Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

I blame Gizmodo. Surely the tech blogger should have caught this problem and alerted Apple while the cops were searching his home. Jobs should sue Gizmodo for this.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

@Andrew_b: that would explain what had happened, but it doesn't excuse them from this debacle..

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

ars needs to change this headline pronto

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/20...onstructed.ars

"iPhone 4 deconstructed; antenna design a "work of genius""

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

Hahaha looks like they'll need another sidetalking.com for the new iPhone :D

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

Well, if this really does shake down to be a major problem, it shows that the Jobs way of total secrecy and paranoia is not perfect. The chances are that Apple will learn a lesson from this. Imagine if no Apple employee was willing to risk summary execution as a result of being discovered to have removed the field test disguise, thus leading to an undiscovered design flaw. I mean, they were probably told that removal of the disguise would trigger some sensor or other...

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

"Hey, let's make the antenna a metal band that wraps around the phone so it's bound to be touched by bare hands in several places. It'll look SO cool - Steve will LOVE it!"

Hmmm...what could possibly go wrong with that plan...

A case for insulation is outta the question 'cause that would trash the ultra-hip look. But I know a stylish yet affordable fix. Just snap on some rubber surgical gloves! Say 'cough please'.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

It always blows my mind what gets through testing. Usually the test plan itself is to blame: some engineer omits to check novel features, late changes, etc. The problem I've seen in general is that testing too often assumes best case scenarios when it should assume worst by default.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

2 things...

1. Does FCC have a hand in reviewing something like this?
2. Does the 'bumper' accessory hint at Apple already knowing the issue??

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

i really feel dancing when i open my physical keyboard and the cute sound it makes when i open or close it

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

One glove only...can't use a capacitive screen with a rubber glove on. The solution is clearly to revive the Michael Jackson look.

Actually, as much as I enjoy the Schadenfreude here, one report I read makes me wonder how big a problem this is. Do the videos show calls being dropped, or just the bars plummeting? The two I saw didn't test with actual calls, just looked at the number of bars. If calls are not being dropped, this may just be a visual nuisance that they will fix (or a real but manageable problem that they will hide) with firmware upgrade for the bar display.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

quick google shows this fcc sar test apparatus

http://cellphones.procon.org/files/c...s/SAR_Test.jpg

so, no, no human hands holding the phone during sar testing at least

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

Come on, be fair.

It didn't do anything like that while the prototype was in its diamond case on its Unobtanium pedestal back at Apple HQ. No problems during it's transparent case presentation and launch.

It simply didn't occur to them someone will be holding it. And with hands nonetheless.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

yes and yes.

True, nothing specific-- my answer to ysss is in a broader context.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

Sequin-studded surgical glove - for that androgynous yet somewhat dangerous look that says 'I'm just making a phone call - or am I?'

We could sell millions! In left or right hand and your choice of attractive pastel colors.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

speaking of fcc, I wonder if apple will be able to boost power through firmware upgrade without having to resubmit for SAR test?

I notice already it has one of the highest SAR ratings, so they don't have much room to work with there

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

You mean like this?

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

Yes! But with optional sequins!

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

So we are at the "important problem discovered that might kill the product (like missing Ogg support, ...)" stage of the Apple release timeline. Big deal.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

This thread just sounds so bitter



n900 - USB port falls out (Who says Nokia products are "Better Quality"?)


See what I did here.


So does using the bumper make things better?

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

this problem is a lot more fundamental to its function than missing ogg support, IMO.

This is like buying a car that you can't use your feet on the pedals

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

the question is no which device is better, but what Apple would od about this "bug". The question is who gives better support. As no bugs in Nokia fixed, let's see hower Apple would treat their customers

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

With N900, it's "SOME USB ports fall out". We can just claim it's a manufacturer error. Wait, we already did.

Yes, it's a bitter thread. But we've had our fun on the device when it worked fine, we can't go back now that it had flaws. It's a moral obligation.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

Yep! Its fine, its on the iphone 4 thread.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

No need to get bitter y'all... I covered that in the thread tags for all.

"haters gone hate" = h8'ers gon' h8
"worst thread ever" = worstthreadever

There's actually a lot of good information in this thread and the other iPhone 4 thread about the bad decision(s) and lack of testing via the FCC on the impedance due to no hands on the devices during testing.

Makes for an interesting read sans bitterness. It's a goof. The microUSB, this... I think everybody is just rushing stuff to the market.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

I had a feeling that it would reduce reception but not cut it out altogether due to the remaining bits of the exposed attenna.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

The microUSB issue makes you think it was rushed why? Not everyone has the MicroUSB issue, it's obviously a manufacture error. Mine is quite sturdy, I've plugged and unplugged the phone at least 300 times since, and it's sturdy enough to hold the phone horizontally by the charger.

It is as sturdy if not more so than the small pin-sized Nokia charger I've had in N80.

