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iPhone Signal Strength Problems In the UK
An anonymous reader writes "British iPhone users, who bought the Apple phones when they went on sale in England on Nov. 9, are reporting persistent problems with signal strength on O2, the UK's only iPhone service provider. The complaints started only 2 days later. InfoWeek blogger Alex Wolfe says there's a debate as to whether O2 or the iPhone is at fault; it appears to be the handset, which is unusual since US users haven't reported similar problems. Some 02 customers report that getting a replacement phone fixes things; others have had to do a software restore back to version 1.1.2 of the iPhone software."
FWIW, my sister has an iPhone and tells me that the reception is noticeably worse than her previous phone (a Razor, I think).
I've had an iPhone since they were launched here in the UK and I cannot honestly say I have experienced any signal problems and if anything I get better voice quality on the iPhone than my previous phone (w810i).
I'm not exactly in a major metropolitan area either, out here in a commuter town in the South West, but my signal strength hasn't really been a problem - I'm always able to make calls or connect via GPRS or EDGE, so I'm pretty much happy at the moment. I've travelled a bit as well in the past 2 weeks and I've yet to experience signal loss, even out in the country side.
Could we please do away with iPhone this and Apple that?... I'm kind'a tired of it. We got it, it's the hype... but damn, what's next... "IPHONE GETS SCRATCHED"... why is iPhone so important? Tons of other tech products have tons of problems. Can we please have some REAL News?
"=" is an assignment; "==" is pronounced "is equal to". Say it! Say it and mean it!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
If it only effects a couple of people, it is not a story.
You would need at least 03 customers before this should make a headline.
You can block Apple stories in your preferences. Or you can ignore them. These are but two of the many bold strategies for avoiding stories you don't like.
That's a "truth with modifications". If you subtract the areas in the US where there's no GSM coverage, i.e. most of the country, you get a GSM population density that's higher.
One difference is that in the US, the market is largely a profit-driven free-for-all, where the actors can choose to only put towers where it will be profitable to do so. That means the big cities, their suburbs, and the highways between them. In most of Europe, there's coverage requirements to get a license to operate (and consumers that historically have bought things based also on quality and not features-for-the-price alone).
Another difference is that in Europe there's not a near 100% lock-in for phones to a certain provider, like in the US. Most people in the US aren't even aware that phones don't have to be locked to a provider. Some have heard of unlocking of phone, but even of those, almost none know that you can get phones that weren't unlocked, but never locked in the first place.
In Europe, if a provider hasn't given a good enough service or coverage, you have historically been able to take your phone elsewhere and get a new plan for your existing phone. The lock-in of the iPhone to a single provider is going to be a lesson in how good the "old" system was, and make European users understand the terrible situation US users have, and why so few Americans have cell phones.
" went on sale in England on Nov. 9" Just FYI, the UK isn't just England, it's got Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in it too. Hence 'United Kingdom'.
Seriously, most people have "smartphones" (obnoxious term) that already outclass the iPhone in most areas (and no, not having buttons is not better if your life revolves around texting...). The iphone looks good in the american mobile phone market, but the american mobile phone market is a travesty.
The iphone, while being exceptionally heavily marketed, has already been deemed uncool in the 18-30 age group. Seems to be mainly older people who buy it, more susceptible to the advertising that it's "hip".
Nope - O2 have good coverage throughout Britain. The iPhone has poor receive sensitivity and low transmit power compared to other models. It's an overpriced piece of junk.
I have a O2 phone (XDA Mini S in fact) I have had pretty good coverage everywhere (not yet found an area where I couldn't get a signal) and my phones reception quality isn't that great when compared to most phones (my Orange m500 using a O2 sim card had a much stronger signal in the same areas.) In the UK the big phone operators Orange, Vodaphone and O2 have around 98/99% coverage of the UK for 2.5G phone and 3G coverage is increasing rapidly (I believe its over 70% coverage.)
The issue isn't the operator.
