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Infineon Chipset May Be Cause of IPhone 3G Issues

Posted by kdawson on from the can-you-hear-me-now dept.

JagsLive sends along a CNet blog piece about a plausible theory to explain the iPhone 3G connection problems many users have experienced. Apple has not acknowledged any such problems. "Richard Windsor of Nomura published a research note... Tuesday singling out the iPhone 3G's chipset, made by Infineon, as the probable culprit for the reception problems we reported on Monday. The dropped calls, service interruptions, and abrupt network switches experienced by iPhone 3G users reminded Windsor of similar complaints five years ago, when 3G phones were first launched in Europe. 'We believe that these issues are typical of an immature chipset and radio protocol stack where we are almost certain that Infineon is the 3G supplier,' Windsor wrote. 'This is not surprising as the Infineon 3G chipset solution has never really been tested in the hands of users. Some people will not experience these problems as it is only in areas where the radio signal weakens that the immaturity of the stack really shows.'"

33 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. No. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Crap testing is the cause of iPhone 3G issues. There are always issues before a product is released. The testing is supposed to find them. Something as obvious as this issue indicates that Apple didn't give a shit about testing.

    1. Re:No. by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Funny

      ...And why would they? Not only do you have a devoted Mac rumors bunch of people who will blog about a suspicious scratch on someone's iPhone, but you have the fanboys who if Apple markets iCrap they will buy 10 of them, and then 5 more when the price drops. Not to mention the fact that Apple is half-way open source and Unix based it keeps the tech guys buying it. Really, Apple can't even test an iPhone outside of a secret underground lab without it being leaked. Take that plus the fanboys and you have a company that can't and has little need to do testing.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    2. Re:No. by PainMeds · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There are always issues before a product is released. The testing is supposed to find them.

      You're not too familiar with Apple products, are you?

    3. Re:No. by paanta · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, the problem is that the fan base is insane and expectations are through the roof. If two blackberries in a million are faulty, it'll never make it onto slashdot. The two account execs who own them just don't care about the product enough to bitch. If two iPhones in a million show up with some hairline cracks on them, all of a sudden it's on Consumerist and MacRumors and every other tech website.

      Sorry, but all products have flaws. You're delusional if you think that even 1% of companies are able to find all the bugs in their product before it makes it out the door. Even my f-ing Honda has had recalls.

      I think the goal is consumer satisfaction, and Apple has consistently proven themselves capable in delivering a product that people love. The problem is that people love it so very, very much that they're willing to spend 30 hours posting about perceived slowness in the interface or perceived slowness in download speeds. Ultimately, no one is producing a product like the iPhone that surpasses the iPhone's user experience, and that counts for a lot.

    4. Re:No. by clang_jangle · · Score: 3, Funny

      Are you kidding? Apple products face the most rigorous real-world testing known -- the real world! Those of us who've used their products since the 1980s know this well, and we never buy the new stuff until the masses have tested it thoroughly for us and at least Rev C has been released. Typically, by then it will be perfect. Although sometimes it pays to wait for Rev D -- that's usually the final version, and the most featureful.

      --
      Caveat Utilitor
    5. Re:No. by lymond01 · · Score: 4, Funny

      perceived slowness in the interface

      It's real, I tell you! The slowness is....ooooh, shiny Apple Logo on the back...

    6. Re:No. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If I buy a $10k Toyota Yaris and the tires fall off, I pretty much figured that was bound to happen.

      What we have here are consumers behaving like battered wives. This joker accepts that ten thousand dollars is not enough to expect the most basic utility of a product. There are those who would criticize another consumer for complaining about getting an iPhone (or Yaris, or Xbox, or iPod, or MacBook, or...) that is a lemon. That is how badly misused they have been by our consumerist system. When we buy a product and it doesn't work, we should blame ourselves for not having spent enough money, or, get this one, for expecting too much.

      No wonder corporations are having such an easy time replacing government in sovereign nations. Consumers don't even have enough self-respect to expect the most basic value from a product (or service). This has got to be related to the reason people vote Republican, even faced with incontrovertible evidence that it is against their own best interests.

