Apple issues statement on iPhone 4 'antenna-gate' lawsuit settlement - Page 2

But that article was entirely about the theory that they had added an insulating layer to the antenna bands, which they hadn't. Did I misunderstand where you were going with that?

Steve Jobs never called you a liar. I would call you something much worse than a 'jerk' for stating BS and dragging a dead person through the mud, misrepresenting reality and history. Go watch the press conference again. He did acknowledge the issue in-depth, gave context, and offered solutions which should have satisfied everyone.

Jobs never called you a liar. He pointed out that all phones have dead zones when you block key points on the antenna. The iPhone 4S is the first smartphone I know of that uses an intelligent system to switch antennas but that doesn't mean you can't block the signal from it.

So where is the mass recall? Where is the iPhone 4 being replaced with a new model with the antenna inside? Why did they continue the same external antenna design for the 4S? These are all things that people said would obviously happen. There is a excessive divide between being a flawed concept and being able to improve on the design.

Are you calling all the iPhone 4 and 4S users liars that don't use cases and have no problem whatsoever? And none of this is even addressing the other silly issue that the number of bars actually represents something worthwhile. AnandTech clearly showed the iPhone 4 could make and hold a call at a much low decibel than any other phone they tried yet the iPhone was still representing no bars when it held this call.

To reiterate, no one is saying you didn't have problems just as no one is saying that no unit is ever defective or that no other phone in the history of cellphones has ever been able to drop a call, just that the issue wasn't a design flaw from using an externally placed antenna as we can clearly see by proof of satisfied users and the continuation in the iPhone 4S. Note that Apple did place the WiFI antenna back inside the 4S.

Maybe the fact that it was proven that was never a design fault in the first place would put a stop to people like you complaining about it.

Of course, you would never be able to do this unless it was an issue regarding another brand.

See how easy it is to do that?
(make broad accusations of bias based on nothing factual)

I don't think they arrived at a final conclusion. Some of the comments indicated a suspected change, while others did not. Altogether inconclusive as far as I can tell.

In any case I was letting TS know that iFixIt had commented, and wasn't ruling out a change was made. If that was his proof that nothing had changed, it's not.

LOL. Man you are so far inside the RDF it's painful. First off the CDMA iPhone 4 has a different antenna pattern (which carried to the 4S), you of all people should know that, so it does NOT suffer the same issue seen on the 4 GSM model.

The issue was over exaggerated, but that happens when you make a great product. However to say the problem never existed is flat out delusional. Steve himself admitted it, even acknowledged CS findings and Apple tried to stem some of it by adjusting the bar ranges in 4.0.1. It's ok to make mistakes.

"Absolutely no design change". Good to see, Tallest Skill, who obviously replaced Johnny Ive, tells us nothing was changed. Let's believe him. There never was an issue. Oh, wait...

TS, you may have not had a problem, but you need to set into your head that others MIGHT have. It WAS a problem with the phone. It's solved? Good. Pretending it never existed because it was solved just makes you look ignorant. It existed, fact. I attest to that. I'm even inviting you to coffee in Amsterdam if it makes you happy, to see the iPhone 4 issue demonstrated. I'll even pay the coffee! (Note: it might not be very good coffee, it's quite north of Europe there )

Obviously, our values are strongly different, just as our interpretation. You also seem to misunderstand my text. As I said, I LIKED the iPhone 4 (and I still do, except I upgraded).

However, if someone calls me a liar, which in my opinion, he did, he's a jerk.

Moreover, and on a separate idea, Steve or anyone else: being dead doesn't make you right.

There are lots of (really) bad dead guys to support this, let's choose, for example, Stalin. Is it dragging Stalin (dead person) through the mud to say he was a mass murderer for his political gain? No, it's not.
Point in case, being dead is no excuse.

If I believe Steve was a jerk to say that, I'll say so. I believe so. I'm sorry it makes you unhappy. Note that, unlike you, I tolerate the idea I might be wrong. And you know what? I'll re-listen to the press conference to check if I might have missed something. For now, i'll stick to what I said: he basically denied the issue, which exists, which means he called me (and everyone else with the issue) a liar.

I hear what you say Solipsism(X). You're actually making the same point as last year In the end, it's a matter of interpretation, but Apple's track record of acknowledging their mistakes is far from stellar, as, for example, the watercooled Macs proved...

My point is, as a user, I would have appreciated Apple saying "we made a slight mistake" and then doing exactly what they did. However, they did not. My words probably were stronger than I intended though. I apologize for that.

-------
What's missing to Ai is a chatroom to yell at each other virtually

That's an unanswered question There's no resolution there.

