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Working iPhone 4? PROVE IT!!

Why all the pissed off people on here? The OP is looking for a simple test. Damn.

If I can find someone that isn't having problems, I'll bring them to my house and test it. 4 of my friends have the new phone and all of them lose signal in my house. Full bars - - - - to no bars in less than 6 seconds.

If I find someone that claims not to have a problem. I'll do the test. Its not that big of a deal.

If I can find an iPhone that holds full bars in my place during the test, I'll be amazed and it will actually mean something.

On a side note, your location means everything. Some places I can hold the left seam, and I loose zero bars. Two of my friends and I went to dinner and all three phones held full bars with the test.

All the OP is trying to do is validate that the issue is actually only affecting some phones and not due to user error in testing.
 
Dang... I have two iphones but I'd need a third to record it.
and even so neither of my two have the reception issue.
Believe me I've tried it in many places other than at home.

at first I thought mine had it but every time I try it I go from 5 bars to 4 bars... no biggie.
 
This stinks of BAD engineering or bad thought or bad production line at Foxconn.

1. I'll bet Apple is tearing Foxconn a new hide like last week!

2. Has NOBODY at Apple supervised by Jobs himself reported issues with the iPhone?! IF NOT then they've been too busy playing games and NOT using it for fear of leaving it at coffee shops or bars and Jobs spanking them hard. IF SO ... then the onus is on Jobs' for either a) not believing the testing, or b) failing to recognize this as an issue with engineers for FIXING & testing further.

3. why didn't Apple make the antenna's at the TOP & bottom of the device (Bottom being the WLAN/GPS/BT radio since those would not be a priority when connected into a stereo dock or car charging dock, or any dock). Top radio would HARDLY be touched by just about ANY end user like the sides would and chances of being affected in the pocket would be slimmer.

Other phones use flimsy ribbon with tiny copper wire within and do NOT show attenuation like the IP4; yes those are within the phones not on the outside but their still VERY tiny.

Wondering if this IP4 does NOT boost radiation when signals become low like other phones. Jobs at D8 has stated that issue with reception should be cleared up by AT&T and if they don't well then they don't 'we'll see'. Somehow this makes me think Jobs' knew what the deal was.

Do I still want the iPhone 4 = HELL YES> Do I want this issue resolved in a Firmware update and very fast production lineup adjustment - HELL YES! Do I want a recall for a quick replacement of the 2nd production run and repaired/adjusted at Foxconn by Apple for first production run units to make existing customers happy = HELL YES! Does this help Apple for current sustained sales and future sales of iPHONE which leads to iPad and Mac sales?! = HELL YES.
 
chrisk1250 said:
College Station, TX. AT&T signal in my experience hasn't been great here. It's definitely not as good as areas like Houston. During football games its impossible to even send out a text message. Should be a really good town to test this issue.
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I'm in college station, and can replicate the issue, but I only get to 1 bar, never no service

(im off of luther and 2818)
 
Wateroksnmud said:
You are a moron.
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Not a good idea to post stuff like in a thread with Arn in it. Just saying’.

Alonzo84 said:
Why don't YOU prove it? You posted earlier that it should be easy to find someone who doesn't have this issue. So go find them and compare it to your "broken" phone and test the damn things yourself. Why are you trying to put this burden on everyone else?
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You’re right, it is fairly hard to prove, since not everyone has two iPhones, much less one that works and the other doesn’t.
 
citrate said:
Question: If Apple announce on Monday that every device is affected and you can send yours back for a 'perfect' one, I guess you will decline because you are 'very happy with your device' already?
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Oh come on, we all know this isn't going to happen. Not everyone is affected, I would be really shocked if this was actually effecting more then 40% of devices.
 
Wow! A lot of morons here.

To the guy who said he tested a 16gb and 32gb next to each other and one worked and the other didn't... liar. If by the very small chance your telling the truth, your doing the rest of us a great disservice by not proving it. You have the phones and you said the location was in your house so whats the problem? Not worth your time? I'll send you $10 via paypal as soon as you upload the proof. Who knows, maybe a couple others will chip in a buck or two. Oh that's right your full of ****

It's obvious that it's a design problem when physically touching the phone causes the problem. All of the phones will have this problem unless apple learned of the problem and changed the design but decided to sell both versions. The only other possible explanation would be that the manufacturer has a near 50% defect rate. No factory in the world has defect rates like that and I doubt apple would choose one that did.