It also hits me I'm offtopic. So, like, boo Apple or something.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

The fact I have a N810, have plugged in my microUSB quite a few times and never had it pop out, nor has anybody on these boards versus a 1400+ reply thread for the N900 and the woes of getting support from Nokia.

Dunno man. If that's not a possible error due to manufacturing, thus what I categorized as a goof, then what is it considered? It has happened more than once, they had to actually fix the motherboard soldering for it, just like Apple will have to fix this too...

I will have to call it a design problem. Just because it didn't happen to everybody doesn't make it a goof or rushed/improperly tested product. Not all of the Sony batteries exploded, but they sure as hell called all of those back.

And the people that stated as you had that it hadn't had happened to them, it sooner than later did in some cases. I hope it truly does not happen to you though man. That would suck.

For the iPhone 4, I'd probably throw it in a case and be done with that. No touchy the stainless sides and I'm good.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

Well, there are design flaws, and there are design flaws.
I imagine something like a loose USB connector can be addressed in future manufacturing runs. Its effect is not pretty at all, but actually it's quite a minor flaw, having to do with component selection.
I don't see an easy solution for Apples situation though... This looks to me like a major conceptual flaw.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

Are we sure that these iPhones with this problem aren't prototypes or early production models?

Related to this, where can I find out if the N900 is currently being manufactured in a different way compared to how it was manufactured around release?

I'm just waiting for my phone to go in for repairs for the third time, but am skeptical whether a new device will solve my prob. Im suffering from the low/no volume in earpiece bug.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

BGR singing a different tune after more information is gathered:

http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/...-software-bug/

I guess the antenna design is SO GOOD AFTERALL that it performs much better than it can internally be measured :D

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

Say huh!? How are they putting iOS 3 on an iPhone 4!? BootROM wouldn't match, you'd think.

Forget making excuses. They just didn't test it. They might be able to do something, but I'd rather think that it'll be fixed via design changes than 3d parties saying it's a driver issue.

Hmm. I think Texrat said it best when the bumpers were an admission of an existing design flaw perhaps.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

This isn't surprising. Any antenna doesn't like foreign conductors. I can get my N900 to lose bars if I really cup it in the area of the GSM antenna. Honestly, I just tried it. If you cup an iPhone really hard, it will lose reception. The thing is, on the iPhone 4 it's super easy. No cupping needed. There's a video showing that even a finger touch is enough. Usually when you hold a phone, you aren't blocking it enough to influence the signal. But with the iPhone 4 you can do it easily just by touching it the wrong way.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

One other possibility is that the actual antenna actually works well; but the signal meter is designed/implemented poorly. It doesn't measure the actual rx/tx performance of the antenna, thus the skewed reading when you touch parts of the body (some reports mentioned the call goes on without issue with zero signal bar).

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

Actually Nokia/Google are more like Microsoft was with PC's. Apple is being Apple (single vendor, tight hardware/software integration, do it our way).

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

The communication is all digital. Having lower bars doesn't mean you immediately sense degradation in the quality. Eventually it will start "dropping bits" and lagging and crackling. There is a video showing complete call drop when held with the skin connecting the antennas.

Regarding the possible signal meter software bug, think of it this way - the device can't sense when it's being touched, and obviously some effect is triggering the change in bars. There is no explanation other than a change in reception/transmission. Maybe there's a bug that exaggerates the loss of reception, but something is definitely happening. Also, lower reception means higher transmission power, means less battery life and more warming up your head. It can't be good.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

I really do hope it is just a software issue for apples sake and all the people about to buy one, but from the various videos I have seen it does seem like there is definitely a possibility to disrupt the reception on the iphone 4 to the point of dropping connection with even a very accurately placed finger.

I guess we will see

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

Worst case, Apple starts dropping a free bumper into every iPhone 4 box and has existing owners drop by genius bars or enter serial numbers online to receive free ones. The bumpers probably cost Apple a buck or less, so it won't kill them.

People will still buy the other bumper colors even, just to differentiate themselves from the boring, free one everyone has.

Nintendo having to offer free replacement wrist straps for early Wii Remotes didn't hurt that system any.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

In the end, it's just an artificial bug that will be fixed via a small downloadable patch. When asked about the feature, Jobs commented: "I just want the users to experience an awesome wave of relief on my command."

(jk)

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

Be fair people! The testers were likely running simultaneous fart and burp apps to test multitasking abilities and didn't notice this reception issue. It's not like you'd use a phone for calling people. :D

All joking aside...

It sounds like the cover/secrecy theory would explain this oversight. But holy cow! Antenna integration has got to be a cornerstone in any wireless device's design.

Re: iPhone 4 - Loses Reception When You Touch the Side (Who says Apple products are "Better Quality"?)
 

I guess the other $28.99 is the fruit tax we have been hearing about :)