Consumer Reports Throws iPhone 4 Under the Bus

http://www.pcworld.com/article/20092...r_the_bus.html

Correct, so I don't know why you're so certain nothing changed.

Simply looking at the Anandtech antenna attenuation tests, going so far as to show tight cupped grip and normally held signal comparison results, should be evidence even to you that something changed.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4971/a...-att-verizon/2

Towards the bottom of the page. . .

I do try to be consistent.


I understand your PoV on this as a user who was afflicted with either a faulty device and/or a device that was being on some very specific network condition that caused your calls to be dropped as soon as you touched it's 3G spot* but I don't see any evidence that the entire design platform of the iPhone 4 was inherently flawed and see plenty of aforementioned evidence to suggest it's sound so I don't see why an apology would have to made publicly, especially when the issue wasn't already blown so far out of proportion already that Apple was forced to do damage control with free cases and a presentation detailing their R&D and how other phones are affected as well. (That was a long sentence)

Now if the issue was unbearable you could have always gotten it replaced or refunded and it's likely who was ever representing that retailer would have apologized to you.


Here's an anecdotal example..

I bought the iPhone 4S when it came out. I know that world mode chips are inherently less power efficient that more focused baseband chips. I also know that the inclusion of the so many RF bands means that the power amp design would include its own challenges. We found out the 4S had the Qualcomm MD6610 chip which was not used by anyone at this time. Most of the reviewer models seem to be perfect but there were a fairly large (though surely a small fraction) of owners who had issues with battery life.

This is from cellular issues. Now whether this is from a slightly off baseband, power amp or some other chip and/or the issue with a certain cellular connectivity it's in many ways the same situation some legitimately** had with the iPhone 4. I had this battery issue.

Now I know that firmware updates will resolve any issues eventually but I wasn't really wanting to wait it out so I considered trying a new unit but I was also annoyed with my Siri connectivity timing out that first weekend due to server overload so I just returned the unit and have been using my iPhone 4 since then... without a case... and without issues.

The Apple Store employee apologized and he oddly said an update would be out in a week or so (which wasn't true) but never did I think Apple needs to admit that there is a fatal flaw with the device. It's new tech in many ways and will have hiccups that simply can't known until you scale up. That doesn't mean one should suffer with the problem either just as I found the issue unacceptable at the time.




* Coined by Dick Applebaum.
** I sincerely mean that.

You linked to an article about the iPhone 4S. That has no baring on the GSM/UMTS iPhone 4 being different from current shipping models. Clearly a lot has changed between the iPhone 4 and 4S, despite so many saying Siri is the only new feature. I can name 100+ things that are different between the two devices. I bet I could name around 20 that are just different in regards to its wirless connectivity.

And note so many of their other phones in the list are much, much worse than the iPhone 4S yet so close to the iPhone 4, and yet they all have internal antennas. Makes you wonder.

Are you looking at the same chart at the bottom of the page that I am??

The iPhone 4 GSM/UMTS (the third one in the list) is the worst of the lot, both cupped and held naturally. The others are not at all "so close to the iPhone4", except for Verizon's iPhone 4 version which itself still tests better than the GSM/UMTS ATT one. Note that in an open palm it's just fine.

1) Many phones with the "non-stupid internal antenna" are closer to the iPhone 4 dB than the iPhone 4S.

2) You haven't accounted for the minimum dB that the phone can still be functional. Here's a scenario: A phone that is not held registers at -78 dB but when held tightly gripped registers at -80 dB. So that's a difference of only 2 dB, right? So that's good? Now what if I told you that phone can't make or hold a call past -79 dB? That makes that an issue yet before you considered the full scope of the antenna's sensitivity it looked great. Now go back and check the different minimum dB ratings of the iPhone 4 when they tested it and extrapolate from there.

What does that have to do with evidence that something changed with reception between the ATT Version and the Verizon version of the "same" phone? Simply looking at the chart should be a hint.

Nothing, but that isn't what you reported. You linked to a speculative article from July 2010, yet the Verizon iPhone came out in Feb 2011. The GSM/UMTS iPhone 4 had no change to its design that you can show all you've shown is that a CDMA iPhone 4 had a different antenna design... as it should as it's not a GSM/UMTS phone.

You then point to dB ratings of different phones without actually making a case and I responded by pointing out the sensitivity is meaningless without knowing the parameters in which it can operate and noted that the GSM/UMTS iPhone 4 can operate at lower dB levels than any other phones they tested.

