Everyone is a scientist. If it's pro Apple stock, it's bound to get a mention on AI. Last week CR was a great publication known for their honesty, this week, it's ignorant and unscientific!
Under the infamous CR "test results" was the Suzuki Samurai, to which they attached huge bars and ran at 20 MPH over when they had problems going through a slalom and did it again.
They seemed to have forgotten that the World War II-era Jeep had the same problem, only in the field.
CRs really opinion poll based results (more like the user review pile) should *always* be taken with salt (maybe a pound or two at times... ). It can be really difficult to tell with the 40 MPG or lower results for Prius' when the reviewer carefully fills the tank, relies on the extremely inaccurate automatic cutoff (which runs consistently one or more gallons under full on my cars), or uses some other random method. *I* fill the tank until I see gasoline, so IMHO I'm doing my best for consistent filling.
And that's not to mention the cases where the intentionally fudge the test. Remember the test on car roll-overs?
CR has shown that if there's enough whining about a topic, they'll jump on board. For example, they're bashing Apple without doing any control experiments on other phones. EVEN IF their testing methodology were meaningful, the results are meaningless without testing other phones.
And you know all of these things because......?
(Hallucinations don't count).
Really? My iPhone 3G used to drop calls on occasion. I have STILL not had a single dropped call on my iPhone 4 - and I'm in a moderate signal area.
SOME people have problems with the phone - but that's true of any phone and network on the planet. I'm still waiting for your evidence that the iPhone is less reliable than any other phone out there. If you find it, you'd be disagreeing with the same CR that you're praising - since CR says the iPhone has the best signal of any smart phone - even with the problems.
Or, just maybe, Apple is far more rational than you are.
First, you find the problem.
Then, you do research to find a solution to the problem.
Then, you have to get regulatory approvals
THEN you can fix the problem.
All this whining that Apple hasn't created the world in 3 days is just plain absurd. They've told you a perfectly usable work around and have stated that they're working on other fixes.
The problem is that Apple heard the siren call of market domination & rushed the product to market: in true Apple style using the buying community as their Beta Testers (Snow Leopard being a more recent example...). Predictably there will now be fixes/patches etc. to remedy the problem & those of us who insist on not being in the first buying wave of ANY Apple product will benefit greatly from those of you who do.
Consumer Reports accepts no advertising, they have no vested interest in seeing Apple succeed or fail, they have NEVER lost in any valid challenge to their methodology ever. This BS regarding anechoic chambers is hyperbole and has nothing to do with the real world,
These were the allegations, they were not proven in court. CR has faced many of these suits, but they have never lost one.
BTW, I'm not defending CR, only accuracy.
More like CR hasn't *lost* in court, not that the allegations weren't proven. Let's have a little accuracy here...
They probably won, especially on jury cases, because what jury wants to admit they decided against Consumer Reports. They would probably get written up in their publications as a jury that should be recalled... Maybe even that the jury system should be eliminated... And, of course, replaced by CR's reviewing structure instead...
So what Mr Egan is saying is that if you put the iPhone 4 in a completely controlled non-real world environment, that it will work perfectly fine?!? OOOOOOKKKKKKAAAAYYYYYY..... Too bad you can't make all your phone calls from that room.
Apple sells what is simply a big rubber band you wrap around the phone as a case(?) that fixes the problem for an outrageous $29.99. Why don't they just start including it with the phone and give one for free to everyone else who already bought it. The thing probably costs them about 25 cents to make. How frakking cheap can you be???!?!?
The problem is that Apple heard the siren call of market domination & rushed the product to market: in true Apple style using the buying community as their Beta Testers (Snow Leopard being a more recent example...). Predictably there will now be fixes/patches etc. to remedy the problem & those of us who insist on not being in the first buying wave of ANY Apple product will benefit greatly from those of you who do.
Consumer Reports accepts no advertising, they have no vested interest in seeing Apple succeed or fail, they have NEVER lost in any valid challenge to their methodology ever. This BS regarding anechoic chambers is hyperbole and has nothing to do with the real world,
Uh, the people have personal axes to grind to eliminate Apple, jerk!
Oh. Mr Job?s, right now, silence is not golden. I?m quite sure Apple has these answers by now? If not, send me a few more iPhones ( i bought 3). I?ll find a chamber and get you some answers in a day.
