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iPhone XS and XS Max Users Are Reporting Poor Cell and Wi-Fi Reception (theverge.com)
Some users who upgraded to an iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max over the weekend have reported poor cell and Wi-Fi reception and noticeably slower speeds when comparing their new phones to their older models. The Verge: According to users on Apple's support forum, MacRumors forums, and Reddit, the issue appears to be widespread across the country and not limited to any specific carrier. It's a frustrating issue, especially considering that the iPhone XS is supposed to have significantly faster data speeds on Wi-Fi and LTE compared to the iPhone X, according to data tests conducted by SpeedSmart. There's even a new antenna line running along the bottom of the phone as discovered by a recent iFixit teardown, which should have helped with reception. Additionally, folks at r/Apple, the most popular subreddit for iPhone and other Apple related discussions on the site, have corroborated the claims.
You're holding it wrong
"You're Holding it WRONG!" comments in 3, 2, 1
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
They are not holding it right, Steve told us so.
I'm sure they're merely holding it wrong. Please consult the manual and hold it only with the specified fingers in the specified manner with the specified pressure in the specified orientation. It's not a design flaw; the design is perfect just like everything that comes out of Apple. Your body is flawed and must adapt to service our engineering.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
This is due to the superior antenna in the new models. The users are holding it wrong and this causes the antenna to work sub-optimally.
- SuperKendall
Apple Human Shield Centipede Defense Team...ASSEMBLE!
In before, "They're probably just using it wrong."
You are welcome on my lawn.
After seven years of iphone use (4S and 6S), i'm going to android for next phone. Apples shit is too expensive for what you get, and I don't want or need the new functionality. I don't use social media, or watch videos on my phone. Its not an entertainment center, its just a phone. I have other, better devices for non-phone activities.
I can confirm this. I have an iPhone Xs. Used to never have signal problems standing outside when near the wall where the router is.
I now get no signal outside and severely diminished signal if I leave the room with the router. Anything in the way of the router kills the top of three bars of wifi strength. Cellular data will routinely drop out where I'll just stop receiving anything for a bit until I reboot the phone. I have no idea how much of this is iOS 12 (since it comes with the Xs) and how much is just bad design with the Xs. But so far, for a $1000 phone, I'm really unimpressed.
we have enough posts regarding people "holding it wrong" .
If the new iPhones are getting poorer reception and slower downloads than the old ones did in the same location, I'd have to call it a very expensive downgrade, not an upgrade.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Apple is too busy making custom emojis to care about properly testing their phones. Remember this is a trillion dollar company.
I almost guarantee a simple firmware fix will correct this.
Obviously it's simply showing the incorrect number of bars. They just need to tweak it so that 1 bar reception shows full bars
This is only important if you plan to use the wireless connectivity functionality of the devices.
They are using it out of Spec.
The phone performs best, when no further than 100m from the nearest tower, operating at 100% transmit power, holding the phone in your right hand, parallel to the tower. with a batter charged to no less than 85%, with all other nearby radios disabled.
Apple guarantees that under these conditions, calls will only suffer a max drop out rate of 50%.
tl;dr "it's the users fault".
Works on my phone. Bug report closed.
Before the last few years, Apple had I guess what you could call "normal" amounts of problems in their HW & SW but it feels like they've gotten dramatically worse at producing quality products in the last 3 or 4 years.
Funny how it coincides with Apple's push to hire based on "diversity" and not "merit".
At least the world is more diverse now! lol
P.S. I'm part of a minority and I don't want AA.
Just wanted to make sure nobody missed the warnings
More money than brains.
Some users who upgraded to an iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max over the weekend have reported poor cell and Wi-Fi reception and noticeably slower speeds when comparing their new phones to their older models.
I blame iOS 12. I upgraded an iPhone 6S from iOS 11.4.1 to iOS 12 and noticed that Wi-Fi connection speed and reception are worse now.
At the office, I cannot get very good cell reception so I rely on Wi-Fi. When I arrive at the office, I turn on the iPhone's Wi-Fi and then connect to the Wi-Fi network. The time it takes to establish a connect to the network is much slower, and the range appears to be shorter too. Locations where I once was able to receive a solid signal are now dead spots.
I wonder whether they are sly references to the excessive prices of these trinkets?
