Slashdot Mirror
iPhone 4 Reception Recall Ruckus Roundup
Readers today have been sending tons of stories about the iPhone 4, so here are a few of the highlights: Following the Consumers Reports announcement that the iPhone has antenna problems, Andy Patrizio asks if Apple can withstand the pressure to recall, while CNet estimates that a recall would cost them $1.5B. But that's just the latest on the iPhone 4 — the long running carrier exclusivity lawsuit rumors have been upgraded to Class Action status.
CNet estimates that a A recall would cost them $1.5B
It's not only that cost. In 3 days Apple's stock has gone down a huge 5%, costing Apple and their shareholders millions of dollars and creating huge image problems.
It also look like Apple's PR team completely messed up, from the "learn a new way to hold a phone" to removing of any critical comments from their support forums. Considering PR and marketing is one of Apple's strongest areas and which pushes everything they do forward, they did some incredibly stupid decisions.
Now that they are basically ignoring the problem, any more time they take doing nothing will cost them even more.
How you like them Apples?
I already returned my iPhone 4, barely got it out of the box before return shipping. Droid X looks like it'll be replacing my half-functional iPhone 3G tomorrow.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
Jobs is too arrogant to allow a recall...they'll find a way to blame customers for this eventually, or weasel out of doing a full recall.
So what we're saying is that the new iPhone is getting a bad reception??? :)
Take Nobody's Word For It.
With all the Apple publicity they probably made an extra $1.5 billion. It's not like the iphone is gods gift, anyone ever been to europe/asia? They had phones like this five years ago.
If they dont release a patch, their stock will be useful only as wallpaper by the weekend.
Except, that is what many savvy investors are counting on, because the fall in their stock price is really a reaction of fear.
Savvy investors never trade on emotion, and they bank on the emotion of others by reading the emotions that drive the market. This still works because the majority of those who trade stocks are still very emotional.
Apple basically shot themselves in the foot, and their wounds are bound to heal. That is far better than if someone else (like MS) shot them and they got hurt, as that would be a sign of vulnurability to competition.
That puts the share price at a mere 177% of its value 1 year ago. Their investors must be pissed!
The problem is the antennas being shorted by a slightly conductive (sweaty) finger bridging one or more of the three breaks.
Apple doesn't need a recall to fix the problem: future phones can have a coating, and a free bumper ($10 cost to Apple) to existing customers solves all the problems.
At 2M iPhones, the "recall fix" would be a whopping $20M.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Look, I love Apple products. I own / have owned a MacBook Pro, 2 iMacs, an iPod 2G, an iPhone 3GS, an iPad, an Airport Express, and an iPod shuffle. I get it.
But, seriously Apple, you did a recall with the MacBook battery issue. You replaced batteries and even though it cost you some money your karma was helped by it. Do the same with the iPhone 4... offer owners a case which you test to make sure fixes the problem. It will probably cost you $20 per for these including shipping and processing assuming you can get the cases for $4 or so. But you will instantly shut up the majority of people who are complaining VERY loudly about the problem AND you will have "done the right thing".
NO company is capable of 100% preventing mistakes, but it's how you act as a company that determines how you're perceived. You can be cool and hip all you want but if customers are afraid to purchase your products because you've stuck to your guns and forced lawsuits to happen you lose in the long run.
I'm very disappointed in the way they've handled this. The least they could do is issue certificates for free bumpers IMMEDIATELY for any iPhone 4 owners who want one, in addition to waiving the restocking fee (which they already did). That would have done a lot to shore up customer loyalty and keep their image good.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
The reason I have passed on ALL of the iPhones so far is I don't buy into the hype, not to mention a LOCKED OS. Hey, if you just pick up a phone to use it, then perhaps the iPhone is for you, but, if you are a "tinker" type, I don't see how the iPhone would be good. Even given all of the faults with WinMobile, at least you can hack it til the cows come home. The way I look at it is it is MY phone, and I'll screw around with it how I want to. I don't like "locked" phones. My current phone, HTC Rhodium (Tilt2) never even had the stock OS fired up. I told the guy at the at&t store that I would set it up later (since I already had a Touch Pro). Took it home, unlocked it, wiped out the stock OS and put one from XDA-Developers on it and tweaked it exactly how I wanted. Job's & Company have a MAJOR public relations nightmare on their hands, and a golden opportunity for some of their competitors to run ads that exploit this problem.
