@bighap That why there is a 3 week wait for the iphone you troll. The phone is hot. I have one and tons of people coming into my hotel have one. The product is awesome. Apple doesn't make Android shit phones where the competition has the same fucking OS. LOL! Apple rules this generation of portable tech homey. They are in their renaissance period.
@bighap You just think so. You know the term "antennagate"? Yeah, the one Apple coined last 2 weeks ago? It's getting the iPhone 4's name everywhere, and millions of people are telling others that it's "no big deal" and "my phone still works fine."
It still seems to me that most people don't have this antenna problem. I was at an Apple Store earlier today and tried to reproduce the problem gripping the phones on display. None of them dropped even a bar.
So either Apple has coated all this phones with something special or this whole thing has been blown out of proportion by a small number of people who have really conductive hands.
And they're lying about the nature of the problem.
No other phone suffers from the same issues.
Here are the facts, the real ones:
Anandtech has shown that the Nexus One’s signal drops by only 10dBm when holding it normally, while the iPhone 4’s signal drops by 24dBm.
Even when gripped tightly, the Nexus One’s signal drops by only 17dBm, compared to 24dBm on the iPhone. And of course, nobody holds his phone like that in normal use.
CNET have done a video that has shown that, even when the iPhone 4 has 5 bars, by just touching the weak spot, the person on the other end can’t hear you anymore.
German Stiftung Warentest have done scientific testing and seen the iPhone 4’s reception drop by 90% when the weak spot gets touched. They could not make other phones drop more than 25%, even when gripping them tightly.
Steve Jobs himself has confirmed that the iPhone 4 drops up to one more call per 100 than the 3GS (it must be very close to one, otherwise he would have used other numbers). AT&T’s average dropped call rate is 1.44%, they claim. If the iPhone 3GS is an ‘average’ AT&T phone, that means the iPhone 4 drops about 67% more calls than the 3GS. A HUGE increase!
The real issue is not that you can make the signal drop, but HOW and by HOW MUCH.
HOW: Hold the iPhone 4 naturally in your left hand, like everyone does while surfing or making left-handed calls. That’s very different from ‘death-gripping’.
HOW MUCH: 20dBm vs. 10dBm or 90% vs. 25% or 99% vs. 90%, depending on your system of measurement. Or, in other words: Much more than with other phones.
And I can even explain to you WHY the iPhone has those problems and other phones don’t.
The iPhone 4 is the only phone that lets yoou ground the antenna by bridging it with other metal parts.
Other phones let you shield the antenna, which of course causes attenuation. A drop of 10dBm means power drops by a factor of 10, or 90%.
But that’s very different to grounding the antenna, which causes it to become completely ineffective. A drop of 20dBm means power drops by a factor of 100, or 99%.
That means, if you hold both phones naturally, the Nexus One still recieves ten times the radiation power of the iPhone 4.
At -91dBm (the minimum for full 5 bars in iOS4.0), the Nexus One only shows 3 bars, but it can still easily make crystal clear calls when held naturally, even though it loses 10dBm, whereas the iPhone 4 gets very close to dropping the call, which happens at -113dBm.
Bars don’t mean anything. If one phone shows 4 bars at -90dBm and another shows 4 bars at -80dBm, the radiation power recieved by the first phone is still 90% less than that recieved by the latter.
By showing us bars, instead of doing real reception and audio quality measurements, Apple essentially admits that other phones don’t have any real issues.
I agree completely. I'm usually on the its Engadget's site, they can do what they please camp, but this getting ridiculous. There is absolutely no new information in this article at all. Unless you have some new info on the subject, give it up already. With all the childish bashing in the comments and the repeated worthless articles, I'm just about ready to give up on Engadget. This site has really gone down hill in the past year.
I tried that on at least 10 phones at the Apple Store and they didn't drop bars. Now a regular customer is going to go into the Apple Store and try it just like I did and they're going to conclude that stuff they read on the internet is totally inaccurate and buy the phone.