Now I'm not saying there won't be a software update that fixes this issue. If there is an update then it will just be a workaround for a poorly placed antenna. Don't expect apple to change their design on future 4gs either. Then they would have to admit that it was a major problem and see millions of phones returned under the warranty. Apparently it's going to be don't hold your phone like that or don't buy one.
 
I posted In a bunch of threads yesterday asking for this same experiment. It is the only way to more or less scientifically prove that a phone doesn't have the problem. I don't know why this is so hard for some people to grasp.
 
Jason-Houghton said:
just to clear things up:

For the phone to loose signal you need to cover the left black line on the rim - effectively shorting out the bottom and left antennas.
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Uh, no. Cause that never makes me lose reception (I know where you are supposed to touch to replicate it). I can't use a finger. I have to have my palm covering it. Or sometimes it only does it when my thumb lieing full flat against it. A fingertip is never enough. And sometimes I have to have the death grip, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I'm pretty sure my hands are really dry, though usually I'd say that I could see maybe my hands being slightly damp (I think this has more to do with it). But I usually have to try to get it to replicate at all. And sometimes the bars will go down some, and hten go up one. Right now I can only get it to lose one bar of reception.

Oh, and I don't drop calls, the bars go lower. I'd never have noticed even if people hadn't pointed it out here.

Anyways, I refused to get a case so I figured I'd just get used to holding it differently. But now I've decided for the fact that I'm a klutz and I know I will drop my phone a case is a good idea. So it's even more of a non issue for me.
 
mediaboy said:
Why all the pissed off people on here? The OP is looking for a simple test. Damn.
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Actually, the OP is asking for some pretty serious test coverage. :)

citrate said:
ANYWHERE? Wow you've covered the whole world? I guess that's all the evidence we need.
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That being said, I can't prove it given I can go from 5 bars to 1 (in addition to lost wifi strength) when bridging the two bottom antenna separators with my thumb and index fingers. If I slide my fingers ever so slightly upwards to unbridge the antennas, it recovers back to full 3G/wifi signals.
 
Sure, let us all go out of our way to gather a couple ip4's together so we can provide proof to you somehow! Hilarious!

I'll tell you what. If you want to start a thread on the issue why don't YOU do the test and report it here instead of challenging the board to do your work for you.

Sounds like you just wanted to start a thread so you could argue.
 
Skoal said:
I'll tell you what. If you want to start a thread on the issue why don't YOU do the test and report it here instead of challenging the board to do your work for you.

Sounds like you just wanted to start a thread so you could argue.
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The bottom line is he can't do the test because he is saying it's impossible.

His believe is that any two iPhones in the same physical location will show the same results (either a signal issue or no signal issue). The reason is it depends on the quality of the tower signal rather than any difference in the iPhones themselves.

The only way to disprove this is to have two iPhone 4s in the same location with one showing the problem and one not showing the problem. Only then can you be sure there is actually a hardware difference.

arn
 
I have an iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and the iPhone 4. All with iOS4. My iPhone 4 experiences the signal loss (actually signal bar loss) but only when it's connected to 3G. I actually haven't experienced any dropped calls even when there are no bars.

I just got home from a visit to the Apple Store (Simi Valley, CA) to see if any one of their demo units would experience the same issue. None of the store phones would exhibit a loss in reception. They were all connected to the EDGE band though. I was talking to an Apple Store employee about how my iPhone 4 was showing a loss in bars so he asked me to show him. Well.... I had full service/bars and we talked a bit about it and he told me that Apple thought iOS4 was switching to 3G bands in a different way in comparison to older OS releases.

He was confident that Apple was going to release an update sometime next week to address the handling of changing bands and frequencies and that it's most likely a software issue.

I do have a funny feeling that they are right about it being a software bug. I have a hard time believing the pessimistic and skeptics that Apple let a hardware problem slip past R&D and their engineers.
 
Here's something to consider. I see terms like "short" used which aren't really correct. Human skin has pretty good resistance to current. You can't really short anything with your skin.

However, you can act like half of a capacitor. It's how the touch screen on the phone works. Bridging the two metallic pieces can have some interesting effects similar to inserting a capacitor into the circuit, but direct current passing isn't one of them.