Where you got the idea that the AT&T and Verizon iPhone 4 are the same is you note understanding how the cellualr technologies in each are very different. In fact, one could argue that the Verizon iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S are more closely related in that they are both use the diversity antenna design and Qualcomm baseband chips. They even go so far to include an MDM6600 world mode chip into a phone design only for CDMA networks as noted internally by the lack of PowerAmps and externally by the SIM card tray.

Has Apple switched the GSM/UMTS iPhone to diversity antennas? Not that I've seen. They've certainly updated the baseband firmware along the way, perhaps even making it more intelligent so that it can detect when there is attenuation at the 3G spot and adapt accordingly. Software updates are suppose to do improve the device but they can't fix a fatal HW flaw from a stupid engineering design that was pushed through by a stupid CEO that cares only about exploiting workers in China and fleecing us every last dollar (hyperbole).

PS: There is no treasure map on the back of the Constitution.

. . . claims that TS was making, which is the only thing I'm posting about (for the moment).

Right, I'm an idiot and forgot* about the change in antenna. I deserve a tongue lashing for that one, that's for sure. YEAH, THAT'S A SURPRISE. OL' TALLEST SKIL FORGETTING SOMETHING. NOT LIKE HE HAS ANY FUNCTIONAL MEMORY OF ANY SORT. CAN'T RELY ON HIM. Hate myself…

No not an idiot at all. . . Just showing your age

It was proven to be a design fault and if you cannot do a simple google search then I can see why you make such comments.

That is your first statement I agree with!

While I think that for an debate *especially on this site he should have qualified his statement it's obvious to me he meant the GSM/UMTS iPhone 4 as the CDMA iPhone is obviously fundamentally different simply by virtue of the fact it connects to an entirely different type of network.

On top of that, you didn't link to the Verizon iPhone you linked to an article that predates its announcement by 6 months that was so speculative that they put a question mark in the title.

Understood. I'm not sure what iFixit concluded, but I measured a number of later-manufacture iPhone 4s, and none had an insulating layer on the antenna bands.

You're holding it wrong.

Interesting. . .
Any guess from you on why at least some number of early iPhone 4 models had demonstrable issues, while later ones seem to largely avoid the complaints from their users?

got a link for that?

I would love to know the answer to that. My suspicion, which will likely be unpopular, is that it was media-driven.

A big deal was made of it, and so lots of people were busy trying to reproduce it on their shiny new iPhones. And sure enough, just like most phones, if you change the antenna impedance by "holding it wrong", you can change the signal strength. As time passed and the phones actually worked fine, people lost interest and stopped trying to make it happen, and as it was almost never a significant cause of dropped calls, the whole thing got forgotten. The signal strength display algorithm was changed, and that may also have helped to avoid mistaking the cause of dropped calls as due to this, when in fact it may just have been poor signal strength to begin with.

I can still cause a signal strength drop on my Verizon IP4 by bridging the bands - it's just not an issue in real use.

So I would suggest that most phones have similar demonstrable issues, but most are ignored, as the iPhone 4's also now is.

Samsung and RIM deny signal problems, says iPhone only issue

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...e-2029995.html

• Blackberry Storm — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W7NXeDf5RA
  
  
• Galaxy S — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEnYzEjjwM

Do you have any articles or just easily manipulatable youtube videos?

Thanks for the opinion Muppetry. Can't say it couldn't be correct.

Plenty of articles of Steve Jobs on stage completely decimating all the pathetic shortsighted lies RiM and Samsung spewed to try to get a leg up over the dominate iPhone. There are also plenty of independent tests that show that other phones single will weaken if you block the signal with your hand, including the link GatorGuy posted to AnandTech. And then there the physics of this universe regarding blocking a radio wave with a dense material. But you can ignore all that and take unsubstantiated comments from CEOs that should have just kept their mouth shut but instead were shown to be liars and fools. So far you haven't said enough to be shown to be anymore than the latter.

I can't stand blackberries but have had several as company issued phones and they all had excellent reception. Only thing good about them really.

None of them dropped calls like the iPhone 4.

None of them held calls like the iPhone 4.


It's been almost 2 years. I'd say own up to your errors jumped on a bandwagon because Apple did something so radical from the status quo that it must be bad just find out that it wasn't only better but that no one else has even come close to challenging them in the very, very short time they've been selling phones. But I can't imagine you would be seeing as how you are so investing in hating Apple you couldn't bare to admit that you are wrong.

@ Gatorguy,

How widespread were the WiFi issues in the GSM/UMTS iPhone 4?

WiFi issues? I didn't know about any so I have no idea. Can you supply a link to it and tell me what the point is, or what I should be looking for and why?