I have 2 friends with the iPhone 4 and neither of them have problems either. So the problem here is that you can't reproduce the problem 100 percent. And if Apple is right, it seems to only affect 1.7 percent of users.
Not that I believe you, but you're missing the point. It doesn't happen to most people or Apple would be experiencing more returns. They're not. And the fact that anyone can walk into the Apple Store and try it for themselves is going to help Apple sell lots of phones.
@pspitts You think all manufacturers should make their own OS? How would the PC world look if HP, Dell, Sony, Acer, etc all made their own incompatible OSes?
Personally I think I should be able to buy a phone I like and put any damn OS on it I like. Let H/W manufacturers make H/W and S/W providers provide software.
@bighap hey think of it this way ur getting a free case for your iphone and if apple is using them its good quality wait.... sorry i really didnt think that one through
73% is not that high. And whether they love AT&T or not, they're all used to dropping calls.
Most of the people who bought the iPhone 4 already are also fans and faboys/-girls. They wouldn't even return it if it couldn't make calls at all.
Anyway, no need to discuss this. There's a design flaw which makes every single iPhone 4 drop signal (by 20dBm or 99%) if you touch its weak spot. And this is the natural way of holding the phone.
Other phones do not suffer from this issue, because you can only make it drop 10dBm or 90% by "death gripping" them, which still allows them to make crystal clear calls. And nobody "death grips" his phone anyway.
Those are the facts.
Story told. Apple failed. Let's move on.
If anything, Engadget should finally tell the real facts, instead of quoting Apple's nonsense all the time.
@bighap It hardly failed with so few people reporting reception issues and so many buyers.
The news media is like a huge magnifying glass amplified by lies and half truths. Blogs are no better.
But I am with you, this is yesterday's news.
If a web author wants hits, he'll report on what's popular. And if he wants to be considered favoribly, he'll pander to his audience.
In my opinion Apple's new hardware/software release history is plagued with major flaws, and it is never a good idea to adopt their first gen products.
@maati forget it.. they wont understand. People who understand and have no problems admitting the issue return the phones but people who are very shy keep it no matter what because they want this phone badly. soo badly that they argued previously that how good this phone is and cant take questions from people like "why are you covering up the phone with the ugly looking band" or "where is your iphone" or they are engadget staff
Its amazing how large an army of paid shills Apple has in the journalism industry! My dear Ross Rubin, the problem is not signal attenuation which every smart phone has and Apple is showing that. The problem is antenna de-tuning which the iPhone4 suffers from and drops calls whereas those other phones don't. So now AT&T is to blame for the revolutionary-never-been-done-before-precision-engineered antenna? LOL Thats like claiming I can mug someone's wallet and should be let scot free just coz I dont have enough money for an XBox360.
@maati Great post!!!! Your comments are spot on. I've been watching the dB in the status bar of the N1 now, and I think more than holding it in any particular way is just fluctuations in the natural signal strength due to the environment. I can lay the phone flat and observe fluctuations of up to 10+ dB over time. Either way, with the custom mods that boost reception on the N1, there is never a problem. That's what is great and the N1, we can mod it to our delight!
@maati: I bought an iPhone 4 the first day it was released. The reception is fantastic, I haven't dropped a single call, I'm running Skype for all my international calls while checking six mail accounts in my unified inbox all the while staring at the best screen on a phone. Ever.
I assume that you're using an Android phone and are happy with your decision. You must be in the minority of those who would buy another, because according to The Yankee Group, 80% of present Android users won't be buying an Android phone next time around. Fail.
@Itchy Britches Those titles are bad, except for the second one.
"Are you f*cking kidding me with this sh*t, Apple? - by maati."
I'll take that one.
But actually I'm more upset with media who talk about "antennagate" and "death gripping", than with Apple themselves.
I mean, Apple want to sell phones and if they think lying helps, they'll lie.
But the media should stick to facts. You know, like the huge increase in dropped calls over other phones (1.44% is AT&T's average and the iPhone 4 drops one more), the real nature of the issue (grounding the antenna vs. shielding it) and so on.