As the Fanboys say, apple just works
"Some users who upgraded to an iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max over the weekend have reported poor cell and Wi-Fi reception and noticeably slower speeds when comparing their new phones to their older models."
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
#DeleteChrome
Eight years ago, when Apple debuted the iPhone 4, they re-engineered the antenna, making it into a stainless steel band running around the edge of the phone. But the antenna was actually two separate antennas, with a very narrow gap between them. If anything, including your hand, created enough of a conducting pathway between the two separate antennas, reception and 3G data quality reduced terribly. As this Anandtech article explained, "Anything conductive which bridges the gap in the bottom left couples the antennas together, detuning the precisely engineered antennas. It's a problem of impedance matching with the body as an antenna, and the additional antenna that becomes part of the equation when you touch the bottom left.
And so, when asked about the problem, Steve Jobs famously said, "Just avoid holding it in that way."
https://www.wiwavelength.com/2018/09/iphone-xs-and-xs-max-mostly-fail-to.html
https://www.wiwavelength.com/2018/09/antennagate-reduxs-if-so-what-can-apple.html
What do you expect for a $1000 plus phone? Do you really think Apple is concerned about its basic functions??
Looks good on all the mindless iSheep that were so eager to drop Qualcomm because apple was to cheap to pay them. Hope all those profits apple made cutting corners helps you get a signal.
The message has been receive and a patch will be sent soon enough.
Older models will have their performance decrease so the newer model won't feel so sluggish anymore.
Im sure they are all holding it wrong.
* User must pay shipping and handling.
I can confirm this has been my experience with one. Also that I was overcharged for minimal improvements and still pissed there's no headphone jack from the company "brave" enough to screw their customers repeatedly. And lack of fingerprint reader is seriously annoying.
I got mine on Friday, and have yet to see the third, let alone fourth, bar . . .
hawk
CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Got 2 iPhone X'es in my household and they get the worst WiFi reception out of all devices in the house (Apple banned any apps that will actually show you channels and signal strength, but you can still monitor from the AP side). An iPhone 6 and and iPhone 5S work great where iPhone X loses 5GHz and switches to 2.4GHz as backup. Grabbed an iPhone X and Galaxy S9+ and started walking away from the home, Galaxy got twice as far (by a couple hundred feet) before not being able to stay connected. Sounds like iPhone XS is continuing with the decline. Maybe a ploy to sell Apple's WiFi AP products?
to actually be usable as a... well, phone?
apple makes low quality ; high profit devices.
People are just figuring this out?
... is it "beautiful"?
Should have kept net neutrality.
If you are rich enough to buy a $1500 phone, then ATT, Verizon, and friends say you should be rich enought of pay $1500 for your phone bill. Don't like that? Go talk to the FCC. They will say "of course there is no monopoly", just like their owners have instructed them to.
I know you're not talking to me, but the issues to me are twofold:
(a) The company I work for, and come to think of it the previous company and the one before that, have/had standardized on the iphone for a company phone. So I get issued one whether it's actually useful or not. Because it's pretty and slippery and thin and the execs liked that. This is the largest issue.
I'm not an exec, it's not important to me how many aesthetic awards my phone has won, and "keeping up appearances" means nothing to me. What's vital to me is that my phone make and receive calls reliably when I'm chasing a severity one incident. (For this reason, the iphone I'm required to have sits mostly unused in a second holster, and my team knows to call me on my old beat-up Note 3 instead.)
So I follow these threads to see what I'll potentially have to deal with, and yes, occasionally venting, which is arguably not terribly mature but is cathartic.
(b) (Admittedly to a much lesser extent,) I have to drive by an AT&T store to get to the beginning of the drive-thru line for the most convenient Starbucks on the way to work. Every time Apple craps out some new handheld device, there's a big crowd of people standing in the cold PNW drizzle waiting for the store to open. They block traffic, and flat out refuse to get out of the way for oncoming cars, rather than take a chance of losing their place. It's damned irritating. Have some SELF RESPECT, people. It's JUST A PHONE.
All that said, there are worse things than having an iphone. My Windows phone, long ago, would pop up a message "(some driver) has stopped working and will now close" with an OK button. Thereafter, the phone WOULD NOT RING until it was rebooted. An iphone was arguably better than that. I guess everything is relative.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.