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Consumer Reports Can't Recommend iPhone 4
jbezorg was one among many readers to send word that Consumer Reports has concluded that they cannot recommend the iPhone 4. (They still enthusiastically recommend the 3G S.) "It's official. Consumer Reports' engineers have just completed testing the iPhone 4, and have confirmed that there is a problem with its reception. When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone's lower left side — an easy thing, especially for lefties — the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you're in an area with a weak signal. Due to this problem, we can't recommend the iPhone 4. ... Our findings call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4's signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software that 'mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.'" The comments on the article don't display any of the vitriol the Apple faithful have been known to unleash upon anyone daring to question the Cupertino way. Perhaps they are moderated.
Shows how little you know...
Consumer reports tests EVERYTHING they can get ahold of.
And as for reviews... they seem to be one of the few you could actually trust to be even halfway honest about what they are testing.
They test everything and historically have been fairly reliable since they don't accept advertising dollars from the manufacturers of the products they test, unlike most magazines and websites.
FTA: "We also tested several other AT&T phones the same way, including the iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre. None of those phones had the signal-loss problems of the iPhone 4."
> Then why did Nintendo do it for the Wii.
Nintendo is scared to death of competitors. They're in a highly competitive market and they realize the other guys will swoop down like vultures after a screwup.
Nintendo also can't depend on a cult to buy products and make excuses.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Obviously you missed the part of the report that explained how they did a controlled test (in an RF isolation chamber with their own base station) and compared the iPhone4's performance with previous iPhones as well other AT&T smartphones.
The fact that they already had this tech setup leads me to believe that signal reception testing is something Consumer Reports does regularly.
Yes, it is THE most trusted publication among people who don't trust publications.
They don't need to do a recall yet. All iphone 4s are still within the 30 day return period and Apple is reportedly waiving the restocking fee. iPhone 4 users whose problems are such they cannot live with them can return their phone immediately. I also think they can't handle a recall right now, the iPhone 4 is sold out everywhere (it's insane, here in Belgium people are selling 16Gb iPhone 4s for EUR 1000 and up) and still people are ordering. Maybe they'll do a stealth fix and do a recall of the early models later when things cool down.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Overall I have better reception, including data reception, from the iPhone 4 over the 3Gs. I have not had a dropped call due to how I was holding the phone, and fewer dropped calls overall at my house (where the signal is pretty weak).
I don't have a case or anything. I like the new antenna better overall, and I think a simple coating should solve the issue Consumer Reports cites (though again I've never had that happen in practice).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Small nitpick, the pope is only infallible when he speaks ex cathedra (from the chair). When he does this, for all intents and purposes, he speaks with the voice of god and is infallible, the rest of the time, as I understand it, he's just a human being giving his own opinions.
Generally speaking, the popes aren't stupid, and they know the kind of binds being infallible(and therefor inflexible) gets you into and so they are infallible fairly rarely.
Lord Steve on the other hand is infallible all the time and suffers the relevant consequences.
Seriously, for an Open Source community it's outstanding how many Apple fanatics here are, when they are obviously the largest abuser of OSS or open technology.
[Citation Needed]
I'd say that Apple actually is a pretty strong supporter of open source. Here's my citation on the subject:
Open source projects in which Apple is involved.
Sapere aude!
It didn't have anything to do with software, it had to do with testing data, operational data and documentation.
"Specifying power levels over 100% may seem confusing, but there is a logic behind it. The 100% level does not mean the maximum physical power level attainable. Rather it is a specification, decided on early during SSME development, for the "normal" rated power level. Later studies indicated the engine could operate safely at levels above 100%, which is now the norm. Maintaining the original relationship of power level to physical thrust helps reduce confusion. It creates an unvarying fixed relationship, so that test data, or operational data from past or future missions can be easily compared. If each time the power level was increased, that value was made 100%, then all previous data and documentation would either require changing, or cross-checking against what physical thrust corresponded to 100% power level on that date."
104.5% is as high as they like to go, 106% and 109% is just for aborts.
I believe he's referring to the free "controller jackets" for the Wii remotes - which were part of solving the throwing remote problem. You can get a better grip on the "controller jacket" than slippery plastic when your hands are sweaty. Nintendo offered 1 free per Wii remote purchased before a certain date (remotes after that date had them included).
You just had to put your address (and possibly a Wii ID, don't remember) into their website and they sent them to you - free, no shipping charges or anything. That's what I consider good customer service/relations, and that's why so many people like Nintendo - they produce quality products at a fair price and seem to do their best to solve any issues.
Personally, I laughed when I heard the response from Apple about signal strength being a software issue, it was too little too late even if it was the truth. (and if it was the truth they should have pushed out a patch on the announcement day to fix it)
Its not radiated RF waves that are being blocked. Thats what apple is trying to pass it off as (the whole all cell phones get their signal blocked by hands). That is NOT the issue here. The issue is the two antenna's on the device being shorted together. If you know anything about RF as you seem to claim you do, then you know that the length and shape of an antenna is extremely important to its function. Its why you can't plug a TV antenna into a wifi hotspot and expect it to work right, and thats essentially what your doing when you short the two antenna's.