... that my iPhone 4 is outperforming my 3GS, in terms of 3G connection quality and reliability, sometimes to pretty miraculous degree, such as at the train station I wait at every work day, where my 3GS's signal would jump up and down and go away and come back and even when it was showing 5 bars the performance was horrendous. With the iPhone 4 I can in fact reproduce the signal drop when held in my left hand, going pretty dramatically from 4 bars to only 1, but even at 1 bar the performance is outstanding and for the first time ever I've got a 100% reliable and fast connection here. I can stream audio and browse the web and it's fast, even at 1 bar. At 4 bars if not left handed.
So I'm not downplaying the drop in signal strength issue, as that is there when you hold it left handed (and I do usually), but that in practice it performs better, even a lot better, then my iPhone 3GS. So is the antenna flawed or not? I would say that it is flawed, but only from a PR standpoint. It's a public relations disaster, brought only by people who don't have an iPhone 4 and who seem to have a vendetta against Apple for not making a phone that they want, and due to magazines like Consumers Reports, who aren't seeing the forest for the trees. They are focusing solely on that there is a drop, and ignoring how it performs in practice. You need to just use the phone and see how it works for you, and most, I suspect, once they stop staring at the signal strength gauge, are going to find that it does better then their previous phone, even by a wide margin. The iPhone 4 is a great phone. Yes, you should put a case on it, as that will reduce the signal drop issue, but that issue is not nearly as big of an issue as it is being made out to be. It's not a non-issue, it just not the main thing you should be concerned about. You should be concerned about how it performs in practice, and the iPhone 4 excels there.
--- What?
Cannot admit: iPhone4 irradiates you when you hold it wrong. It may appear that the iPhone4 gives you cancer.
Manufacturing: There may be a manufacturing component to it as well. We know they were rushed out the door without even time for the touchscreen bonding glue to dry. Clearly the Foxconn QA was not followed. If an engineer leaves a thumbprint on an internal antenna it detunes it. Imagine what a rushed assembly with leaky glue would do to the tuning characteristics.
Cannot admit: Apply don't pay their manufacturers enough and circumvent their own QA guidelines to rush product to market. They may appear like greedy bastards.
AT&T: The drop problem is also in a small, small part down to AT&T's 3G network topology. Nowhere near as bad as the old iPhone problem of congesting the signalling channels, this is simply due to the fact that 3G signals are way more sensitive to received signal strength. When you hold it the wrong way not only does the handset not heat the base station well (showing fewer bars on the phone) but it is the network that cannot hear the iPhone that causes the call drops as your entire hand and arm are radiating instead of the antenna. When you broadly detune the antenna with your hand the lower powered 3G signal is simply too feint and distorted to be heard by the base station. It does explain why the locations where the issues appear are random and seemingly not related in all cases to the downlink signal strength shown on the handset. RF signals are like that.
Cannot admit: The issue clearly isn't all to do with AT&T and they blamed them the last time with the 3GS.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It would cost them a LOT more than that. If the letter A were recalled, they'd be Pple Corportion.
And they'd sell iPds instead of iPads. Their stock symbol would have to change from AAPL to PL - but that's taken, and so is PPL. PPLE is available, but pple.com is owned by a squatter.
And it's not just Apple. If the letter A were recalled:
About the only good thing about recalling the letter a is that vaginas stay vgins - no matter how many times they're poked! Hmmm, on second thought, maybe it's worth 1.5 billion.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Anand found that gripping the iPhone 4 a certain way could indeed cause up to 24dB of signal drop. This was worst-case, with a sweaty deathgrip. Touching more lightly or with less moisture had less of an effect. Gripping other smartphones near their antennas also caused a drop in signal.
