It's fairly obvious that the howls around the web for
Apple to address this
antenna issue has gotten underneath the skin of one Steve Jobs, and in a fashion that's very much unlike Apple (or AT&T, for that matter), the aforesaid CEO has actually handed out a bit of hard data surrounding dropped calls on the
iPhone 4. According to Jobs, AT&T won't reveal the exact amount of
call drops for competitive reasons, but they
did manage to push out a meaningful delta. As of today, they've noticed that the "iPhone 4 drops less than one additional call per 100 than the 3GS." In other words, the iPhone 4 has actually been dropping
more calls than the 3GS in the three weeks that the former has been on the market. Of course, Steve's also playing up the fact that just a fraction of a percent of all buyers have bothered to call in about their bout with dropped calls (and why would you, knowing
there's no cure?), but it's still interesting to finally get some cold, hard facts on this disaster. Even if it's but a snippet.
posted July 16th 2010 12:36PM
@racerbmw
Samsung (diff phone from what he mentioned, but still) reception problems-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LROTHrTR92k
Who's the tool?
@CDice
Holy shit, engadget totally censors it. Expected, they worship apple.
@CDice Jobs
@CDice
Im not going to bash apple right now although I totally agree this whole debacle is pathetic and I have lost all respect for that company even though I didn't really have much respect for them to begin with.
This is the perfect time for hp and palm to swoop in with a killer ad campaign and ride the iphone 4's ass all the way to the top :-) especially if they decide to make it the next device 4g, they could even put the ability to hold the phone anyway you want as a feature on the advertisement site hahahha. GO WEBOS!!!!
@Revolutionary Wants the whole thing about putting this antenna on the outside to improve reception? How you gonna go from a shitty antenna to an even shittier antenna design and call it evolution? I think they knew this was gonna happen that's why they introduced the BUMPER. My phone drops signal all the time without the bumper on it and still has shitty signal with it on there...
Its like you have to choose a great piece of technology with a shitty antenna and reception or an alright piece of technology that can hold calls. I guess my rollover is about to kick in big time because I damn sure cant hold on to calls for more than 20 minutes at a time.
AT&T should change their slogan to "More Bars in More Places (except on iPhones)" Fuck it, Apple tried to throw them under the boat.
So in other words, for using it as a phone, the iPhone 4 is actually inferior to the 3GS? Hell with this, I am returning my iPhone 4 today.
@enantiomer2000
r u sure? dont just say it, do it. u have waited for the conference, they dont even apologize. well, it's hard to, coz its like this or labeled big liar from now on.......
well, we know ur liar though.. the call drops.
@enantiomer2000
no do not return it
ebay that sucker for 800+ and you have enough to buy 2 capacitive and still have $100 left over
@enantiomer2000 U don't own an iPhone 4 or u wouldn't be returning it.... Quit trolling
@enantiomer2000 Add the rubber and be done with it?
i wanna know why they keep bashing their own 3GS :l
@enantiomer2000
Actually, it is a better phone than the 3GS. Think about it this way. the 3GS form factor was already established at the time of release. There were a plethora of cases that already fit it, and people used those cases from their old phones or bought new ones from a variety of choices immediately. These cases mitigated the antenna problem that the 3GS LIKE EVERY OTHER PHONE has. The 4GS had no case to mitigate reception problems save the Apple made 'Bumper'. So there are 1% more dropped calls from unshielded iPhone 4s than there are from mostly shielded iPhone 3GSs. If both models lacked protection to the same degree, the 4 would be ahead.
@enantiomer2000
I guess they deserve some kudos for honesty but for them to get all those anechoic chambers with PhD guys, spend a load of money redesigning and marketing a phone with an antenna on the outside and then confess that it actually drops 1% more calls than the last model is quite poor engineering.
I really don't buy the excuse that the 3GS drop rate is lower due to people using cases. I never see iPhones in cases.
Also, the way they word it seems like they are trying to confuse people as to whether it's better or worse. They could just have said the iPhone 4 drops 1% more calls than the 3GS.
@enantiomer2000
funny how they phrased it, too. what is the dropped call rate for the 3GS? 1%, maybe? i'm just guessing. but bear with me.
so "iPhone 4 drops less than one additional call per 100 than the 3GS." let's just round it to 1... so the iphone 4 drops 2% of all calls.
in other words, twice as many.
now, the actual number could be totally different. if the 3GS only drops 0.1% of calls... that's a 10x increase. or if it dropped 10% of all calls, it's a 10% increase.
good old marketing playing with numbers.
@enantiomer2000
I still have my 3G and never a signle dropped call. I'm certainly not going to get an iPhone 4 unless they have the fixed version for us Canadians. This is a shame!
@willyolio
excellent points and as you say the figures are meaningless; they should have said "only 1% more dropped calls" and it wouldn't have revealed ATT's secret call success rate.
@enantiomer2000 That's not necessarily true. The iPhone 4 makes calls in a lot of areas in which the 3GS can't get any reception. It's possible (likely?) that if you did a comparison in areas of equivalent reception, the iPhone 4 would beat the 3GS pretty handily in terms of dropped calls.
