There are plenty of counter examples for not only those phones but also the iPhone 4 by people with strong coverage who cannot make their phone fail. As SJ in Apple press conference noted, the formula they used before made it seem like there was a dramatic drop when it was already a weak signal to begin with.
People complaining the loudest here never had any intention of buying an iPhone of any kind in the first place. There is no flaw. If there was one at least 1/3 of that 3 million would be demanding a refund. Where is the crisis? It was invented by bloggers like Gizmodo trying to attack Apple for being caught red handed and by Android fanboys trying to deflect attention from the problems with the android phones.
What percentage of new Android phone models have issues compared to 100% of the new iPhone models?
Regardless, the lesson is the same. Dont buy unreviewed hardware.
100%? Doubtful. All phones will exhibit some level of signal attenuation when held and if you hold it in a death grip deliberate, you will get even greater signal loss but if you have a strong signal, you can still make a call under those artificial circumstances. If 100% of iPhone 4's were being sold in San Francisco then you would have a point.
You have to go out of your way to make it happen because nobody is going to hold it in a death grip when they have it to their ear.
1. If you are not a developer, open source adds nothing for an end user so it is a straw man excuse to get a phone.
But where does the end users get their apps?
The app store? Typical consumers with Android phones will get their apps from the Android marketplace. Same difference.
Consumers are not interested in searching for and installing apps manually like some enthusiasts will.
Not only does the App store make it easy to obtain and keep up to date applications but it takes away the need for developers to heavily market their own apps.
A couple of true points:
1. If you are not a developer, open source adds nothing for an end user so it is a straw man excuse to get a phone.
2. 4G is only a benefit if you are in a 4G area and it burns through battery life like a hot knife through butter. Wimax was never designed to be used in phones and the current chipsets reflect that.
No, they don't. Not in Economy on any of the international flights I've been on.
Do these international flights have live chickens in cages because, I have not been on an international flight in ages that did not have both USB ports and power outlets in economy class.
How many decades ago was it that you flew internationally? By international I don't mean the United Airlines Express service from San Francisco to some small Canadian city?
Not really. C# is the cleanest language I've ever coded in.
Stringwriter on Java accepts encoding. Stringwriter on C# does not so you have sub class one that does. Functions like padright/padleft in a lot of languages will pad out a string to a specific length and truncate any string that is longer that the specified length but in.Net, you have to use two operations (padright + substring). Calling a substring on a string that is shorter than the specified size will return an exception.
I had to write a class library with StringwriterwithEncoding, PadrighttoFixedLength and Truncate functions.
Why don't you go search instead of spreading FUD with hyperbole? There many categories of apps and the Apple App store has one of the largest collection of modern games.
Yes, hobbyist. The price of entry is quite low at 99 dollars per year, Apple takes care of most of the marketing of the app and you get 70% of the price of the app instead of 30% like you would if dealing with the carriers directly.
The upper level phones in japan allow you to make standard touchless debit transactions and have television tuners. I have yet to see an "iPhone wows Japanese consumers" article yet.
You mean the Mobile Suica system? You can pick up a Suica/Passmo card at a subway station ticket machine, buy a case from Softbank with a slit for placing the card in and voila, your phone case pays for your transit trips and convenience store purchases. I did exactly that with my 3GS when I was in Tokyo during golden week a couple months ago.
The e-books readers will never understand the precision offered by the keyboard-mouse combination. I find reading on the e-books without the keyboard and mouse to be like a cliff notes or graphic novel version.
Yes, because the keyboard and mouse have an effect on the actual content of the book./SARCASM.
This sounds to like an attempt to justify reading books on your PC rather than an actual reason.
I don't know of anyone who reads e-books on a PC unless if they have no other choice because they are supplied on their work PC only.
It suddenly dawns on Steve Jobs that the reason for poor Wifi during his presentation was not because of too many people with wifi around but because he wasnt holding it right, therefore shorting the wifi antenna with the 3G one...
so this baby has bad reception in 3G and in wifi
Uh, no. There were hundreds of Mifi (wifi) hotspots in the audience within receiving range of the phone so the wifi stack was having a hard time dealing with the interference from those other stations. There are a limited number of channels that wifi operates on.
The reason why the bloggers/journalists did not have a problem accessing their Mifi is because it was right beside them so their laptop chose the closest and strongest signal. Steve jobs, on the other hand was about half way between their own router behind the stage and a large clump of wifi routers in the audience.
If this is true, it is potentially also tied into the logic of when to stop trying to stay connected and when to display "No service". The phone might drop a call when it think that the signal is below a certain strength.