The non-linear signal representation of the "bars" can also lead to some confusion related to this. The valid range is between -113dB (no signal) and -51dB (full signal). However, 5 bars represents the range of -51 to -91. 4 bars is -91 to -101. 3 bars is -101 to -103. 2 bars is -103 to -107. 1 bar is -107 to -113. If you have a full strength 5 bar connection, that 24dB drop won't even move you out of the 5th bar. If you've just barely got 5 bars, the same 24dB drop can put you down to 1 or 0 bars.
Anand's testing also confirmed what sjonke said in the comment above. Even when it was showing the same signal strength, the iPhone 4 was better at not dropping calls compared to the 3GS. The page shows a screenshot of a 625/31 run on Speedtest.net during a call with only -113dB.
Freedom isn't free, and by buying and jailbreaking an iPhone you financially support Apple's douchebaggery and encourage the development of more crippled, locked down systems, perhaps with more effective jails.
Why do that when you can have an Android phone which you're encouraged to hack on, with real multi-tasking and an open source OS?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Defense Lawyer: "Can it be used to make phone calls?"
Expert Witness: "Well...yeah, but it's reception isn't as good as it could be."
Defense Lawyer: "Is the reception worse than most other phones on the market?"
Expert Witness: "Well no, but..."
Judge: "Next case please."
I'm not surprised that that the iPhone 4 isn't absolutely perfect in every way. No product is. This is a pretty minor issue that has been blown out of proportion. If I were in charge of Apple I would just give out those 'bumpers' for free and hope this all blows over.
Real-world tests by Wired, Engadget, etc. all show that you can have 4 bars and great signal. Hold the phone and have zero signal.
What real-world use are you talking about? I'm not even activating my iPhone 4 until I get my bumper in the mail I just ordered.
I also hate this notion that Apple products always just work. iTunes has wiped music, ringtones and such from my phone multiple times. It crashes all the time. It messes up tags on my MP3s and stripped away album artwork so it won't display correctly in Windows Media Player.
I have app crashes on my phone. The email app still leaves a lot to be desired. I'm missing basic crucial functionality. Contacts can be in groups, except there is no way to put contacts in groups on the phone.
Apple products are not nearly as perfect as people make them out to be.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I have to support hundreds of iMacs and MacBooks at work, and I've had to call in tons of warranty repairs the last couple years (easily 10x than from our pool of HP and Dell machines). I thought maybe apple was ditching quality on the macs in favor of the iPhone, iPod, because of iTunes $$$, but it seems they're just neglecting quality across the board. It doesn't "just work" anymore; it just looks pretty (until the style looks outdated).
Jail. Break. The iPhone is just as hackable as other systems out there.
That's like telling people to adopt Christianity, because it doesn't actually stop you from committing the sins you like.
The 3G/3GS had what sounds to be the same problem with poor reception when you hold the phone while touching the metal edge around the screen.
You can repeat this test as follows:
1. Put your phone into "field test" mode by dialing *3001#12345#* (curiously discontinued with iPhone OS4).
2. Note the signal strength when phone is sitting on a table.
3. Note the signal strength when holding it normally or just touching the metal edge - it's way lower.
4. Pinch the phone so that you are not touching the metal edge. Note that the strength returns to the level it was at while on the table.
I have personally not been bothered by this limitation with the iPhone 3G in normal use. When signal strength is really poor, I avoid touching the metal edge, but aside from that, it's business as usual.
I would be curious to know if the iPhone 4 is any worse than the iPhone 3G/3GS. Has anyone seen a comparison?
Trying not to Troll, I do have 10+ years experience in designing radio networks and mobile phones. All the early phones the whip antennas were encased in plastic. That was why they were black and not silver. It is a very thin nonconductive layer. Not a lot, but all you need to make it work.
I have a 3gs from beginning of this year so I'm not eligible, but my wife is and has been waiting for a few months for the 4g to come out.
It now looks like she is going to either wait for apple to issue a fix or go with an android phone. If anything I know she is not alone and I'd guess she probably represents 2 or 3% of potential customers that are now not going to buy this device.