@Ariel Bender You are wrong and you are probably trying to give android a bad reputation. The truth is that 70% of android users are willing to buy another android phone as their next phone.
@Ariel Bender haha, ive been googling this poll that you say exists..and i dont see it..cnn reports these numbers- no one else. How can it be verified if you cant see the sample population..and deviations...
@maati btw. When you want to be the one 'with the facts', dishonestly claiming that according the anandtech the iphone drops by 24 dB when hold naturally is probably a bad idea (it drops 19.8).
@Itchy Britches it HAS been completely blown out of proportion; the only people who are confident the iPhone 4 can't hold a call or receive data are those who don't have one. This antenna "issue" affects virtually no one.
@Cory Bauer Well... if it means 1% more drop calls. Let's say an average iphone user makes 30 calls a month. Has the phone for an average of a year. That's 360 calls. The probability that this does affect you is... umh.. alright, i don't wanna do the math, but it's more than 50%. You might say you can live with that - fine, but that's a different matter.
@maati "It's a design flaw. It happens to every single iPhone 4."
NO - it happens to Some USERS! Like YOU - so your hands are obviously better at short-circuet the iPhones antennas!
If only 15.000 out of 3.000.000+ customers have called in about a problem, something tells me IT DOES NOT happen on EVERY iPhone, but only to SOME users.. comprende?
Could we PLEASE agree to start talking about the facts and not the 'how it works for ME' senario?
It's simply amazing how hard it is for people to get the facts straight...
Just because users don't notice it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
It happens to every iPhone user. They just don't realize it's an issue with the phone, rather than the network.
By the way, the percentage of complaints about bad reception with the iPhone 4 is 35 times higher than that about the Droid Eris, according to HTC. They only get complaints from 0.06% of their customers, instead of Apple's 0.55%.
And that 50+% increase in dropped calls tells a pretty clear story.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
Can we drop this? Apple failed. End of story.
@bighap "The antenna problem simply lacks a perfect solution." .... The solution would be designing a phone with a working antenna...
@bighap Yay verily. Whatever stance you have on the matter, it's definitely time to forget this.
@bighap
Good old Engadget fell for the "
@bighap
Honestly. Too much news about the Apple Le-iPhone-.
@bighap
Failed? Sorry but sales figures, revenue and profit don't seem to suggest that.
@bighap
That why there is a 3 week wait for the iphone you troll. The phone is hot. I have one and tons of people coming into my hotel have one. The product is awesome.
Apple doesn't make Android shit phones where the competition has the same fucking OS. LOL!
Apple rules this generation of portable tech homey. They are in their renaissance period.
@bighap
You just think so. You know the term "antennagate"? Yeah, the one Apple coined last 2 weeks ago? It's getting the iPhone 4's name everywhere, and millions of people are telling others that it's "no big deal" and "my phone still works fine."
@bighap
It still seems to me that most people don't have this antenna problem. I was at an Apple Store earlier today and tried to reproduce the problem gripping the phones on display. None of them dropped even a bar.
So either Apple has coated all this phones with something special or this whole thing has been blown out of proportion by a small number of people who have really conductive hands.
@pspitts
My comment was in regards to the shitty antenna design. Everything else is great upgrade from the 3GS. Chill out fanboi.
@bighap Apple failed.
And they're lying about the nature of the problem.
No other phone suffers from the same issues.
Here are the facts, the real ones:
Anandtech has shown that the Nexus One’s signal drops by only 10dBm when holding it normally, while the iPhone 4’s signal drops by 24dBm.
Even when gripped tightly, the Nexus One’s signal drops by only 17dBm, compared to 24dBm on the iPhone. And of course, nobody holds his phone like that in normal use.
Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3821/iphone-4-redux-analyzing-apples-ios-41-signal-fix/3
CNET have done a video that has shown that, even when the iPhone 4 has 5 bars, by just touching the weak spot, the person on the other end can’t hear you anymore.
Source: http://cnettv.cnet.com/iphone-4-antenna-tests/9742-1_53-50090044.html
German Stiftung Warentest have done scientific testing and seen the iPhone 4’s reception drop by 90% when the weak spot gets touched.
