Consumer Reports claims Apple's Verizon iPhone 4 suffers same antenna issue - Page 2

Originally Posted by ghostface147

I understand that the media is overhyping the attenuation factor, but I am still curious why the other phones they tested don't have the same amount of degradation.

Originally Posted by Goldenclaw

There are a lot of fanboy responses here ripping on Consumer Reports.

Consumer Reports is a reputable organization.

Originally Posted by Goldenclaw

There are a lot of fanboy responses here ripping on Consumer Reports.

Consumer Reports is a reputable organization. Their product reviews are typically very well researched, and carry weight among buyers who like to find out more about products before they buy. I'd bet that most Apple product users are early adopters, so it's no surprise that they don't understand this segment of the market.

So we've got an ongoing antenna issue with Apple iPhones, they report it, so you conclude that the website is irrelevant. Awesome stuff.

Originally Posted by ghostface147

I understand that the media is overhyping the attenuation factor, but I am still curious why the other phones they tested don't have the same amount of degradation.

Originally Posted by bulk001

IF they are correct, it is surprising that Apple did not correct this issue. That said, I have the ATT model and it has not been a real issue for me.

Originally Posted by applecider

Usually when seeing this kind of a vendetta, and I say vendetta because I do not believe that CR has given all other phones the same testing, it is about money.

Apple is probably not slipping CR any backdoor money or some other quid pro quo. Who knows it may be as simple as not supplying them with samples to study or buying their staff phones and contracts.

Unfortunately that's the way the business world can work.

I used to be a CR fan but often found that their reviewed products were not models that I could find anywhere in the real world.

Originally Posted by Habañero

Hmmm...

See many black helicopters hovering over your house at night?
Wear a foil cap to keep them from reading your (few) brainwaves?
Avoid the tapwater 'cause the fluoride brainwashes you?

CR isn't saying "don't buy this phone". In fact they rated it very highly.

What kind of consumer reporting entity would they be if they DIDN't point out that touching a spot on the phone could make it totally fail at it's primary function (in weak signal spots)? I say kudos to them for continuing to draw attention to this.

Originally Posted by Malligator

If they'd been the ones to discover it maybe they'd deserve some respect. However, they saw the internet firestorm, did some rather unscientific testing, and got their names in the news by jumping on the bandwagon. I firmly believe they would never have found this "issue" on their own.

Originally Posted by Habañero

That's absurd.

Their customer base isn't the tech-savvy crowd who might follow this issue on Wired or Apple Insider.

Their customer base is the general non-tech-savvy public who might not have heard of the flap at all. So including the information was exactly proper for them to do--no matter who discovered it.

Originally Posted by foxhunter101

I hope all of you LOVE the AT&T iPhone 4, I WANTED TO, with all my heart. Maybe AT&T failed me, maybe it wasn't Apple, as I said earlier. The only thing that led me to believe it was an iPhone problem vs an AT&T problem was that I had absolutely no problems with my 3GS iPhone (and before that a 3G iPhone) before I got the iPhone 4 (when virtually every call got dropped.......Apple problem or AT&T problem???). I LOVED everything about the iPhone 4 on AT&T.....except almost all calls dropped.

Is that an AT&T problem or an Apple problem?

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

In testing the new Verizon CDMA iPhone 4, Consumer Reports has found that Apple's new smartphone experiences the same signal degrading antenna issue found in the GSM model released last year.

On the company's electronics blog on Friday, Consumer Reports
....Lots of stuff about irrelevant company deleted for brevity...
Even with all of the controversy, Apple's iPhone 4 was still the hottest selling handset of 2010. Over the holiday buying season, Apple sold a record 16.2 million iPhones in three months alone.

Originally Posted by Habañero

That's absurd.

Their customer base isn't the tech-savvy crowd who might follow this issue on Wired or Apple Insider.

Their customer base is the general non-tech-savvy public who might not have heard of the flap at all. So including the information was exactly proper for them to do--no matter who discovered it.