The iPhone 4 signal is slightly better than the 3GS; I can keep talking in the deeper, more isolated parts of my house where people previously said "what was that, you're breaking up a little."
I'm using it with a case, but I have used every mobile I've ever owned with a case and I'm not about to stop now that mobile phones cost many hundreds of dollars.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
According to the video on Consumer Report's website touching the gap on the lower left side reduces the signal strength by around 20db. That's quite a big loss, the resulting signal strength being about 1/100 of the starting signal strength.. When I grip the base of my Motorola Droid phone around the base (where the antenna is located internally), I can only get about a 2-3db drop in signal strength.
This huge loss does not surprise me, since touching the gap is essentially changing the characteristics of the antenna significantly. I can only wonder whose bright idea it was to use this design or how they failed to catch this during their testing phase? It doesn't take rocket science to fix the problem either, I suspect just a clear insulating coating over the metal band would do wonders.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Christ on a crutch, man, he obviously means they test everything they write about. Firearms don't fall in that category.
ironically, CR still rates it HIGHER than any other smart phone for the US market!
actual report is behind a CR paywall, link goes to blog post that shows a screen shot of the report...
I like microcars
Huh? Apple is the primary source of development behind WebKit, Clang, LLVM, launchd, C blocks, libdispatch, and the rest of Darwin. All of these things are open source, and most of them are being incorporated in other operating systems.
If people are "fanatics" for Apple, it's because they're constantly put on the defensive by Apple-haters like yourself who are taking this opportunity to, once again, bash Apple and their fans. Meanwhile, the huge story here is that Consumer Reports doesn't recommend something. Oh no, they didn't recommend it!
ironically, CR still rates it HIGHER than any other smart phone for the US market!"
TFA linked to in the summary (I know, nobody reads it) explains it better than that snarky blog post:
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
He probably is talking about the closing down of the BSD kernel (even though it's permitted in its license agreement).
They don't use the BSD kernel, they use their own custom kernel called XNU which is based on Mach. Some elements of the BSD kernel are included in this kernel but it was never closed down. It's released under the Apple Public Source License (APSL) which qualifies as open source and the source code can be found here: XNU source
Sapere aude!
Excuse me, but shut right the fuck up. As of 4:02 am EST he got modded 0: Insightful, which is more than he deserves for stereotyping people by, of all things, whether or not they've used products from a specific brand. "The amount of stupidity by Apple users [...] is outstanding" is a fucking TROLL; it's a baseless condemnation of tens of millions of people.
At this moment, you're modded +2: Informative for your post. What does that say about your idiot theory that apple fanbois abuse the moderation system? The post is a mixture of wacky conspiracy ("the fanboys seem to have some back-channel") and bizarre, anachronistic blather ("Ye have spoken well"? what the fuck?). It deserves a 1: Offtopic at best.
For the record, this post deserves offtopic or even troll as well, and I know it. I just needed to vent. Also for the record, I have a couple of apple products around the house, and I also have modpoints. If reality reflected your delusions, I'd have modded you down.
Actually, a few years ago, I bought a Mac Mini which showed grave problems with BlueTooth and Wifi-reception. After digging around a little, that too was a hardware-problem, present in a lot of Mac Minis. Owners were never reimbursed, and (AFAIR) apple.com forum-threads removed.
Also, for that Mac, in OSX 10.4.6, Apple broke all support for FullHD-TV-monitors. Basically, the analysis claimed that for some unknown reason, Apple introduced a change in resolution-detection, filtering out 1920x1080p, if the monitor somehow identified itself as a televison-set. The bug were, to my knowledge, never solved, and owners recommended to buy 10.5 instead.
So, in my experience, Apple is at least as guilty of quality and usability-problems as anyone else, and well-known to not really reimburse customers when these things happen.
On the basis of a quick Google, it's something like 25% of the US smartphone market (which is still dominated by Blackberry). Maybe 15% of global smartphone OS share (which is mostly Symbian). Maybe 2% of the global cellphone market (which is mostly Nokia and Samsung).
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Users on 4chan use the suffix "-fag" to mean "obsessive fan". It may be related to them all being about twelve years old.
To someone who has seen the subculture before, it's unintentional bigotry rather than an intentional insult. If they were actually trying to call someone gay, they'd say "fagfag".
Does my bum look big in this?
I don't understand this statement. Apple's gcc team (e.g. snaroff et al) have supported integrating their Objective C implementation into the main line of gcc since the NeXT days -- almost 20 years. They worked with us at Cygnus to make this happen, including all the hassle to make ObjC++ work. Now they seem to be seriously investing in LLVM/CLang and why not?
Self-serving? Sure, most FOSS projects are, in the end. There are plenty of legit reasons to criticise Apple, but I would not consider their nature and level of support for FOSS (App store excepted) to be one of them.