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Proximity Sensor Presents Latest iPhone 4 Issue
tekgoblin sends news of the latest iPhone 4 glitch being reported in user forums and elsewhere: the phone's proximity sensor seems not to be detecting nearby faces, as it is designed to do, in order to deactivate the screen during a call. The result is often unintended input. "On the iPhone 3GS, the proximity sensor was located to the left of the earpiece speaker. But that space on iPhone 4 is now occupied by the front-facing camera, and the proximity sensor is above the earpiece. What's not clear is whether the iPhone 4 screen's misbehavior is due to the new location of the sensor, or it's because Apple tweaked the sensor's responses in [some] way."
Add this latest story to the antenna issue, and it's looking like Apple shipped a rotten one. You can't have a big win every time without some risk of losing once in a while. Be glad if you're holding on to an iPhone 3G(s) from last year... you got most of the good features from the new operating system while the new hardware doesn't seem ready for prime time. Give them a year to fix the problems, and we'll wait for the iPhone 4G...
The antenna issue hasn't bothered me a bit. But this problem affects me every day. Since I got my iPhone, I haven't had one day where at least one call wasn't accidentally disconnected, muted, or interrupted by touchtones as my ear hit various buttons on the keypad. There are a couple of workarounds (use the earphones, or lock the keyboard), but those take time to establish at the beginning of the call.
My bet is that this can be fixed with a simple software update, but I really don't see how Apple could possibly not have found this issue in their testing. Some reports I've seen suggest that the problem goes away if you put it in a case of some sort, so maybe Apple only tested it with those silly cases that made it look like a 3G when they sent it out in the wild for testing, and the case kept it from having the problem.
And it seems to me that they could combine the proximity sensor input with the accelerometer and gyroscope inputs. When you hold the phone within a certain range of angles AND the proximity sensor reads X, then turn off the touchscreen.
I think I have had enough of Apple at this point. I can guarantee that I will jump ship to HTC's EVO phone by December this year.
Now let's wait for the Apple fanboys who will see no wrong on Apple's part.
Will Apple offer a free
lol good one
...suggests that they depend on heavy marketing and legal scare tactics rather than good engineering practices to sell a product.
Yes, the iPhone, and indeed Apple's entire product line, clearly demonstrates that their engineering is far behind the competition's.
/. as of late.
Let me guess, you don't regularly use an iPhone or an Apple computer or OS X? But you don't want to be left out of the fervent Apple backlash that's taken over
I had the original iPhone, and it was an exceptional work of engineering. I recently upgraded to the iPhone 4, and it again seems like an excellent work of engineering. I'm only speaking from personal experience, but I haven't had a problem with the antenna or a single dropped call to date. The huge success of the iPhone has placed it under an intense spotlight, and as it's the current "king of the hill," everyone's out to expose its blemishes and blow them out of proportion. As such, these critiques need to be taken with a grain of salt, and given time to see if they represent real issues among users, or anti-Apple fud.
...and here's why: -
When it come to the iPhone, folks at Apple haven't told us how not to hold it wrong...so let's wait for Steve's instructions.
I now have an iPhone 4. Before that, I was a 3GS user. Before that, Palm Centro, Treo 680, and Treo 650.
All I can say is that I have absolutely no complaints. Phone gives better audio quality and apparently better signal strength than my 3GS, which also rarely dropped calls and generally had little trouble accessing the 'net even though I live in NYC and supposedly ought not to have even been able to place a call, period.
I haven't had any issues with the proximity sensor, any issues with signal loss/degredation, etc. No yellow spots, beautiful screen. The device works better than just about any other electronics device (save the 3GS) that I've bought in the last few years. It seems to me that people hold Apple to impossibly high standards compared to other electronics vendors. Few devices or even major computer items (printers, laptops, monitors) I've bought over the last few years have been defect free. Every single one of them has had issues. Many I've exchanged several times trying to get a "good one" (for example, Kensington Expert Mouse with misaligned laser so that motion isn't properly detected, or AOC LCD monitor with control panel buttons that don't register presses).
People only get into "OMIGODSCANDAL" mode when it's Apple for some reason.
I'm happy to say that the two Apple devices I've bought (iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4) have satisfied me enough that I'm seriously thinking of getting an iPad (despite previously thinking I wouldn't) and making my next computer a Mac rather than a Thinkpad.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Mark me as redundant, but haven't people learned already that first-gen Apple products are suspect to major flaws? (Even though iteration-wise, this is the 4th iteration of the iPhone, of course, realistically this is a Apple product with brand new hardware and design, akin to going from the PPC Powerbooks to the Intel Macbooks).
I can't help but to think that this bug has more to do with dropped calls than the antenna- Screen doesn't go off, so your face hits "End" ... I can see how people would see that as a drop.
I've got an HTC Desire and it too has a problem with your ear pressing on-screen buttons during calls.
The screen can also be too sensitive to skin touches. So, for example, when the phone is in my jeans pocket, it responds to the skin of my thigh through the pocket lining. I've had to resort to the "drag your finger in a certain pattern" unlock mode to prevent the phone from making calls while it's in my pocket.
Of course Apple is going to be scrutinized more than any other popular company because they limit their models to one or two. For example, lets say I want a Motorola phone with Android, I don't -have- to get a Droid, I can choose to get a Droid, Droid X, Backflip, Cliq, Devour or i1. A flaw that the Backflip has will probably not be shared with the Droid and a problem with the Droid might be addressed on the Droid X. Apple seems to think that their one phone is the phone for everyone and when it is not, people are going to attack them. Motorola isn't saying that all of their phones are for everyone, they make their own niches, someone who needs a high-end phone is not going to get a Cliq but rather get a Droid (X), someone who wants to get a smartphone on a budget also isn't going to buy the Droid X but instead might go for the i1.
If Apple offered multiple products, they could escape scrutiny because there would be other products to fall back to if one product ended up being terrible and Apple would suffer minimal losses, but since they have a unified phone program, the flaws are much more pronounced.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I have seen it written somewhere that the proximity sensor issue affects only those who did a "restore from backup" to transfer their settings from an older phone. I can't verify this beyond stating that, having read this, I activated as a new phone, the transferred settings manually. I have had no proximity sensor problems. Now before I get jumped on for defending Apple, let me just say that, yes, this is a problem, and they should sort it asap. But I figured I'd share a potential workaround in case it helps someone.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
this seems to be an issue with ios4 (happens on 3gs also) to do with importing from old phone sensor settings on restore...
after some searching found that
the fix was to go into settings/general/reset all/ then it recalibrated the sensor....
have had zero issues since
locked out of this slashdot account for 10+ years... Im back