      I don't know about you, but this seems like a pretty shitty way to live. If the public were my sister, and her husband were to treat her the way the corporate culture treats consumers, I would tell her to divorce the bastard, or perhaps poison his coffee.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    7. Re:No. by icebike · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Please cue random, ``If OS X were Open Sourced it would all disappear,'' comment.

      Working with Linux and OS X on a daily basis the defense, ``Linux is free'' doesn't hold water anymore due to the billions invested by IBM and others to make it stable.

      Sorry, that's just plain wrong.

      Linux was ROCK solid stable for a LOOOOONG time before IBM invested one thin dime into it, or put one kernel developer on the payroll.

      It might not have been pretty, but it was stable since the Pleistocene.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    8. Re:No. by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 5, Interesting
      I worked for Apple in Cupertino during the Apple ][ / Apple /// days. The transition happened then.

      Woz was a genuine engineer, and in his spec all Apple ]['s were burned in over 4 days in a hot room (50 degrees C) before they were packaged and shipped to the stores. The ]['s were very well known for reliability, which along with excellent packaging (yep, not all Jobs' competence is Reality Distortion Field) very few were returned for any sort of quality issue.

      The Apple /// was a slightly different issue -- there was a problem with a clock chip supplier that worked as an object lesson that you can outsource a lot of things, but responsibilty (if not actual testing) can't be one of them.

      And due to pressures of IBM's release of the flawed but powerfully marketed brand-new 8086 based PCat that point, the first real competition in the business world put pressures on Apple that it hadn't encountered before, thus a decision to release what they had in bulk to gain market share and risk returns overrode the impulse to limit supply by running them through that hot room first. This was the first disjunct and marketing lesson (see Apple and "Black Friday" and "duck quack synthesizer" if you can find the reference) for a company that was learning about how to go from company to corporation in one huge lump. Apple grew from $0.5M to $0.5B in gross sales that year, in their defense, and that's a huge amount of change to absorb.

      Money wasn't really a problem, learning to land the fish was.

      Imagine -- if you have a job that moves dirt 1/2 ton at a time, you're fine buying a half-ton pickup to move it. You can even scale that up a few times. But if you're suddenly faced with moving a million tons of dirt, you have to find a more complex solution than simply buying a half-million trucks. Everything Apple suffered during that phase was a result of the huge success of the Apple ][. That kind of scale didn't bother IBM, but we had trouble finding places to put people and other concerns of gearing up.

      --
      Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
    9. Re:No. by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 3, Informative
      Screw the karma, I'll have to explain the reference. The Apple /// had serious problems, and the Macintosh wasn't on the horizon yet. IBM brought out their Personal Computer. Mike (I think it was Markkula, could be wrong (get off my lawn!)) walked around firing everybody responsible, and a fair bit of collateral damage as well (this was during the hazy Silicon Valley heyday where the industry moved very fast on things). His reason, overheard at the time -- "IBM has just brought out a competing product. The interest on their petty cash reserves is more than we bring in in a year, and you guys are trying to invent a duck quack synthesizer."

      When my lady and I bought a Mac LC in Tasmania a couple of years afterward, one of the system sounds available during the demo was a lovely "Quack!". We utterly pissed ourselves laughing in the showroom. Never explained why. Those crazy Yanks...

      --
      Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
    10. Re:No. by flosofl · · Score: 4, Informative

      For example Finder doesn't distinguish between files and folders.

      Really? So in Finder, View->Keep Arranged By->Kind doesn't work for you? How strange. I'm sure Google was broken that day, I just checked and it's in the first link.

      You can also make the change permanent and global in View->Show View Options and setting the drop down of Arrange By to Kind and then clicking Use as Defaults.

      --
      "This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
  2. From my iphone 3G by Frion · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have no idea what connection issues they are tal

    1. Re:From my iphone 3G by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 3, Funny

      Annoyingly, the same iPhone 3G glitch also sends the messages right before they are dropped.

