A couple of cities have been notoriously horrific for AT&T users. New York and San Francisco. ... From all I've read I gather there are simply more iPhone (and to a lesser extent other smartphone) users in S.F. & N.Y. than AT&T's network can handle reliably.
From casually observing people in NY and SFO, and for that matter, LAX and AUS - in other words, where many tech-savvy folks live - it would appear that an overwhelming majority of all the laptops in use are MacBooks (and many of the others have Apple stickers on 'em, wishing it were so).
I would expect a similarly disproportionate number of iPhones are in use.
So far, the reports of the iPhone 4's antenna issues have been based entirely upon unscientific testing by users who don't understand how their signal bars work. Comments by engineers Steve Gibson and Simon Byrnand explain that the signal bar meter does not quantify a specific amount of signal available (very different signal variations can still result in five bars being observed).
That means that videos posted by users that show a drop in signal related to hand placement are nearly worthless as evidence of a real problem. Users don't need bars to appear on their phone; they need a strong enough signal to place a call or send and receive data.
I said the same thing on MacRumors forums a couple days ago, and all I got was banned. You guys on the internet are so mean sometimes. Gosh!! Someday, I'll get over it.
Don't waste your time on macrumors, it's crawling with idiots and run by douche-bags.
Actually, I thought the mods there quite tolerant right up until I was banned. I actually requested a number of my posts (responces to trolls) be removed with the trolls themselves, and this request was granted, many of the trolls were removed along with my replies... but I didn't expect all posts be removed, and the ban. But it may have only been fair if the trolls were also banned, and those particular ones disappeared too and went quiet so I assume so.
I was kind of freaked by AppleInsiders initial reporting on the story, out of character I thought... maybe I'm being aloof or whatever, but I always held AppleInsider in high regard for their level of journalistic integrity, they always seem to enlighten when others obfuscate. So maybe I was pretending I didn't notice for a few days until they redeemed themselves, which I feel was done by the honesty and full disclosure in this article.
What I mean is... metaphor time... when you're a police officer, you don't hunt your peers. Lawyers rarely go after lawyers, and journalists are less likely to be critical of other journalists... usually poor journalism is ignored by superior journalists because everyone knows no one is perfect, no one is immune from scrutiny.
Actually, I thought the mods there quite tolerant right up until I was banned.
OT...
I used to frequent that site for many years, almost from the beginning. Then when Jobs took over Apple again and released the first iMacs, MR started growing pretty fast and as a result the floodgates were open for every troll and anti-Apple idiot out there to come in and make it miserable for everyone else. The Mods and Admins (especially Doctor Q) turned into a bunch of angry insufferable pricks who started banning longtime regular members over the most insane bullshit, some of it fabrications and lies. The last time I was banned there was for an allegedly "personal insult" I made five years prior. The hilarious part is that he couldn't even show me the posts I had apparently made to warrant being banned five years later. It was all based on the word of one Mod who was no longer a Mod. That's how much they value their longtime members and contributors: Not at all.
MR used to be a great Apple community forum, but now it's devolved into one giant clusterfuck covered in ads and overflowing with trolls. AI is more like what Macrumors was like in it's heyday.
What the hell is is...a review of the iPhone 4 or a review of AT&T's shitty service. He goes on forever about the network:
Quote:
At the same time, there are still too many places I get service bars but can't maintain a good enough signal to make an actual call. There are many potential reasons for this, including the fact that one can get a strong mobile signal and still not be able to talk or send and receive data because the carrier's backhaul network is overcrowded. It's like being able to quickly jump on the freeway via an onramp with no traffic, only to be stuck in a jam that prevents you from actually getting anywhere further down the road.
Whether the problems I observed are related to iOS 4 software, an issue with AT&T's towers or their uplinks, or some combination of factors, it prevents iPhone 4 from being easy to unreservedly praise for the main purpose it serves. No matter how great the hardware, if the phone doesn't work as a phone where you need it to, it isn't a very good phone.
Of the first twenty calls I made with iPhone 4, every single one of them terminated itself prematurely except for one: a FaceTime call I made independent of AT&T's network. The experience was almost enough to make me return my fancy iPhone 4 and hold my nose through an Android experience on a lessor HTC phone with flashy hardware features that don't quite work and a terrible user interface on a high pixel resolution but low 16-bit color resolution screen, just so I could actually place calls (and do things like tether both my notebook and iPad, something I can't do with iPhone 4 unless I jailbreak it).