Originally Posted by Wovel

They must be so sad the phone they are obsessed with hating is the #1 handset in the world. Must be doubly dad that it has one of (if not the) highest customer satisfaction rating. It must be hard to look in the mirror and realize how irrelevant you are every day.

Originally Posted by hill60

Why bother reporting on the garbage that comes from that irrelevant site?

Originally Posted by Wiggin

To answer the second part of your post first, it's quite simple, other phones don't let you contact the metal antenna directly. Go stick your finger in a light socket if anyone doesn't think human flesh can affect the flow of an electrical signal. All phones will suffer signal degradation if something, like flesh, is blocking the electromagnetic (radio) signal from reaching the antenna in the first place. The iPhone 4 has the additional challenge of letting contact with the antenna interfere with the flow of the electrical signal in the antenna itself. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that a case helps alleviate the problem. A thin case won't do anything to prevent the radio signal "blocking", but it does prevent the electrical signal interference. Just like wearing insulated gloves will save your life when you stick your finger in a light socket. (Please don't actually stick your finger in a light socket. I don't want get sued by your survivors! )

That said...

I think CR is making two critical mistakes in their conclusions. First, the problem is not significant enough to warrant not including the iPhone on their recommended list, for either ATT or Verizon. Every device has flaws, pros and cons. To suggest that this flaw is so much worse than other usabilty flaws on other phones is silly.

Second, they are comparing the iPhone 4 to, well, the iPhone 4. And it's all relative. They don't list the actual signal strengths other phones were receiving or how sensitive their receivers are. Only that the iPhone lost more signal. But what if the iPhone had better reception to begin with? For example, supposed the iPhone was twice as good at signal reception as another phone. But then it lost 25% effectiveness due to this flaw. Do the math, and the iPhone is still 50% better than that other phone. Getting the antenna farther from the noisy EM environment inside the case may well outweight this minor issue. So, overall better performance in exchange for a rarely experienced nuisance.

People who claim this issue doesn't exist at all also need to take a step back. There have been enough 1st-person, customer reported experiences to confirm there is an issue. But like all things related to cell phones, your experience may vary. Just because you can't confirm the issue yourself doesn't mean it doesn't exist for some people.



Ask any consumer products liability lawyer why Apple didn't change their product design. It's not a big enough issue that there was any threat of recall. Apple never promised a specified level of reception performance that they failed to deliver on. The carrier's own coverage maps are so unreliable that you'd never have a case against Apple for something this minor.

But if they had significantly redesigned the Verizon iPhone, many people, and their lawyers, would look at it as an admission of guilt and start filing class action lawsuits. Even if Apple was confident they'd win every case, they would still have to invest a lot of time, money, and marketing muscle to fight the accusations.

But I bet you won't be able to directly contact the metal antenna of the iPhone 5.

Originally Posted by gettysburg11s

The antenna issue is a testament to how much people love Apple. Consumer Reports are being pretty hard nosed about it, but they are essentially correct. Despite what Apple says, I can attest to the fact that the problem does exist in low coverage areas, while competing smart phones don't have an issue. Apple should have swallowed its pride and fixed the issue immediately, instead of what they did: issue bumpers and then sell another phone with the same issue. We can only hope that Apple fixes the issue once and for all with the iPhone 5.

I sold my iPhone 4 and got a new HTC Inspire 4G, which I love. It has a much larger screen and Android is way more configurable. Maybe I should have kept my iPhone 3GS. Overall, it was a better phone than the iPhone 4, despite having a lower quality screen.

Originally Posted by Goldenclaw

There are a lot of fanboy responses here ripping on Consumer Reports.

Consumer Reports is a reputable organization. Their product reviews are typically very well researched, and carry weight among buyers who like to find out more about products before they buy. I'd bet that most Apple product users are early adopters, so it's no surprise that they don't understand this segment of the market.

So we've got an ongoing antenna issue with Apple iPhones, they report it, so you conclude that the website is irrelevant. Awesome stuff.