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
My wife and I upgraded our phones from Razr's (also with AT&T) to iPhone4's on launch day. AT&T's network is not nearly as bad as the iPhone makes it. I can't make or receive phone calls in my office any more. We get calls dropped all the time. We've had occasions when one phone shows 4 bars and can make and receive calls and data while the other one just shows "Searching...". The only solution I found was to reset the Network settings. I can call my phone while it claims to have 3 or more bars and I'll hear ringing before being directed to voicemail on the calling end while the iPhone remains completely silent on the subject. I don't get notified of voicemail until hours later - all while the phone pretends it has connectivity.
My friends tell me this is just what you expect with the iPhone and that my phone actually works better than their previous generation iPhones. So your statement might be correct if you define "most other phones on the market" as all the previous generations of iPhones but is completely false otherwise.
The iPhone is a really shitty phone but it's a testament to how well it does everything else that I'm still only "considering" returning it.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Seconded. I've yet to get an iPhone, but I've got a friend who picked up a couple 4s right when they came out. He couldn't be happier. Even though they do lose some signal with the right grip, in daily use they drop fewer calls and have better sound quality than Blackberries/Palms/other phones he's used. So it's hard for him to get too worked up about this issue.
And American phone subsidies notwithstanding, it's a $600 device. If you care about your phone, buy a freaking case or bumper already! And/or a bluetooth headset. You don't have to be that kid sitting in Starbucks showing off just how spendy a phone your parents bought you.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
I was about to wonder about your problems till I saw that last part...you're running iTunes on Windows?
I've run all of this on a mac (older one granted, a G5 Tower I got cheap)...and no problems at all. I'd dare say if you run Apple stuff on Apple products...9 times out of 10, it does just work. Mixing MS windows in the equation is likely asking for trouble.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
What has two thumbs and has no reception problems with his iPhone 4 whatsoever? This Guy!
The solution to this is to offer to refund the full price of any iPhone 4 until the end of the year, no questions asked. I would be surprised if 5% of the phones came back.
I've wondered that myself.
After all, if you're getting dropped calls with your new shiny iPhone 4 that you didn't with your old phone, why haven't you returned it? Are you waiting for a fix that Apple may or may not provide? News of this hit the internet about a day after it went on sale, and there was at least a 14 day return policy (that even cancelled any contract you signed and reset your upgrade eligibility). And your old phone worked for you, and it still can.
As for those complaining about the issue after a couple of weeks, or to be more generous, after end of last week, I have no sympathy since the issue is widely reported and even Consumer Reports has put out a statement that's broadcasted everywhere. If you still buy it despite this, well, you knew what you were getting into.
Seriously, I'm now undecided. I've still got an original iPhone (imported and unlocked), and a 3G that comes off contract next year. I'm tempted by the iPhone 4 (unlocked!), but I'll probably wait and see what Apple does before committing. If I end up waiting for the iPhone 5 (next year, and yes, you know it's coming), so be it. (And with those antenna issue class actions, you know Apple can't do anything until those are resolved - lawsuits are a great way to shut someone up since a wrong move can open a can of worms. So even anything Apple might do to fix it has to be carefully considered to avoid giving the lawsuit more ammo.)
Fake (or real?) Jobs did say, after all, "It's just a phone. Not worth it." Return it, move on with life. If Apple fixes it, great, buy it then, else, wait for the new model. Or live with it, if you must have it, knowing full well it has the issue now.
And yes, I own lots of Apple stuff - iPods, iPhones, Macs and even an iPad. Apple's released duds in the past (like the Apple 3, the Lisa, the G4 Cube, the puck mouse, etc. etc. etc.).
And American phone subsidies notwithstanding, it's a $600 device. If you care about your phone, buy a freaking case or bumper already! And/or a bluetooth headset. You don't have to be that kid sitting in Starbucks showing off just how spendy a phone your parents bought you.
So what you're saying is, it's a $600 device that's defective unless you buy a $30 case or other accessory? If I cared about my phone, I'd probably buy one that "just worked". I have a 3gS and as much as I like some of the capabilities, it has done a decent job turning me off to the whole Apple thing...