  3. Shit by alexborges · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I knew i shouldve waited.

    Again bitten by Jobs's first-out-the-door gizmo.

    I was also the proud owner of a tibook 400... yeah, the one that spontaneusly broke appart from heat due to the "TI" part (although it did look cool at first).

    I guess some of us will never learn.

    --
    NO SIG
    1. Re:Shit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's pretty simple to get over. Stop joining the hype-wagon whenever the company releases a new product, that means don't follow the news every time Job's jerks off to his own press. The fanboys and paid astroturfers get suckers into a frenzy for $PRODUCT every time.

      Try this (but don't pull the trigger!) Go over to avsforum and chose a manufacturer of TVs. Look at panasonic or pioneer if you like plasmas, sony, samsung or sharp if you think LCD are you thing. Look at the hysteria over up-n-coming $MODEL. Come back daily and keep up to date on that model. Within two or three weeks you'll be on the verge of pre-ordering it. At this point, delete that bookmark and don't comeback for a couple of months. The same thread(s) will be full of owners pissed off with the issues of this round of models, full of fanboys pretending the problems don't exist exhibiting cognitive dissonance, and hot prospects asking owners about $MODEL. As soon as real owner tells it like it is, they'll be jumped on by those that can't bear to think they didn't get the $BEST_THING_EVER. It's really funny.

      Of course, at some point you will desire a new product, or what you have craps up. After watching a few rounds of the above, you'll know you can pick up the $BEST_THING_EVER a few months after initial release for a fraction of what people paid. And guess what? Your friends will be just as impressed by whatever it is, and probably don't follow model numbers anyway.

    2. Re:Shit by maynard · · Score: 3, Interesting

      My TiBook 800 has lasted a good six years and is still ... sorta running. I use it primarily to display streamed music and video. And it's still useful as a backup laptop in case the new one gets borked.

      And I have to say that in Boston I've had no trouble getting good 3G reception on my iPhone. However, I've had plenty of other bad things to say about that purchase. Jailbroken, the iPhone is just yummy. But out of the box, it's pretty worthless. And the App store is just pathetic. Good luck returning an app that doesn't work. Hell, good luck figuring out which apps work without first buying the damn thing. And don't talk to me about reviews - most of them read like they were written by the application software sales staff.

      Until Apple gets some quality control in there, I'm not buying another iPhone app.

  4. that's ok by Colin+Smith · · Score: 5, Funny

    I guess some of us will never learn.

    Not your fault, it's genetic.

     

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    Deleted
    1. Re:that's ok by autocracy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Now I wont be able to sleep.

      That's ok, that's genetic too.

      --
      SIG: HUP
  5. Who the hell is Richard Windsor... by calstraycat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...and what qualifications does he possess to comment on the possible cause of the alleged iPhone reception issues?

    Seriously. This story is being widely distributed, but I have yet to see anyone ask about his credentials. Is he an electrical engineer with expertise in the design of cellular technology?

    As far as I can tell, he's some financial analyst. So why would anyone consider him a credible source? Since when are the speculations of a financial analyst regarding the rather esoteric realm of RF engineering considered valid.

    Am I missing something? Does someone know about his background?

    1. Re:Who the hell is Richard Windsor... by girasquid · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Windows 7?

  6. Re:It's the antenna by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    battery life? As far as I know the iPhone pretty much beats all other 3G phones on battery life (whoops, scratch that. 3 Blackberrys beat the iPhone by a couple minutes.)

  7. Re:Firmware? by Serious+Callers+Only · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Can this be fixed by a firmware update? It said something about the stack which made me think firmware, or is it just shoddy hardware?

    Can this hypothetical technical flaw, in an unknown chipset which the iPhone may possibly use, be fixed in in a possible future firmware update?

    Possibly.

    However a story from a cnet journalist quoting a financial analyst on a technical problem where they're not even sure of the chipset in question is not very credible. I haven't heard of any reception problems on other sites - I wonder how widespread they are?

  8. goddammit by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 5, Funny

    can you iPhone people just ATH and drive?