Originally Posted by skyflyrr

All RF signals can be attenuated by standing in front of, holding antennas, etc. The problem here is that they do appear to have something to prove against Apple. I work in the Wireless RF field and I can tell you all cell phones have signal problems. iPhones do not in general have any more signal problems than any other cell phone. iPhones with the external antennas perform better even with these so called attenuation problems than most other phones due to most phones having their antennas totally inside. Most cell phone manufacturers call it good to have an antenna with a -6db return loss. This simply means very inefficient performance. The iPhone antennas perform much better than those with internal antennas.

Originally Posted by Robin Huber

It's not that simple. I am a thirty-year CR subscriber--first the paper and now the electronic version. I had been thinking of dropping my subscription for a several years before the iPhone 4 hit the market. Most times I would go to the site to check on a product I was thinking of buying I found the information lacking in the following ways. 1) the product I was interested in wasn't tested, 2) the brand I was looking at wasn't included in the test, 3) the test results were cursory, 4) the times I did buy a recommended product I often found the product severely lacking in ways that were not identified in the testing. In other words, I am finding that either I take what they say with a grain of salt, or don't bother to even check. If it weren't for the automatic renewal I would probably have cancelled by now. The iPhone 4 thing is no surprise to me at all. The sad thing is for many years CR wasn't this way at all. I don't know what has changed with them, but something has, and it has nothing to do with the iPhone.

Originally Posted by Goldenclaw

There are a lot of fanboy responses here ripping on Consumer Reports.

Consumer Reports is a reputable organization. Their product reviews are typically very well researched, and carry weight among buyers who like to find out more about products before they buy.

Originally Posted by Wiggin

The iPhone 4 has the additional challenge of letting contact with the antenna interfere with the flow of the electrical signal in the antenna itself.

Originally Posted by jd_in_sb

Interesting that Consumer Reports cannot recommend this hottest, biggest selling smartphone in the history of smartphones. It looks like they want to be contrarians to appear relevant.

Originally Posted by CANDesign-OK

...non-issue, got burned on a CR highly rated weed trimmer (B&D GH1000)...

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

"The problem is similar to the one we confirmed in July with the AT&T version of Apple's newest smart phone," the post reads. "It can occur when you hold either version of the phone in a specific but quite natural way in which a gap in the phone's external casing is covered.

Originally Posted by Malligator

So the rule is you can only post about products that are available for you to buy? You may want to stop posting on this site then since it specializes in news and rumors about products none of us can buy yet.

Originally Posted by anonymouse

Consumer Reports hasn't been a reputable organization for at least 30 years. Their product reviews are not well researched and carry weight only with people who know nothing about the subject. Their product reviews, most often, evaluate items on irrelevant criteria, or improperly weight the criteria they do use. Other phones have been shown, by others, to have similar problems, but CR isn't testing all phones for this problem, just the iPhone. Their review is as illegitimate as their entire organization is.

And, what, you ask is their motivation to keep hyping this in the press? They are "independent", right? So we must be able to trust them?

Their positions and salary depend on how many subscribers they bring in. In the iPhone 4 they've created what they think will be a cash cow for them out of an issue that's a non-issue and hope to increase their subscriber rolls as a result. Essentially, they've become the page hit whores that so many bloggers and news sites became long ago.

Virtually every call? you mean more than 50%? Occurring in different places? I would say you had a defective unit. Not AT&T's fault, not Apple's fault, just a part of product manufacturing where there is always a defect rate no matter how small it may be.

Originally Posted by Scaramanga89

Or alternatively, they are correct, the iphone 4 does have a flaw which has been replicated in the Verizon version and you all are too blinkered to admit it. If they had come out and said it was fine you would be trumpeting the report from the rooftops.

Originally Posted by Scaramanga89

Or alternatively, they are correct, the iphone 4 does have a flaw which has been replicated in the Verizon version and you all are too blinkered to admit it. If they had come out and said it was fine you would be trumpeting the report from the rooftops.

Originally Posted by foxhunter101

I've read the iPhone 5 has a redesigned antenna, different camera, better battery life, more speed, faster processor, etc., I can only hope, they (Apple), gets this one right!