The current iPhone 4 seems to work just fine no matter how you grip it in most AT&T markets and would most likely work just fine in other markets in other countries even without this "fix".
It just so happens that the majority of tech bloggers are located in San Francisco which is an area where the AT&T signal is over subscribed and probably has the highest concentration of other signals that can interfere with cell tower signals.
If tech bloggers were located in another city, this would be a non-story because other people in other markets have expressed having better reception than the 3G or 3GS with their new iPhone 4.
1. Mail. You can use Mobileme for your email or any number of services using IMAP, POP3 or Exchange. I see no lock in there given that mobileme is accessible from the web with your browser.
2. Contact. You can use Mobileme syncing for your contacts or Gmail contacts through Exchange mode. No lock in there either.
3. Notes. The Notes app now syncs through Mobileme allowing you to easily port those notes elsewhere. No lock in again.
4. Music. Music is sold as DRM-free AAC in iTunes which can be played on other players and phones. You can also play MP3 format music or import MP3 music from services like eMusic.
5. Video. Purchased video is DRM'ed at the request of the MPAA but the same holds true for other devices/services like the Zune.
6. eBooks. Free epub books that are public domain are provided DRM free. PDFs are also DRM free. Lock in for purchased books is the same as other services.
Looking at the iOS ecosystem, I see it as less closed than Blackberry or Windows Mobile as it is not tied to one desktop platform for the end user and it it cheap for a developer to get started on iOS compared with windows mobile or Blackberry app stores.
Do these people in the EU government even have a clue about how software is written? If they expect Apple to allow Java or not only adopt Java and abandon their SDK then they must be mentally challenged.
As an EU citizen I demand that we an investigation be launched into who is paying off this stupid woman.
Apple would sooner pull out of the EU market than allow the EU bureaucracy to dictate what languages can be used to program for their platforms.
All this does is line the pockets of lawyers and corrupt politicians. Regulation has its place but this is getting ridiculous.
If I design a platform, I have the right to set terms for using that platform and consumers have a right to not buy into that platform. These EU people claim to be about "freedom" but regulation never leads to more "freedom". What's next? Will they regulate Apple into making iOS 4 less secure to open up a market for antivirus? As an EU citizen, I demand accountability from the EU. I demand that they stop accepting money from lobbyists hell bent of making everything insecure just so they can peddle their crapware "security" software.
Wow. Who knew, you need to own a Mac to use development tools made for the Mac.
Next your going to complain that you need a PS3 to play PS3 games.
Congratulations! That may be the dumbest thing I've seen on./ in a long time! Are you saying that you wouldn't have any righteous indignation if Microsoft ordered that all Windows software must be coded on a Windows machine? And not to be a punctuation nazi...but I don't believe anybody owns a "going", the word you were groping for was "you're"
Congratulations, your post may be the dumbest thing I've seen on slashdot in a long time. Of course you can write software for windows on another platform using VI if you really want to but you would be considered an idiot by your peers and an inefficient time waster by your boss.
If you are serious about writing software for Windows then you should use the best tool for the job especially if you are paid to write software. The best development environment for windows software is Visual Studio 2010.
The best tool for writing software for the mac or the iOS platform is Xcode. Hobbyist can waste their time with vi or emacs but people who are actually looking to deliver a finished product for public consumption will use X-Code.
No, they don't make a phone that is "CDMA", as in "It will work with Verizon's CDMA network". They make a phone that is CDMA, as in "It uses WCDMA to access the radio network, the same as all other 3G UMTS phones".
You're being confused by the fact that they're calling it a CDMA phone, which means something entirely different over there than it does in the US.
WCDMA is the air interface for 3G which AT&T and other GSM/HSPA carriers around the world use. It is not related to CDMA2000 other than having been inspired by CDMA. It is not directly related to the CDMA2000 used by Verizon.
In Japan, NTT Docomo sell iPhone and has been for a while. NTT Docomo uses Wideband CDMA (WCDMA), so there's already CDMA version of the iPhone. Anyone that knows the cell phone industry knows supporting GSM/TDMA and CDMA/WCDMA is required for global rollout. Europe is still dominated by GSM/TDMA, while much of asia uses WCDMA/CDMA for the extra capacity and bandwidth. Don't take my word for it, just ask wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTT_DoCoMo)
Oh, my goodness. WCDMA is the air interface for HSPA which AT&T calls 3G. WCDMA has nothing to do with the CDMA which Verizon and Sprint use which is called CDMA2000. Other names for 3G are HSPA, UMTS and FOMA. NTT DoCoMo is "NOT" the official iPhone carrier, Softbank is the official iPhone carrier. I roamed on NTT DocCoMo when I was in Tokyo with my iPhone 3GS.