AT&T's network is clearly the weakest link for iPhone 4, almost in a dramatic Greek hero sort of fashion: the mythical magical mobile computer-phone dipped in the river Styx all but for its mobile contract. AT&T's issues create the perception that this amazing device can do no wrong, apart from when the Fates take circumstances out of the hands of Apple's own engineers and hand them to AT&T.
.....
My initial dropped call problems occurred in the walk from the metro station to my house, a notorious valley of terrible cellular reception exacerbated by a surrounding neighborhood full of too many iPhone users. Further testing backed me away from the cliff, as both the call quality (thanks to new noise cancellation) and call performance seem to be significantly improved over the iPhone 3GS, at least in areas where you give it a signal to work with. In fact, while testing how the phone works when it loses its signal, I found iPhone 4 was able to grab and hold a connection in places where my iPhone 3GS could not at all.
Still, if you don't have a decent signal to work with, your iPhone 4 experience will be utterly devastating. No matter how great the phone's design and implementation, if you lack usable service you're stuck paying big bills every month for an essential piece of hardware that isn't doing its job.
So, really? If you live in an area where AT&T is atrocious, you maybe shouldn't get an iPhone? And how is it that the "essential piece of hardware isn't doing its job?" The hardware is fine. It's the network, stupid.
Quote:
They are improving however. In San Francisco, holes where EDGE was hard to get last year are now showing up as usable 3G. There's also AT&T's Microcell 3G product, which can help fill a dead space in one location, although it costs a one time fee of $150, and you can't set up more than one or locate it anywhere else apart from your home billing address. It also bills 3G mobile data use as part of your monthly plan allotment, although if you have Internet access for your Microcell 3G, you're probably also using WiFi for your data, not its 3G data service.
Jesus...STFU! This is supposed to be a review of the iPhone 4, not San Francisco's AT&T network. Most of live in places where AT&T doesn't suck THAT bad. REVIEW THE PRODUCT.
You get the usual goodies, such as 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, VGA front camera, Bluetooth, a digital compass, retinal display, e-mail, voice control, assisted GPS and Google Maps, the browser Safari web, access to applications and media through iTunes and FaceTime via Wi-Fi.
Comments
Shoozz,
A couple of cities have been notoriously horrific for AT&T users. New York and San Francisco. ... From all I've read I gather there are simply more iPhone (and to a lesser extent other smartphone) users in S.F. & N.Y. than AT&T's network can handle reliably.
From casually observing people in NY and SFO, and for that matter, LAX and AUS - in other words, where many tech-savvy folks live - it would appear that an overwhelming majority of all the laptops in use are MacBooks (and many of the others have Apple stickers on 'em, wishing it were so).
I would expect a similarly disproportionate number of iPhones are in use.
BTW, iOS 4 sports animated airplane mode indicator, which flies away when airplane mode is switched off.
I thought that was there since iPhone 1.0.
BTW, iOS 4 sports animated airplane mode indicator, which flies away very nicely, when airplane mode is switched off.
I'm pretty sure this has been around since the original iPhone.
So far, the reports of the iPhone 4's antenna issues have been based entirely upon unscientific testing by users who don't understand how their signal bars work. Comments by engineers Steve Gibson and Simon Byrnand explain that the signal bar meter does not quantify a specific amount of signal available (very different signal variations can still result in five bars being observed).
That means that videos posted by users that show a drop in signal related to hand placement are nearly worthless as evidence of a real problem. Users don't need bars to appear on their phone; they need a strong enough signal to place a call or send and receive data.
I said the same thing on MacRumors forums a couple days ago, and all I got was banned. You guys on the internet are so mean sometimes. Gosh!! Someday, I'll get over it.
I said the same thing on MacRumors forums a couple days ago, and all I got was banned. You guys on the internet are so mean sometimes.
Don't waste your time on macrumors, it's crawling with idiots and run by douche-bags.
Don't waste your time on macrumors, it's crawling with idiots and run by douche-bags.
Actually, I thought the mods there quite tolerant right up until I was banned. I actually requested a number of my posts (responces to trolls) be removed with the trolls themselves, and this request was granted, many of the trolls were removed along with my replies... but I didn't expect all posts be removed, and the ban. But it may have only been fair if the trolls were also banned, and those particular ones disappeared too and went quiet so I assume so.
