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Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

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Re: Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

#61

Post by gamble »

bond wrote: post #17
AlexMuir wrote: post #11

A lot of people ask how Apple didn't pick this up in field testing. I think the answer is that they wrapped the iPhone 4 in plastic to camouflage it as an iPhone 3GS (as we know from the Gizmodo phone). Hence all their field testing was effectively done with bumpers on.

They knew... Steve Jobs: "The iPhone 4 went through all of these tests. We KNEW that if you held it in a certain way, the bars would go down."

Absolutely. This is a human psychology problem, not an engineering problem. They designed the phone knowing that it suffered more attenuation than other phones, but it also dealt with highly-attenuated signals better than previous iPhones. Overall reception is the same or better, all things considered.

What killed them was the way the reception bars dramatically plunged toward zero within seconds of bridging the antennas. If the iPhone 4 had shipped with the bar distribution formula in 4.0.1 and used the same level of hysteresis as other phones, no one would have noticed the drop and everyone would have happily gone on using their iPhone 4's oblivious to the attenuation.

Re: Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

#62

Post by extension »

powrtoch wrote: post #56
extension wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does 3GS reception improve with a case? I thought the iPhone 4 only improved because of the exposed antenna.

According to Steve (and others) you get a similar phenomenon with earlier iPhones, it's just that the "do not touch" zone is in a different place. So a case would help any of these phones.

The case helps the iPhone 4 because it prevents conductive contact between your skin and the antenna, right? Previous iPhones had no exposed antenna, yes? Or did they? If not, the case would not have made as big a difference.

Re: Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

#63

Post by brown9-2 »

rauljara wrote: post #21

Q: Are you willing to make an apology to investors? Steve: You know we hear from customers who love this phone and have a great experience with it, and we're doing a lot to help them with any issues they're seeing. To investors, you know, you invest in the company we are, so if the stock goes down $5... I don't think I owe them an apology. Whether or not Jobs is bs-ing about loving his customers so much, I wish more…

The key difference here is a CEO that is interested in building long-term value and great products that customers love, rather than a CEO who is only incentivized to create short-term shareholder value.

Re: Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

#64

Post by brown9-2 »

mfarris wrote: post #53
ccorda wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the norm is a 5% drop rate, that's a 20% increase. If the norm is even higher, then the increase is less as a percentage, but no wonder ATT won't release the numbers.

If my family and friends' experience is any indication, the drop rate is over 50%. So it's probably going from 55% to 56%: horrible to a teensy bit more horrible. I live in Los Angeles. There are cell towers uglifying the sky everywhere. My favorites are the mock trees -- one in Burbank is a squat, fake palm tree with "coconut" repeaters. And despite the apparent ability to put towers absolutely anywhere... AT&T stil…

Your friends and family have one out of every two calls dropped?

Re: Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

#65

Post by mfarris »

brown9-2 wrote: post #64
mfarris wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my family and friends' experience is any indication, the drop rate is over 50%. So it's probably going from 55% to 56%: horrible to a teensy bit more horrible. I live in Los Angeles. There are cell towers uglifying the sky everywhere. My favorites are the mock trees -- one in Burbank is a squat, fake palm tree with "coconut" repeaters. And despite the apparent ability to put towers absolutely anywhere... AT&T stil…

Your friends and family have one out of every two calls dropped?

It's comical. I call home when I leave work. We might talk for five or ten minutes as I drive. This requires two or three calls, due to the drops -- on a major freeway with five bars of reception.

My family and friends have similar issues. A couple don't have it so bad because they're on the West Side, where AT&T seems to have built more towers -- gotta keep Beverly Hills & the movie studios happy, you know.

Oddly, we have little trouble with 3G data. I can stream podcasts and use Google maps simultaneously. It's the calls that are the issue.

Re: Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

#66

Post by AndrewHampton »

vitobcn wrote: post #51
AndrewHampton wrote: post #20

Based on the little I know about signal strength for digital phones, the number of bars really doesn't matter, The bars could just be replaced with an indicator letting you know whether or not you have strong enough signal to make a call. And from that perspective, the stats discussed today that there is less than one additional dropped call per 100 calls make this whole thing seem like a non-issue. However, what I h…

Without getting into details about digital modulations, yes, parameters such as signal strength, network congestion, user speeds, etc. do affect transfer rates. The speeds quoted by phone providers are always the maximum transfer rates allowed by the communication standard used by the network. To give an example with WiFi networks. Even though a router might support 802.11n and have a maximum speed of 144Mbit/s, if y…

Thanks for the explanation.

Re: Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

#67

Post by swernli »

mfarris wrote: post #65
brown9-2 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your friends and family have one out of every two calls dropped?

It's comical. I call home when I leave work. We might talk for five or ten minutes as I drive. This requires two or three calls, due to the drops -- on a major freeway with five bars of reception. My family and friends have similar issues. A couple don't have it so bad because they're on the West Side, where AT&T seems to have built more towers -- gotta keep Beverly Hills & the movie studios happy, you know. Oddly, w…

I have a weird theory about that, actually. I have seen some similar issues in the Seattle area when moving from one part of the city to the next; the signal is at full strength, but the call suddenly drops, almost as if I'm crossing a boundary. Now, I preface this by saying I know little to nothing about the cell phone network handles calls, but thinking about this made me wonder if it had anything to do with handing off the connection from one tower to the next. Maybe it's better to have fewer, higher power towers to minimize hand-off than many low powered ones. Of course, that's exactly what most people don't want: high powered cell towers blasting them with radiation.

But I have to wonder if this problem is exaggerated by the 3G connection maintained by the phone. My dad used to have the same problem in NY (not the city), but he switched to edge and stopped dropping the calls. He just turns on 3G when he knows he wants to do some faster web browsing, which is rarely for him. Maybe you could try turning off your 3G and see if it reduces your problem in LA?

Re: Live iPhone 4 press event coverage

#68

Post by philwelch »

AndrewHampton wrote: post #20

Based on the little I know about signal strength for digital phones, the number of bars really doesn't matter, The bars could just be replaced with an indicator letting you know whether or not you have strong enough signal to make a call. And from that perspective, the stats discussed today that there is less than one additional dropped call per 100 calls make this whole thing seem like a non-issue. However, what I h…

I've run some 3G speed tests on my iPhone 4, and even when I death-grip it and the bars drop, the most dramatic result I've gotten is increased ping (10x as much ping). Throughput doesn't seem to suffer.
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