There is only one type of iPhone which is a GSM (Edge) and HSPA (UMTS) device. CDMA != WCDMA. Do you understand?
Go look on Wikipedia. WCDMA is linked with HSPA/UMTS/FOMA "NOT" CDMA aka CDMA2000.
So that is a simple upgrade then? Is it backwards compatible with existing devices? If you are going to upgrade every tower anyway, why not go with HSPA+/HSUPA and get near LTE speeds right now and be able to support the iPhone 4 and other existing handsets?
So, you know, they can support the existing devices of the 90-some odd million customers they have that work on CDMA tech, not GSM/HSPA+/HSUPA tech?
You might want to look out side of the "good o'le USA". Canada had one GSM/HSPA carrier (with a cheaper city focused sub-brand carrier) up until November 2009 and two CDMA carrier. Telus and Bell rolled out an HSPA+ network supporting 21Mbps HSPA (download) and fast HSUPA (upload) in November of last year to gain access to handsets like the iPhone 3GS. They still have their CDMA networks intact to support existing customers but are pushing the HSPA network over CDMA for new subscribers.
Basically, any phone that has an integrated antenna will have diminished signal when you hold them from the bottom instead of how almost everyone in the civilized world holds a cellphone when making a call. Take note of the Verizon phone in the mix.
A real keyboard.
Some of you iDandys may not want one, but I do. I've got my eye on the Droid 2, not the iPhone or the Incredible or the EVO.
You can use any real full sized blutooth keyboard with an iPhone. Oh, you mean one of those dinky cramped messaging phone keyboards? What if you want to use another language layout? With a virtual onscreen keyboard, you can just switch between layouts with the touch of an onscreen button.
Slashdot Mirror
* Samsung I9000 Galaxy S:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LROTHrTR92k
* HTC Evo Signal Attenuation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pj2YBYTbag
* Droid Incredible:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaDE941PzQk
* Droid Incredible (With Network Extender in Room):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpEQH9_A5jw
* Nexus One:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEIA_lMwqJA
* Nexus One vs. iPhone (start at 1:29):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvMoV4_C4aA
* Nexus One (after Google's update to correct):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2g5J4qPp54
* Nexus One:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deCkjeHYT-g
* Android G1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CDaxhjUs9M
* "Major signal degradation when Nexus One is picked up" (N1 Thread on On this Problem):
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/android/thread?tid=34ae2c179184c33e&hl=en
There are plenty of counter examples for not only those phones but also the iPhone 4 by people with strong coverage who cannot make their phone fail. As SJ in Apple press conference noted, the formula they used before made it seem like there was a dramatic drop when it was already a weak signal to begin with.
People complaining the loudest here never had any intention of buying an iPhone of any kind in the first place. There is no flaw. If there was one at least 1/3 of that 3 million would be demanding a refund. Where is the crisis? It was invented by bloggers like Gizmodo trying to attack Apple for being caught red handed and by Android fanboys trying to deflect attention from the problems with the android phones.
I never had any problems in Canada or when travelling in the states, Japan or Europe.
What percentage of new Android phone models have issues compared to 100% of the new iPhone models? Regardless, the lesson is the same. Dont buy unreviewed hardware.
100%? Doubtful. All phones will exhibit some level of signal attenuation when held and if you hold it in a death grip deliberate, you will get even greater signal loss but if you have a strong signal, you can still make a call under those artificial circumstances. If 100% of iPhone 4's were being sold in San Francisco then you would have a point.
You have to go out of your way to make it happen because nobody is going to hold it in a death grip when they have it to their ear.
Maybe all of those Android fans of Verizon shouldn't have been making fun of the iPhone. Payback is a bitch.
A couple of true points:
1. If you are not a developer, open source adds nothing for an end user so it is a straw man excuse to get a phone.
But where does the end users get their apps?
The app store? Typical consumers with Android phones will get their apps from the Android marketplace. Same difference.
Consumers are not interested in searching for and installing apps manually like some enthusiasts will.
Not only does the App store make it easy to obtain and keep up to date applications but it takes away the need for developers to heavily market their own apps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAOtC9QfXac the other side also NSFW language
That was awesome.
A couple of true points:
1. If you are not a developer, open source adds nothing for an end user so it is a straw man excuse to get a phone.
2. 4G is only a benefit if you are in a 4G area and it burns through battery life like a hot knife through butter. Wimax was never designed to be used in phones and the current chipsets reflect that.
