same form-factor for the next iPhone. And I mean same inside and out. I look forward to ifixit's teardown to see if Apple has changed their attennae wiring. If it's changed, then no, it wasn't overblown.
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uhm ... no, that won't serve as proof really.

noone's arguing that the antenna design isn't a bit flawed.
Overblown means that the media attention this got is not proportional to the actual negative effect it had on the average user.

if my friend gets sick and i yell 'SWINE FLU EPIDEMIC', that's overblown ... even if it turns out it actually is swine flu he is suffering from...
(actually, the whole swine flu situation was massively overblown aswell)

And while we're at it. 'Was it overblown?' ... duh. It's today's media. What isn't completely blown out of proportion nowadays?
 
It's very true. I see it with every iPhone 4 that I repair. My old 3G is consistently 5 bars in the work area. A lot of the 4s vary between 2 and 5 bars. Constantly fluctuating. That said, the iPhone 4 is still an excellent phone.
 
chrono1081 said:
No offense but consumer reports is not this great trusted reliable source that people think it is. Sure they have good recommendations sometimes but they get it wrong a lot of the time too.

I remember back when I worked at Circuit City part time in 2000ish people used to always come in with their consumer reports magazine and they only would buy what consumer reports said was good. At the time the magazine was recommending the worst digital cameras out there, including a sony camera we sold that had a 100% return rate. At the time, Circuit City employees were still on commission so every time a return happened, we would lose money. Unfortunately for me I worked in the camera department and would try my best to sway users away from the junk consumer reports recommended into stuff that was actually good.

Consumer reports is an average publication at best.
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So...you're going to be discrediting an entire publication based on one instance of behavior that is likely an outlier out of the norm? Come on, Chrono, you're a smart guy. You should know better than that :( Tell me, was the "100% return rate" for the particular model based on a nationwide scale or only in your particular store? Could it be possible that you have gotten a bad batch of cameras? Over what span of time did these returns last? What we're the failures with the camera? Is it possible that people were just buying them only to use them for a bit and return them later? Unless the number of cameras you sold was inordinately small, I find it incredibly hard to believe that any item has had a 100% return rate. I'd say its hard to approach 100% certainty for anything (except death and taxes).

chrono1081 said:
Unfortunately for me I worked in the camera department and would try my best to sway users away from the junk consumer reports recommended into stuff that was actually good.
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Yeah, like Monster Cables, right?
 
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I camped out on launch day for my iPhone 4. The Phone definitely dropped signal from full bars down to no service when I was at home. It was never enough of an issue because I use my phone more at my office. The prox sensor issue was real & caused me to hate my new iPhone. I sold it in less than two weeks and went back to the 3GS.

Once the 4.1 iOS update was released I got another one & it's great.
 
chrono1081 said:
Overblown. I don't know a single person, myself included with any problem and I have 26 iPhone 4s registered to my developer profile. If the "issue" was as big as people claimed it was surely one of those phones would have experience issues.

Its trendy to hate Apple.
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Among other things I manage the mobile devices where I work. It was not overblown and it is a real issue.
 
Overblown? Totally.

However: I'm coming to realize--after three years of usage and experiencing escalating drops and diminishing voice quality--that AT&T-hate is not.
 
crazytiger86 said:
So...you're going to be discrediting an entire publication based on one instance of behavior that is likely an outlier out of the norm? Come on, Chrono, you're a smart guy. You should know better than that :( Tell me, was the "100% return rate" for the particular model based on a nationwide scale or only in your particular store? Could it be possible that you have gotten a bad batch of cameras? Over what span of time did these returns last? What we're the failures with the camera? Is it possible that people were just buying them only to use them for a bit and return them later? Unless the number of cameras you sold was inordinately small, I find it incredibly hard to believe that any item has had a 100% return rate. I'd say its hard to approach 100% certainty for anything (except death and taxes).
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The 100% return rate was from our store however on a very consistent basis consumer reports was recommending junk. As for the cameras, it was years ago but they were sony cameras, its all I remember and since sony comes out with new cameras practically every week its hard to pinpoint which ones. Their computer recommendations weren't so hot either. Everyone at work used to joke about Consumer Reports and some of their recommendations. I can't speak for anything outside of electronics but in electronics it was bad. I'm not saying that the magazine is bad, but to me they are not the best starting point for researching electronics and after working at Circuit City it soured my opinion of them and I haven't looked at them since. In my opinion a better starting place for reviews would be Neweggs site. Techy people are usually who shops there and write the reviews. Which brings up another point that anyone shopping for electronics should NEVER rely on just one source of information.


Yeah, like Monster Cables, right?
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Omg that company is such a scam! I've posted this before but I'll post it again (see you got me started! :p) :

Monster came into our store and set up a display showing the "monster cable" difference. There were two TVs, each set up beside each other. One TV used monster cables, the other TV used your standard in the box cables. The monster TV was definitely clearer....the monster TV also used COMPONENT cables where as the "in the box cables" tv was hooked up with composite!!!! Me and a few others pointed this out to the manager who told us to shut up about it. We were also told Monster paid a lot for the display and we were to use it.

What did we do? During closing one of the guys put non-monster component cables on the "in the box" TV and there was no difference. None. Except for $85 in price difference :rolleyes:

Most people tend not to believe that story since "its a big named retailer" but its completely true. We eventually had to put the other cables back on the monster display. Circuit City was a very very corrupt store. Just look at their "ad corrections" aka legal bait and switch :rolleyes:
 
I don't use a case, and as soon as I give my iP4 to my mum who 'holds it wrong', it becomes obvious the person on the other end can't hear her after a few seconds of talking, and moments later the call fails.

No problems with her old 3G, or her bumper'ed iP4. Problem is indeed there. Overblown, maybe a little, but it's a phone. Sure it loses signal strength if you hold it, but it shouldn't have a single point of failure.
 
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