I was kind of freaked by AppleInsiders initial reporting on the story, out of character I thought... maybe I'm being aloof or whatever, but I always held AppleInsider in high regard for their level of journalistic integrity, they always seem to enlighten when others obfuscate. So maybe I was pretending I didn't notice for a few days until they redeemed themselves, which I feel was done by the honesty and full disclosure in this article.
What I mean is... metaphor time... when you're a police officer, you don't hunt your peers. Lawyers rarely go after lawyers, and journalists are less likely to be critical of other journalists... usually poor journalism is ignored by superior journalists because everyone knows no one is perfect, no one is immune from scrutiny.
Actually, I thought the mods there quite tolerant right up until I was banned.
OT...
I used to frequent that site for many years, almost from the beginning. Then when Jobs took over Apple again and released the first iMacs, MR started growing pretty fast and as a result the floodgates were open for every troll and anti-Apple idiot out there to come in and make it miserable for everyone else. The Mods and Admins (especially Doctor Q) turned into a bunch of angry insufferable pricks who started banning longtime regular members over the most insane bullshit, some of it fabrications and lies. The last time I was banned there was for an allegedly "personal insult" I made five years prior. The hilarious part is that he couldn't even show me the posts I had apparently made to warrant being banned five years later. It was all based on the word of one Mod who was no longer a Mod. That's how much they value their longtime members and contributors: Not at all.
MR used to be a great Apple community forum, but now it's devolved into one giant clusterfuck covered in ads and overflowing with trolls. AI is more like what Macrumors was like in it's heyday.
At the same time, there are still too many places I get service bars but can't maintain a good enough signal to make an actual call. There are many potential reasons for this, including the fact that one can get a strong mobile signal and still not be able to talk or send and receive data because the carrier's backhaul network is overcrowded. It's like being able to quickly jump on the freeway via an onramp with no traffic, only to be stuck in a jam that prevents you from actually getting anywhere further down the road.
Whether the problems I observed are related to iOS 4 software, an issue with AT&T's towers or their uplinks, or some combination of factors, it prevents iPhone 4 from being easy to unreservedly praise for the main purpose it serves. No matter how great the hardware, if the phone doesn't work as a phone where you need it to, it isn't a very good phone.
Of the first twenty calls I made with iPhone 4, every single one of them terminated itself prematurely except for one: a FaceTime call I made independent of AT&T's network. The experience was almost enough to make me return my fancy iPhone 4 and hold my nose through an Android experience on a lessor HTC phone with flashy hardware features that don't quite work and a terrible user interface on a high pixel resolution but low 16-bit color resolution screen, just so I could actually place calls (and do things like tether both my notebook and iPad, something I can't do with iPhone 4 unless I jailbreak it).
AT&T's network is clearly the weakest link for iPhone 4, almost in a dramatic Greek hero sort of fashion: the mythical magical mobile computer-phone dipped in the river Styx all but for its mobile contract. AT&T's issues create the perception that this amazing device can do no wrong, apart from when the Fates take circumstances out of the hands of Apple's own engineers and hand them to AT&T.
.....
My initial dropped call problems occurred in the walk from the metro station to my house, a notorious valley of terrible cellular reception exacerbated by a surrounding neighborhood full of too many iPhone users. Further testing backed me away from the cliff, as both the call quality (thanks to new noise cancellation) and call performance seem to be significantly improved over the iPhone 3GS, at least in areas where you give it a signal to work with. In fact, while testing how the phone works when it loses its signal, I found iPhone 4 was able to grab and hold a connection in places where my iPhone 3GS could not at all.
Still, if you don't have a decent signal to work with, your iPhone 4 experience will be utterly devastating. No matter how great the phone's design and implementation, if you lack usable service you're stuck paying big bills every month for an essential piece of hardware that isn't doing its job.
So, really? If you live in an area where AT&T is atrocious, you maybe shouldn't get an iPhone? And how is it that the "essential piece of hardware isn't doing its job?" The hardware is fine. It's the network, stupid.
They are improving however. In San Francisco, holes where EDGE was hard to get last year are now showing up as usable 3G. There's also AT&T's Microcell 3G product, which can help fill a dead space in one location, although it costs a one time fee of $150, and you can't set up more than one or locate it anywhere else apart from your home billing address. It also bills 3G mobile data use as part of your monthly plan allotment, although if you have Internet access for your Microcell 3G, you're probably also using WiFi for your data, not its 3G data service.
Jesus...STFU! This is supposed to be a review of the iPhone 4, not San Francisco's AT&T network. Most of live in places where AT&T doesn't suck THAT bad. REVIEW THE PRODUCT.