No, they don't. Not in Economy on any of the international flights I've been on.
Do these international flights have live chickens in cages because, I have not been on an international flight in ages that did not have both USB ports and power outlets in economy class.
How many decades ago was it that you flew internationally? By international I don't mean the United Airlines Express service from San Francisco to some small Canadian city?
People need to stop buying his crap. Don't give him another red cent.
Not really. C# is the cleanest language I've ever coded in.
Stringwriter on Java accepts encoding. Stringwriter on C# does not so you have sub class one that does. Functions like padright/padleft in a lot of languages will pad out a string to a specific length and truncate any string that is longer that the specified length but in .Net, you have to use two operations (padright + substring). Calling a substring on a string that is shorter than the specified size will return an exception.
I had to write a class library with StringwriterwithEncoding, PadrighttoFixedLength and Truncate functions.
Why don't you go search instead of spreading FUD with hyperbole? There many categories of apps and the Apple App store has one of the largest collection of modern games.
Yes, hobbyist. The price of entry is quite low at 99 dollars per year, Apple takes care of most of the marketing of the app and you get 70% of the price of the app instead of 30% like you would if dealing with the carriers directly.
The upper level phones in japan allow you to make standard touchless debit transactions and have television tuners. I have yet to see an "iPhone wows Japanese consumers" article yet.
You mean the Mobile Suica system? You can pick up a Suica/Passmo card at a subway station ticket machine, buy a case from Softbank with a slit for placing the card in and voila, your phone case pays for your transit trips and convenience store purchases. I did exactly that with my 3GS when I was in Tokyo during golden week a couple months ago.
The e-books readers will never understand the precision offered by the keyboard-mouse combination. I find reading on the e-books without the keyboard and mouse to be like a cliff notes or graphic novel version.
Yes, because the keyboard and mouse have an effect on the actual content of the book. /SARCASM.
This sounds to like an attempt to justify reading books on your PC rather than an actual reason.
I don't know of anyone who reads e-books on a PC unless if they have no other choice because they are supplied on their work PC only.
It suddenly dawns on Steve Jobs that the reason for poor Wifi during his presentation was not because of too many people with wifi around but because he wasnt holding it right, therefore shorting the wifi antenna with the 3G one... so this baby has bad reception in 3G and in wifi
Uh, no. There were hundreds of Mifi (wifi) hotspots in the audience within receiving range of the phone so the wifi stack was having a hard time dealing with the interference from those other stations. There are a limited number of channels that wifi operates on.
The reason why the bloggers/journalists did not have a problem accessing their Mifi is because it was right beside them so their laptop chose the closest and strongest signal. Steve jobs, on the other hand was about half way between their own router behind the stage and a large clump of wifi routers in the audience.
The current iPhone 4 seems to work just fine no matter how you grip it in most AT&T markets and would most likely work just fine in other markets in other countries even without this "fix".
It just so happens that the majority of tech bloggers are located in San Francisco which is an area where the AT&T signal is over subscribed and probably has the highest concentration of other signals that can interfere with cell tower signals.
If tech bloggers were located in another city, this would be a non-story because other people in other markets have expressed having better reception than the 3G or 3GS with their new iPhone 4.
2. Contact. You can use Mobileme syncing for your contacts or Gmail contacts through Exchange mode. No lock in there either.
3. Notes. The Notes app now syncs through Mobileme allowing you to easily port those notes elsewhere. No lock in again.
4. Music. Music is sold as DRM-free AAC in iTunes which can be played on other players and phones. You can also play MP3 format music or import MP3 music from services like eMusic.
5. Video. Purchased video is DRM'ed at the request of the MPAA but the same holds true for other devices/services like the Zune.
6. eBooks. Free epub books that are public domain are provided DRM free. PDFs are also DRM free. Lock in for purchased books is the same as other services.
Looking at the iOS ecosystem, I see it as less closed than Blackberry or Windows Mobile as it is not tied to one desktop platform for the end user and it it cheap for a developer to get started on iOS compared with windows mobile or Blackberry app stores.
As an EU citizen I demand that we an investigation be launched into who is paying off this stupid woman.
Apple would sooner pull out of the EU market than allow the EU bureaucracy to dictate what languages can be used to program for their platforms.