    --
    Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
  9. So I'm not crazy by colin_n · · Score: 4, Informative

    I have noticed a lot more dropped calls on the iPhone 3g. Between the poorer battery life, the dropped calls, and the inability to unlock the sim, the upgrade feels like a downgrade from my old iPhone.

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    --------- I have no signature
  10. Schadenfreude by Alsee · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Good. I hope Infineon goes friking bankrupt and dies.
    They are one of the manufacturers of Trusted Platform Modules.
    That puts them right near the top of my shit-list.

    -

    --
    - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    1. Re:Schadenfreude by learningtree · · Score: 3, Informative

      I can see your point. But just for your information, Infineon is one of the most innovative companies in the VLSI market, with some very good products in the communications and automotive domain.
      As for the ethical issues associated with Trusted Platform Modules, pretty much every VLSI company (Freescale, STMicroelectronics, TI etc) has products catering to this domain.

  11. Odd by slimjim8094 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've been getting better reception on my 3G iPhone than I had on my Razr (also 3g)

    Battery life is pretty crappy, have to recharge it every night. But that's all I need. I think that has more to do with the big honking screen than any chipset issue.

    I have noticed that the signal indicator likes to sit at around 1 bar, but it's a bit deceptive because it works fine for a while (feels like empty on a car... still goes for a while anyways)

    I know an anecdote isn't true for everyone... maybe he's in a bad signal area? Maybe he has a defective phone? I haven't seen what he's talking about.

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    I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
  12. Why is this a problem? by ForestGrump · · Score: 5, Funny

    AT&T has the best network around - More bars in more places. So this flaw should never be visible to the end user...unless AT&T has been lying to me.

    Grump

    --
    Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
  13. Re:It's the antenna by outZider · · Score: 4, Informative

    The iPhone has a larger capacity battery than many of those models. There's also not one single Nokia model on that list, and the N95 outlasts the iPhone easily.

    --
    - oZ
    // i am here.
  14. Re:Blind brand devotion by cowscows · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think you're overestimating the size of the Apple fanboy market. That crowd certainly exists, but you're going to have a hard time convincing me that everyone who's got an iPhone got it just because it has an Apple logo on the back. That crowd was tapped out in the first couple weeks or so. The iPhone must be offering something to people that's making so many of them spend money on it.

    But I'm sorry to interrupt. Please continue telling us all the details of your phone contract so we can fully comprehend how much smarter you are than everyone else.

    --

    One time I threw a brick at a duck.

  15. Re:Firmware? by Serious+Callers+Only · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's interesting. I haven't seen any dropped calls as yet on mine, or signal problems, it's 3G all the time. It may depend a lot on the network AT&T has in your area I guess.

    Seems odd if it is an iPhone specific problem that complaints haven't been more widespread. Suppose the way to test it would be to put the same sim in a different 3G phone when experiencing problems with the iPhone and see how it works? I'm sure there was a time when journalists did that kind of testing before writing an article, instead of filling it with easy speculation.

  16. It's an AT&T Network problem. Fido was similar by aristotle-dude · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Looking at the thread on the Apple discussion boards, this seems to be an issue with the popularity of the new 3G phone and the inability of the AT&T 3G network to be able to handle the extra data load with such an internet enabled device.

    I experienced a similar issue for a few days in Canada with the Fido and others with the Rogers 3G networks shortly after the July 11th launch. Within a few days, the problems mostly went away where I live and now I get great reception even at work.

    There may be a few faulty 3G iPhones but this is mostly caused by a combination of faulty AT&T sims and problems with their network stability and capacity.

    --
    Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
  17. New 3G Network by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    I work in the industry. I know AT&Ts' 3G network is new and really unproven. 2G service is way more reliable. I have a BlackJack and when I have it set to 2G I have awesome coverage with no problems. With my blackjack on 3G I get dropped calls. Jerky sounding calls. All with full signal all over town. I've tried other 3G phones with same results. I think this is common for any new network that hasn't worked out all its blemishes.

    This is not an iPhone chip issue. It is a network issue.