If you play with a speedtest app, you'll see that upload speeds are what get impacted the most. Using scotch tape or electrical tape only lessens the impact, doesn't eliminate it, which supports this idea. But it is still enough to remove the worst of the effects. Anything more than a mm or so and it's swamped out in other effects that impact performance of the cell network.

So cases do work, but even coatings don't actually prevent this effect. There doesn't need got be direct contact for it to happen, just close enough to create a capacitive effect. It is possible there is a software component, but it's entirely unknown if his 4.0.1 will have any serious impact on addressing the issue.
 
chrisk1250 said:
Not sure why there is so much animosity toward the author of the thread.
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There is animosity because he asks in the title of the thread to provide, and when people provide videos, he gets snarky and sarcastic, telling the poster that it proves nothing.

I see the bars dropping on mine, but I don't drop calls, so it doesn't matter to me. It seems like it might be a case of too much information being reported to the user that doesn't effect everyone.

I have no "proof" other than my phone works for me and that is proff enough.
 
emaja said:
There is animosity because he asks in the title of the thread to provide, and when people provide videos, he gets snarky and sarcastic, telling the poster that it proves nothing.
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It's because the people posting their videos aren't actually reading the original post closely enough.

While the poster may be a little snippy, I'd be to if I was asking for proof that the Loch Ness Monster exists, and people kept posting pictures of their cats as proof.

no one is arguing that there aren't people in locations with iPhone 4s that aren't affected. The original poster believes that to be true. So posting a video of a working iPhone 4 isn't helpful.

arn
 
Why doesn't the OP go and buy himself an iPhone 4, see if it works or not, then take it back if it doesn't.

Otherwise, this thread is dead.
 
ryuuzaki said:
Can I ask you something?

Why the hell do you want everyone's phones to be defective? How is this a constructive topic? What gives you the right to screw with people who are perfectly content with their phone?

My phone is fine. Data is just fine. Faster than my 3G. IF I squeeze my phone til its about to break my palm's skin, then I lose a few bars, but if I touch the side, I don't. To me, I don't have this problem. No dropped calls, nada zilch, held in the left hand.

Do you want me to death grip my phone so your point can be proven? News flash: no one death grips their phone when they are on a call. IT is actually quite uncomfortable to hold your phone in that manner.

Moral of the story: mind your own tech. If your phone is messed up, facilitate complaints towards Apple with users who share your experience, but leave the folks who don't have an issue alone. We don't want to be bothered for crying out loud.
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Amen.

I don't understand why there has to be proof not all the iPhones aren't broken. I can see why one would be doubtful but not every sine phone produced is messed up.
 
TheAppleGeek said:
Amen.

I don't understand why there has to be proof not all the iPhones aren't broken. I can see why one would be doubtful but not every sine phone produced is messed up.
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Wouldn't it be helpful for those people who think their phones work perfectly to know that isn't the case if Apple offers some kind of way to fix it? Or if not all phones are affected, this would mean that it might be worth it for those with affected phones to simply have them replaced.

Not to mention that people have spent the last 4 days throwing around all kinds of baseless conjectures about what may or may not be the problem. Wouldn't it be nice to actually have some semi-scientific proof of some aspect of the situation?
 
Not the exact test, but pretty close to it.

From another thread:

definitive said:
This is something that has already been mentioned but I guess I'll post my personal experience:

I did a test today where I took my iPhone 4 (which suffers from the "incorrect holding position" syndrome) to a high signal location, and I couldn't get the bars to drop for over half hour of testing. I then took someone else'd iPhone 4 and tested it at my home location. The signal dropped at my home in a matter of seconds on both of the iPhone 4's.

I tried restarting the phone, and each time the signal at my home would drop, and would remain full at the new location.
Click to expand...
 
admanimal said:
Wouldn't it be helpful for those people who think their phones work perfectly to know that isn't the case if Apple offers some kind of way to fix it? Or if not all phones are affected, this would mean that it might be worth it for those with affected phones to simply have them replaced.

Not to mention that people have spent the last 4 days throwing around all kinds of baseless conjectures about what may or may not be the problem. Wouldn't it be nice to actually have some semi-scientific proof of some aspect of the situation?
Click to expand...

if they run a software fix then no one's phone is messed up. the software is.
 
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