They could not make other phones drop more than 25%, even when gripping them tightly.
Source: http://www.test.de/themen/computer-telefon/schnelltest/4116516-4116521/
Steve Jobs himself has confirmed that the iPhone 4 drops up to one more call per 100 than the 3GS (it must be very close to one, otherwise he would have used other numbers). AT&T’s average dropped call rate is 1.44%, they claim.
If the iPhone 3GS is an ‘average’ AT&T phone, that means the iPhone 4 drops about 67% more calls than the 3GS. A HUGE increase!
Source: boygeniusreport.com/2010/07/21/att-we-have-a-1-44-dropped-call-rate/
The real issue is not that you can make the signal drop, but HOW and by HOW MUCH.
HOW: Hold the iPhone 4 naturally in your left hand, like everyone does while surfing or making left-handed calls.
That’s very different from ‘death-gripping’.
HOW MUCH: 20dBm vs. 10dBm or 90% vs. 25% or 99% vs. 90%, depending on your system of measurement. Or, in other words: Much more than with other phones.
And I can even explain to you WHY the iPhone has those problems and other phones don’t.
The iPhone 4 is the only phone that lets yoou ground the antenna by bridging it with other metal parts.
Other phones let you shield the antenna, which of course causes attenuation. A drop of 10dBm means power drops by a factor of 10, or 90%.
But that’s very different to grounding the antenna, which causes it to become completely ineffective. A drop of 20dBm means power drops by a factor of 100, or 99%.
That means, if you hold both phones naturally, the Nexus One still recieves ten times the radiation power of the iPhone 4.
At -91dBm (the minimum for full 5 bars in iOS4.0), the Nexus One only shows 3 bars, but it can still easily make crystal clear calls when held naturally, even though it loses 10dBm, whereas the iPhone 4 gets very close to dropping the call, which happens at -113dBm.
Bars don’t mean anything. If one phone shows 4 bars at -90dBm and another shows 4 bars at -80dBm, the radiation power recieved by the first phone is still 90% less than that recieved by the latter.
By showing us bars, instead of doing real reception and audio quality measurements, Apple essentially admits that other phones don’t have any real issues.
@maati
Dude, are you writing a book about this or something? Jesus Christ!
@Itchy Britches
If Engadget doesn't tell the truth, I have to.
@bighap
I agree completely. I'm usually on the its Engadget's site, they can do what they please camp, but this getting ridiculous. There is absolutely no new information in this article at all. Unless you have some new info on the subject, give it up already. With all the childish bashing in the comments and the repeated worthless articles, I'm just about ready to give up on Engadget. This site has really gone down hill in the past year.
@Darkroom
I tried that on at least 10 phones at the Apple Store and they didn't drop bars. Now a regular customer is going to go into the Apple Store and try it just like I did and they're going to conclude that stuff they read on the internet is totally inaccurate and buy the phone.
I have 2 friends with the iPhone 4 and neither of them have problems either. So the problem here is that you can't reproduce the problem 100 percent. And if Apple is right, it seems to only affect 1.7 percent of users.
@Itchy Britches
I tried it with several iPhones in the Apple store and ALL of them dropped bars.
@Itchy Britches
You really think Apple is going to put out phones on display that have this behavior? Hell no.
@bighap
All iPhone 4s show this behavior, if Apple haven't modified the ones in their store.
And I'm pretty sure they haven't cause I've been able to replicate the issue with all of them.
@maati
Not that I believe you, but you're missing the point. It doesn't happen to most people or Apple would be experiencing more returns. They're not. And the fact that anyone can walk into the Apple Store and try it for themselves is going to help Apple sell lots of phones.
@pspitts You think all manufacturers should make their own OS? How would the PC world look if HP, Dell, Sony, Acer, etc all made their own incompatible OSes?
Personally I think I should be able to buy a phone I like and put any damn OS on it I like. Let H/W manufacturers make H/W and S/W providers provide software.
No more TV/VCR phones....