It is probably caused by some combination of these two things:
1. Transmit power for 1800/1900 (probably what is in use in NZ) is half the wattage allowed for the 850 band in the U.S. The 850 MHz allows for significantly greater tower spacing at a cost in cell phone life. You can't get away with that in the 1900 MHz band because the signal doesn't carry as well. AT&T uses 850 heavily, for obvious reasons, though in California, you will likely find many 850 MHz towers at much closer spacing and at reduced power to minimize the cell's overall coverage footprint to reduce the collisions inherent in high density environments with limited spectrum. You shouldn't see your cell shouting at anywhere near maximum output, though, so I sort of doubt this has that much to do with the difference, though I suppose it might be a factor.
2. GSM phones can use different encodings depending on signal strength, available bandwidth, the preference of the tower, and the intersection of modes supported by both your phone and the tower. It is much more likely that the phone is operating in one of the lower power modes in NZ. Half rate codec draws significantly less power than the other codecs, and EFR draws slightly more. IIRC, in California, AT&T's towers prefer FR if the phone supports it, because the call quality sounds better and they have enough tower density to handle it. In NZ, they may be using HR, which by itself can make a huge difference in talk time because the cell phone is essentially "talking" to the tower during only half as many time slots.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The iPhone has two processors each has it's own firmware. The iPhone software is at 1.1.2 - it controls the functions of the screens, programs, the touchscreen, etc. The iPhone baseband is either 3.9, or 4.6 - it controls the radio, WiFi, bluetooth, etc. The two processors talk back and forth using highspeed Hayes modem AT commands. :)
.TIFF exploit should you want to. But to do anything to radio reception, you would need to change the baseband firmware. Currently no one knows how to downgrade the baseband software.
Downgrading the main 1.1.2 firmware only changes the software - so you can reenable the
There's details in this thread:
http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/showthread.php?t=16571
In a nutshell, anyone downgrading their software to 1.1.2 or 1.1.1 or lower and who says they experiencing better cell phone reception is working under the placebo effect, because the firmware they are downgrading doesn't affect the radio at all. And no one knows how to downgrade the baseband firmware - or if they do, the technique isn't being publicized.
As far as reception, on T-Mobile in the US, my reception has generally been good. There's a bit of a funky "bug" that I've seen that if the reception is low or "no service" and you move into an area with service, it takes the phone a while to recognize this. So if you are in an underground tunnel and have no reception, then when you leave the tunnel it can take minutes for the iPhone to notice it has service again. This may be a "feature" since they are trying to save power or something, but it can be annoying to wait 3 minutes or more for the iPhone to decide it has service. There's also a rare odd effect that the phone will think it has all 5 bars, but will, in fact, have no service at all. Any time I have either of these issues, they correct themselves with time - or I can just power down the phone.
While metal is shiny and slick, when it is too close to an antenna, the bandwidth decreases. So the antenna designer has a choice of which frequencies to focus their design effort. Since their initial target market was the USA, they probably targeted GSM850 (AT&T's GSM network). From the antenna photos, the GSM 1800/1900 part of the antenna is the part closest to the battery/metal covers, which further degrades performance in this band. One of the earlier replies said their iPhone worked fine in the country-side of the UK. This is most likely due to the GSM850/900 part of the antenna being furthest away from the battery/metal covers.
iPhone disassembled:
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone/Communications-Board/105/8/Page-7/Communications-Board
One can see a small little cable going from the RF Module to the antenna. In almost 99% of the GSM phones on the market today, the antenna is right next to the RF Module. This is to minimize the RF losses between the RFIC and the antenna. By using a cable, significant losses are introduced into the system by both the cable and the miss-match at both ends of the cable. The antenna is also at the bottom of the phone and is more likely to be covered by the user's hand (further decreasing sensitivity); though there are quite a few phone on the market with antennas at the bottom--it is how they get around the SAR limits which are specified as the peak radiation a user receives next to their ear (the mouth area is not measured in the FCC/EU tests.
So, while from an anecdotal perspective, it appears the iPhone has random sensitivity issues; from an antenna engineer's perspective however, it is no surprise why the iPhone has lower performance than most phones (but would still have similar performance to other phones with poor antenna designs--of which there are several for different reasons than cable losses).
If you are interested in reading more technical reports about antenna performance in mobile phones, go to the following website:
http://antennas.astri.org/antennas_mirror
PDF Password = astriantennas