You're thinking small. Why miniaturize the laser, when we could instead enlarge the sharks? -John Searle
Agreed.
Either
1) you have a hacker mindset and you want your phone to be hackable
2) you don't
if you're part of 1, then the 5 minutes it takes to jailbreak is surely not a deterrent
if you're part of 2, you don't care anyway, and the jailed/signed binary environs protects you.
I suspect that 99% of the people who bitch about the iPhone's lack of hackability couldn't write one iota of code themselves.
Link or lies! A 4bar drop to 0 has never happened to any of my phones no matter how I hold them.
Let me google that for you (Nexus One)
There were videos around for other phone if you simply do a search.
If you can't replicate the problem, then you are simply in the same boat as iPhone 4 owners who can't replicate the problem it's supposed to have either (I know a few iPhone 4 users that cannot get the signal to drop, and athough I've been able to reproduce it I can't get it to happen all the time).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But, seriously Apple, you did a recall with the MacBook battery issue. You replaced batteries and even though it cost you some money your karma was helped by it.
Karma nothing. Recalls of dangerous products are mandated by US law. Even "voluntary" recalls aren't; the company either does them voluntarily when the company or CPSC finds a defect, or it risks being sued and paying a penalty in addition to doing a recall.
For that matter, selling a defective product that is not a safety hazard does not trigger a "recall." Unless these iPhones are strangling small children, catching fire, or are poisonous if touched, there's no recall potential here.
I have an engineering background and while I have by no means conducted a scientific study, I can tell you with utmost certainty that the iPhone4 does hardly has a signal reception problem.
It has a signal TRANSMISSION problem.
I've done quite a lot of mucking around with speed test apps on the device and I have observed that while touching the left gap between antennas does cause a marginal decrease in download speed, the signal is by no means blocked. To me, it appears the device can still hear the signal from the tower pretty well even with a human hand to detune the antenna.
Upload speeds, on the other hand, are severely crippled or blocked altogether. It appears that touching the gap has an extremely negative impact on the device's ability to emit a signal strong enough for the tower to hear. This theory is supported by call tests I conducted in which the other party was unable to hear me whenever the gap was touched, even though I could hear their voice just fine.
Quite by accident, I also happened to set my phone down next to a set of computer speakers which were very sensitive to cell phone radio interference, resulting in the typical "GSM Buzz" which most of you of you have surely experienced. What I discovered was that a single fingertip over the gap would almost completely eliminate the speaker buzz due to the interference. Touching anywhere else on the device had no discernible effect. Once again, it would appear that touching the gap severely hinders outgoing transmissions from the device, even over extremely short distances.
As I said, these observations are about as un-scientific as it gets, so feel free to draw your own conclusions. But as far as I can tell, touching the gap is enough to stop your phone's outgoing signal from ever reaching the tower, and a tower which thinks your phone is no longer there isn't going to maintain your call for very long.
I've seen videos from Wired and Engadget of picking up the phone and letting it rest comfortable in your hand where the signal goes from 4 bars to No Signal.
Even the most ardent Pro-Apple sites have confirmed in their testing that this is a serious problem.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I was about to wonder about your problems till I saw that last part...you're running iTunes on Windows?
I've run all of this on a mac (older one granted, a G5 Tower I got cheap)...and no problems at all. I'd dare say if you run Apple stuff on Apple products...9 times out of 10, it does just work. Mixing MS windows in the equation is likely asking for trouble.
Oh, so it only crashes, erases songs, etc for 90% of their customers. THAT'S PRETTY GOOD!!! [/sarcasm, if you couldn't tell]
The shitty quality of iTunes and Quicktime on Windows is simply inexcusable. *Especially* since they have other applications, like Safari, that run quite well on Windows. Hell, even is Windows was the one with the 5% marketshare, it would *still* be inexcusable.
iTunes, by virtue of its scummy buggy-ass drivers and services, is the *only* application I've seen on Windows 7 that can still lock-up completely unrelated applications. (In my case, World of Warcraft locked-up for a solid 4 minutes while iTunes was updating my phone's firmware. Figure THAT one out!)