@Itchy Britches
It's a design flaw. It happens to every single iPhone 4.
You know, that's the definition of design flaw ;)
However, people are blaming AT&T.
@maati
Nobody's blaming AT&T. Have you seen the latest AT&T survey. 73 of iPhone users love AT&T.
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/07/24/yankee-group-73-of-iphone-users-are-happy-with-att/
@bighap: According to research conducted by the Yankee Group, 80% of Android owners won't buy another Android phone. Google has failed. End of story.
@bighap hey think of it this way ur getting a free case for your iphone and if apple is using them its good quality wait.... sorry i really didnt think that one through
@Itchy Britches
73% is not that high. And whether they love AT&T or not, they're all used to dropping calls.
Most of the people who bought the iPhone 4 already are also fans and faboys/-girls. They wouldn't even return it if it couldn't make calls at all.
Anyway, no need to discuss this. There's a design flaw which makes every single iPhone 4 drop signal (by 20dBm or 99%) if you touch its weak spot.
And this is the natural way of holding the phone.
Other phones do not suffer from this issue, because you can only make it drop 10dBm or 90% by "death gripping" them, which still allows them to make crystal clear calls.
And nobody "death grips" his phone anyway.
Those are the facts.
Story told. Apple failed. Let's move on.
If anything, Engadget should finally tell the real facts, instead of quoting Apple's nonsense all the time.
@bighap It hardly failed with so few people reporting reception issues and so many buyers.
The news media is like a huge magnifying glass amplified by lies and half truths. Blogs are no better.
But I am with you, this is yesterday's news.
If a web author wants hits, he'll report on what's popular. And if he wants to be considered favoribly, he'll pander to his audience.
In my opinion Apple's new hardware/software release history is plagued with major flaws, and it is never a good idea to adopt their first gen products.
@maati forget it.. they wont understand. People who understand and have no problems admitting the issue return the phones but people who are very shy keep it no matter what because they want this phone badly. soo badly that they argued previously that how good this phone is and cant take questions from people like "why are you covering up the phone with the ugly looking band" or "where is your iphone" or they are engadget staff
@maati
That's the most intelligent comment I've read all day. +1
@maati
Let me suggest some names for your book, maati.
"Please don't buy this damn iPhone - by maati."
"Are you f*cking kidding me with this sh*t, Apple? - by maati."
"The iPhone's antenna kills children and kittens! - by maati."
"I complain about Apple on Engadget and they still sold 3 million phones! - by maati."
What do you think?
@bighap
Its amazing how large an army of paid shills Apple has in the journalism industry! My dear Ross Rubin, the problem is not signal attenuation which every smart phone has and Apple is showing that. The problem is antenna de-tuning which the iPhone4 suffers from and drops calls whereas those other phones don't. So now AT&T is to blame for the revolutionary-never-been-done-before-precision-engineered antenna? LOL Thats like claiming I can mug someone's wallet and should be let scot free just coz I dont have enough money for an XBox360.
Stop parroting Apple's paid lines.
@maati
Great post!!!!
Your comments are spot on.
I've been watching the dB in the status bar of the N1 now, and I think more than holding it in any particular way is just fluctuations in the natural signal strength due to the environment.
I can lay the phone flat and observe fluctuations of up to 10+ dB over time.
Either way, with the custom mods that boost reception on the N1, there is never a problem.
That's what is great and the N1, we can mod it to our delight!
@maati: I bought an iPhone 4 the first day it was released. The reception is fantastic, I haven't dropped a single call, I'm running Skype for all my international calls while checking six mail accounts in my unified inbox all the while staring at the best screen on a phone. Ever.
I assume that you're using an Android phone and are happy with your decision. You must be in the minority of those who would buy another, because according to The Yankee Group, 80% of present Android users won't be buying an Android phone next time around. Fail.
@Itchy Britches Those titles are bad, except for the second one.
"Are you f*cking kidding me with this sh*t, Apple? - by maati."
I'll take that one.
But actually I'm more upset with media who talk about "antennagate" and "death gripping", than with Apple themselves.