@enantiomer2000 Stop pretending you actually have an iphone!!
@willyolio Yes. Whenever you see data presented in a way that is not typical, it's time to give it a really good sniff test. It sounds like the iPhone 4 drops substantially more calls than a 3Gs. Probably not 2X, but likely 10 to 30% more.
@machmachmach That actually sounds pretty plausible. In areas of extremely bad signal maybe the 3GS simply refused to make the call at all, whereas the iphone 4 detects just enough signal to let you try a call but ultimately conditions change and your call drops.
@rangermac
Thanks, we already got it when Jobs told us the same stupid theory. And by the way, such theory is bullshit.
With the iPhone 4, the problem is that since the antennae are at the outside, you could easily bridge the gap between both of them, grounding them. That's why a Bumper pretty much solves it, it prevents the skin from touching the gap.
Now that has nothing to do with whatever issues the 3GS had, since the antennae on the 3GS are already INSIDE the case and there's no way you could solve that with a bumper or another case. So no, the results on the 3GS are not better because people already had cases for it.
@rangermac
1) No where did Steve say that it was tested against a 3GS with a protective case. Don't make that assumption.
2) Without a point of reference, less than one more call dropped doesn't mean anything. It could be, the 3GS dropped a million calls a day and now the iPhone 4 ONLY drops a million and one calls. See how that works. Without a value of the point of reference, making a comparison is pointless. And in reality what they are saying, at the least, is that they didn't make any progress in improving the antenna reception. It actually got a fraction of a percentage worst.
@willyolio OH my god, thanks for pointing it out! I'm so ashamed that I have not noticed it. I work with stats.
But then again I wasn't really paying attention to the BS.
@enantiomer2000
i agree...how does Jobs get away with saying that the iphone4 antenna is vastly superior to the 3gs when its been documented that you drop more calls than an already troubled device. Dropped calls has been the iphone 3g's biggest problem. How do you make that worse and then call it better
@willyolio
I saw some estimated numbers that 3GS drops about 5 calls out of 100 so the increase would be about 20%.
@TinWard
haha yeah at first i thought that they were only dropping 1 call vs 100 3gs calls
@willyolio
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/21/att_defensively_publishes_private_dropped_call_data.html
AT&T's figures are 1.44% dropped calls. So the iPhone drops in the region of 2.44% of calls.
This is up to a 69% increase in dropped calls
jobs, dont try to fool me with big number again...
a drop call is a drop...
dont fool me with comparison to 3GS again,
How about a separate post for every Apple slide, Engadget?
From EVERY writer!
@whiskers
They did the same thing for the Droid x. Now stfu. Thanks.
@SolidSnake
Keep drinking the KoolAid, white boy.
@SolidSnake no they didnt
@whiskers
How about we get a childish complaint about every one from you since your feelings matter so much? What would be nice is to see some intelligent discussion in one of these threads that doesn't get crapped on by some angsty pre-teen.
@whiskers
Nice racist comment.
Except I'm black.
Fail.
@SitOnMyFaceTime
Hey don't add comments like that.. engadget censors it..
@TechAndOnlyTech
AND THUS THE PROPHET'S WORDS WERE FULFILLED.
ALL HAIL TECHANDONLYTECH!!!
iShit
@SitOnMyFaceTime
Sigh.
This is why we can't have nice things.
@SitOnMyFaceTime
He pisssed me off when he said the blackberry the eris and the samsung have signal problems
what a tool
Apple can just never admit a mistake. But hey even though ALL phones do it we'll give you a free case.
Really? only 1%? you mean, only 1% when HELD CORRECTLY?
@juwei 1% 'in addition to' :)
@juwei
Isn't 1 call dropped out of 100 a lot? I've certainly never had a single dropped call in London for example.
That's disappointing, it was supposed to improve things, not make them worse.
@longcat
Agree 1% difference doesn't sound that bad, at first.
But remember Steve told us the antenna was so meticulously engineered and that it would dramatically improve reception problems. We should have been seeing 10% or more fewer dropped calls.
I reality the percentage of dropped calls is at least 10% higher than what we were promised.
@krkeegan
After reading @arda below I have to admit I was tricked as well.
If the iPhone was dropping 1 in a thousand calls before then dropping 1 more call out of a hundred would be a 1000% increase. The 1 in a hundred number really is meaningless.
So if the iPhone 4 drops more calls than the 3GS, what was the point of this new magical antenna? Apple putting form over function.
@SitOnMyFaceTime
Seriously, Engadget, this is PATHETIC. Make a post with EVERYTHING announced in the conference; 6 posts about minor things told at the same event at the same time is plain stupid.
@racerbmw as opposed to the guy getting emotional over cell phone brands?
This is the only statistic that I didn't like in the press conference. I feel like it is very misleading without more information. If the original drop per 100 was 4 (in reality, it is probably much higher), then you have a phone that drops 25% more calls, and that is a serious problem.