If I design a platform, I have the right to set terms for using that platform and consumers have a right to not buy into that platform. These EU people claim to be about "freedom" but regulation never leads to more "freedom". What's next? Will they regulate Apple into making iOS 4 less secure to open up a market for antivirus? As an EU citizen, I demand accountability from the EU. I demand that they stop accepting money from lobbyists hell bent of making everything insecure just so they can peddle their crapware "security" software.
Wow. Who knew, you need to own a Mac to use development tools made for the Mac.
Next your going to complain that you need a PS3 to play PS3 games.
Congratulations! That may be the dumbest thing I've seen on ./ in a long time! Are you saying that you wouldn't have any righteous indignation if Microsoft ordered that all Windows software must be coded on a Windows machine? And not to be a punctuation nazi...but I don't believe anybody owns a "going", the word you were groping for was "you're"
Congratulations, your post may be the dumbest thing I've seen on slashdot in a long time. Of course you can write software for windows on another platform using VI if you really want to but you would be considered an idiot by your peers and an inefficient time waster by your boss.
If you are serious about writing software for Windows then you should use the best tool for the job especially if you are paid to write software. The best development environment for windows software is Visual Studio 2010.
The best tool for writing software for the mac or the iOS platform is Xcode. Hobbyist can waste their time with vi or emacs but people who are actually looking to deliver a finished product for public consumption will use X-Code.
No, they don't make a phone that is "CDMA", as in "It will work with Verizon's CDMA network". They make a phone that is CDMA, as in "It uses WCDMA to access the radio network, the same as all other 3G UMTS phones".
You're being confused by the fact that they're calling it a CDMA phone, which means something entirely different over there than it does in the US.
WCDMA is the air interface for 3G which AT&T and other GSM/HSPA carriers around the world use. It is not related to CDMA2000 other than having been inspired by CDMA. It is not directly related to the CDMA2000 used by Verizon.
In Japan, NTT Docomo sell iPhone and has been for a while. NTT Docomo uses Wideband CDMA (WCDMA), so there's already CDMA version of the iPhone. Anyone that knows the cell phone industry knows supporting GSM/TDMA and CDMA/WCDMA is required for global rollout. Europe is still dominated by GSM/TDMA, while much of asia uses WCDMA/CDMA for the extra capacity and bandwidth. Don't take my word for it, just ask wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTT_DoCoMo)
Oh, my goodness. WCDMA is the air interface for HSPA which AT&T calls 3G. WCDMA has nothing to do with the CDMA which Verizon and Sprint use which is called CDMA2000. Other names for 3G are HSPA, UMTS and FOMA. NTT DoCoMo is "NOT" the official iPhone carrier, Softbank is the official iPhone carrier. I roamed on NTT DocCoMo when I was in Tokyo with my iPhone 3GS.
There is only one type of iPhone which is a GSM (Edge) and HSPA (UMTS) device. CDMA != WCDMA. Do you understand?
Go look on Wikipedia. WCDMA is linked with HSPA/UMTS/FOMA "NOT" CDMA aka CDMA2000.
So that is a simple upgrade then? Is it backwards compatible with existing devices? If you are going to upgrade every tower anyway, why not go with HSPA+/HSUPA and get near LTE speeds right now and be able to support the iPhone 4 and other existing handsets?
So, you know, they can support the existing devices of the 90-some odd million customers they have that work on CDMA tech, not GSM/HSPA+/HSUPA tech?
You might want to look out side of the "good o'le USA". Canada had one GSM/HSPA carrier (with a cheaper city focused sub-brand carrier) up until November 2009 and two CDMA carrier. Telus and Bell rolled out an HSPA+ network supporting 21Mbps HSPA (download) and fast HSUPA (upload) in November of last year to gain access to handsets like the iPhone 3GS. They still have their CDMA networks intact to support existing customers but are pushing the HSPA network over CDMA for new subscribers.
HTC Droid Incredible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaDE941PzQk
Nexus One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2g5J4qPp54
Nokia E71: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi1gHDa7-X0
Nokia 6230: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_RP7Fn1w8Q
Nokia 6720: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ7t75Uo6qQ
Basically, any phone that has an integrated antenna will have diminished signal when you hold them from the bottom instead of how almost everyone in the civilized world holds a cellphone when making a call. Take note of the Verizon phone in the mix.
A real keyboard. Some of you iDandys may not want one, but I do. I've got my eye on the Droid 2, not the iPhone or the Incredible or the EVO.
You can use any real full sized blutooth keyboard with an iPhone. Oh, you mean one of those dinky cramped messaging phone keyboards? What if you want to use another language layout? With a virtual onscreen keyboard, you can just switch between layouts with the touch of an onscreen button.