I mean, Apple want to sell phones and if they think lying helps, they'll lie.
But the media should stick to facts. You know, like the huge increase in dropped calls over other phones (1.44% is AT&T's average and the iPhone 4 drops one more), the real nature of the issue (grounding the antenna vs. shielding it) and so on.
@Ariel Bender
You are wrong and you are probably trying to give android a bad reputation. The truth is that 70% of android users are willing to buy another android phone as their next phone.
@maati
THANK YOU. Been telling everyone this for weeks. Then, when the fanboys get called out on it, they trivialize it and spew anecdotal evidence.
@Ariel Bender
haha, ive been googling this poll that you say exists..and i dont see it..cnn reports these numbers- no one else. How can it be verified if you cant see the sample population..and deviations...
@Ariel Bender
I get it. That's why Google sells 160,000 Android phones vs. 90,000 iPhones a day. Cause people hate Android.
Yankee Group are either Apple fanboys or paid by Apple. Read their articles, they're insanely biased. Definitely not worth talking about.
This one is more interesting: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/04/user_interest_satisfaction_in_android_approaching_the_iphone.html
Shows the same 77% satisfaction rate for the iPhone, but 72% for Android. And that was before the Nexus One, the Evo, the Droid Incredible...
@Itchy Britches
Because 27% equals nobody? Please redo your math.
@maati i wish i could vote this into it's own article.
@Itchy Britches
And 77% of iPhone 4s went to existing iPhone owners. http://news.softpedia.com/news/84-iPhone-4-s-Went-to-Existing-AT-T-Customers-145570.shtml
Any correlation with that? Maybe we iPhone owners are just used to dropped calls? :-)
@maati
btw. When you want to be the one 'with the facts', dishonestly claiming that according the anandtech the iphone drops by 24 dB when hold naturally is probably a bad idea (it drops 19.8).
@Itchy Britches it HAS been completely blown out of proportion; the only people who are confident the iPhone 4 can't hold a call or receive data are those who don't have one. This antenna "issue" affects virtually no one.
@LeJay That was a typo, sorry about that. I meant to say 20dBm, obviously.
But the source link is there for everyone to check. I wouldn't have included the source link if I purposefully posted the wrong number.
@Cory Bauer
Well... if it means 1% more drop calls.
Let's say an average iphone user makes 30 calls a month.
Has the phone for an average of a year.
That's 360 calls.
The probability that this does affect you is... umh.. alright, i don't wanna do the math, but it's more than 50%. You might say you can live with that - fine, but that's a different matter.
@bighap
Seriously, could this writer sound ANY more like a fanboy?
"Apple is giving away a free bumper, when they REALLY don't have to. They are benevolent supermen, thankyou, almighty Apple!"
@maati
Yeah, I kinda realized that when I reread it. Have some good points, though.
@Cory Bauer
iPhone 4 users drop 3 calls per 100 instead of two (AT&T's average is 1.44).
That's an increase of 50%.
Pretty big, if you ask me. The media coverage is definitely not overblown.
@maati
"It's a design flaw. It happens to every single iPhone 4."
NO - it happens to Some USERS! Like YOU - so your hands are obviously better at short-circuet the iPhones antennas!
If only 15.000 out of 3.000.000+ customers have called in about a problem, something tells me IT DOES NOT happen on EVERY iPhone, but only to SOME users.. comprende?
Could we PLEASE agree to start talking about the facts and not the 'how it works for ME' senario?
It's simply amazing how hard it is for people to get the facts straight...
@Itchy Britches
They use signal booster in stores so the signal is much stronger which makes it more difficult to block the signal.
@marook
Just because users don't notice it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
It happens to every iPhone user. They just don't realize it's an issue with the phone, rather than the network.
By the way, the percentage of complaints about bad reception with the iPhone 4 is 35 times higher than that about the Droid Eris, according to HTC. They only get complaints from 0.06% of their customers, instead of Apple's 0.55%.
And that 50+% increase in dropped calls tells a pretty clear story.