Comment of the year
No, it is not. Normal holding of the phone does not really affect the signal. You have to squeeze much harder than normal and kind of wrap the phone, to really have an effect. Although partially it's probably a function of how sweaty your hands are.
That's simply not true. Signal degradation occurs with a single finger covering the correct location. Here's a video that clearly shows a single finger causing degradation with no twisting or warping of the phone.
http://consumerist.com/2010/07/consumer-reports-wont-recommend-iphone-4-until-apple-fixes-death-grip-design-flaw.html
Thanks for you time but all the info you're giving out is directly contradicted by numerous sources.
I find being offended by me offensive.
From TFS:
But that's just the latest on the iPhone4: the long running carrier exclusivity lawsuit rumors have been upgraded to Class Action status.
The class action lawsuit is about carrier exclusivity, not the app store or other software restrictions. This should be obvious considering the Kindle and every game console have the exact same software restrictions, with the Kindle even having 1984 remotely removed from users' devices, without (afaik) a lawsuit being filed against Amazon.
The carrier exclusivity lawsuit for Apple being tied to AT&T seems absurd. Is there any way whatsoever this lawsuit will succeed?
What would blocking carrier exclusivity mean for every other phone manufacturer? The (dumb) Nokia phone that I have now is Verizon-only. MOST phones have been carrier-exclusive, especially considering we only have 2 primary carriers per technology (GSM and TMDA) in the US anyway.
The lawsuit makes about as much sense as a CPU-Exclusivity class action lawsuit against Microsoft for not making Windows on PowerPC. It's lawyers making an absurd lawsuit against a target with big pockets, hoping to get swatted away with a settlement.
I've had an iPhone 4 for a few weeks now, and largely it works 99% as promised. IMHO there are bigger bugs than the "don't touch here" antenna problem!
1. Overheating shutdown... (I think). If the phone is in my pocket, sometimes I take it out and it's off... I'm guessing it is overheating (hot down here in Texas...)
2. GSM unit crashes... I sometimes venture out into the boonies and sometimes the gsm system just stops working with spotty coverage in hilly areas. When I return to a city with a strong signal, the unit never comes back up and signal strength stays at 0-1 bars.
3. Occasional app crashes... sometimes an app just crashes, usually one of the older apps like facebook, rope n'fly and a couple of other games. It's actually really rare, and I don't seem to loose anything, so it's minor at this point. These apps were rock solid on my 3gs phone, so that's why I mention it.
Overall I'm pretty happy the experience though... it's a lot faster. The voice quality is much better. The screen is fantastic. If #1 and #2 can be fixed then it would be fantastic, otherwise I'll return it and wait for iPhone 4.1...
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Citation needed.
I don't have 10 years of antenna design experience like the GP but I have some knowledge in electrical engineering and that is more then enough to tell me that when you change the electrical length of an antenna it changes the frequency the antenna is designed to pick up. Signal strength doesn't mean squat when the antenna is interpreting the correct signal as noise.
I work in a building on the edge of my telco's tower range, Iphone 3G's do not get 3G signals at all in my office. My Milestone constantly switches between 3G and 2G. The Iphone 4 will have no chance in this scenario and it's not unusual for a person to be in an area with a bad signal.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
RTFA:
The suit asks the court to ban the sale of locked iPhones in the United States and also seeks a ban on Apple restricting what software users can install.
Now I know you can interpret it a few different ways. But in all cases that means more control of the device for consumers. It's not an absurd lawsuit, it's about information control. Right now, with the iPhone (and to a slightly lesser extent Android phones) all of your data and what you can install on the phones can and is controlled by the company who sold you the phone. Apple controls the market so they have approval rights over what you can install, and also controls how to remove or remotely kill your phone. Google's terms of service for Android are essentially the same. That is what they're seeking to overturn. Return control of the hardware to the customer who purchased it, which is what it's supposed to be!
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.