Under the infamous CR "test results" was the Suzuki Samurai, to which they attached huge bars and ran at 20 MPH over when they had problems going through a slalom and did it again.
They seemed to have forgotten that the World War II-era Jeep had the same problem, only in the field.
I hope we're not supposed to take any of these comments seriously.
Hasn't Apple already admitted that the bar display is erroneous?
All bars are erroneous or, more accurately, relative.
They only inform you of a weaker or stronger signal in relation to other bars shown, based on height. They are even subject to error within that measurement as they are only updated periodically, I think every ten seconds.
Perhaps what is needed is the FCC to mandate the min & max total dB range, the min & max dB range between bars, and the min & max time frame between refreshes.
More like CR hasn't *lost* in court, not that the allegations weren't proven. Let's have a little accuracy here...
They probably won, especially on jury cases, because what jury wants to admit they decided against Consumer Reports. They would probably get written up in their publications as a jury that should be recalled... Maybe even that the jury system should be eliminated... And, of course, replaced by CR's reviewing structure instead...
Yes, meaning, they haven't lost in court. That used to mean something, but maybe it's situational for some people.
"We also don’t know if placing a finger on the antenna bridge is detuning the antenna or detuning the receiver itself. And neither does Consumer Reports."
We had apple saying people were not holding the iPhone correctly ( amazing they could say that with a straight face). Then we had lots of people posting YouTube videos holding fingers over and not. Although not scientific, it was pretty clear this is the way most folks would hold this phone (or any other) caused it to fail (ok low bars , dropped calls if in area with weak signal). Then we had Consumer Reports do some testing ( only super geeks or Apple shills would argue about how scientific the test was) and CR says phone has problem. Now we have another scientist saying the CR method was flawed because of people being in the room.
Apple no matter how you spin this your phone has a design problem and you should cut out trying to spin it and just replace the phones with new phones (and read carefully ) with newly designed antenna location. Everyone but a monkey will hold it in their palm so please hire some people to test it that will hold it ion their palm with other people around them.
Firmware will NOT fix a design flaw. It's pretty simple, actually. In an area with poor reception and you decide to lay the iPhone in your palm, you drop the call. Touch the iPhone and you go from having bars - to "Searching".
Now, if there is a software or driver error, that's one thing. We are talking about a 'new' TriQuint chip after all.
The proximity detector essentially 'works' but it needs some tweaking. Firmware should fix that. But the antenna is another matter entirely.
As an aside, when I'm in a weak cell reception area (ie. where I work) I have found that I can get about ~10-12 dBA better reception if I disable the 3G. Don't understand why, but I do know that my phone works fairly reliably with 3G disabled and works poorly with 3G enabled - while I'm at work. At home, I have 5 bars (solid) and the phone works well without regard to 3G enabled or disabled.
One has far less interference at Home than in a typically urban industrialized sector.
Regarding the relationship between wavelength and frequency:
Period, T = 1/Frequency.
Angular frequency (w) = 2 x pi x F [frequency] = (2 x pi) / T.
Therefore, F = 1/T.
The higher the frequency the lower the period upon which the wavelength recycles and thus the shorter range, as you get longer waveforms with longer periods between amplitude peaks. When you are within a near proximity to a 3G tower the performance gains for down/up are visible.
When you are in far proximity to a 3G tower the performance degrades, as expected, and should shift to a 2G frequency range, but without the benefits of high up/down performance metrics.
"Bridging the antenna gap so as to make cell phone receiver deaf (or more deaf) would normally cause the output power of the cell phone to go up to compensate, not down. Eg. the cell phone thinks its further away from the tower.
"If what we see in the video is true – the received single strength went down- it would suggest two things; 1) touching the gap is actually making the cell phone more sensitive – not less, or 2) the problem is not a calibration of the signal strength software calibration as admitted by Apple. Instead suggesting there is a malfunction in the cell phone power control system, or some other screwy situation.
The quote above was from the updated article.
The more I read from this guy, the less insight he appears to have. Sure he has credentials but what he says about this issue seems slightly off target. Hard to understand his logic concerning the signal power received by the cell tower. The CR results leads me to speculate that a finger held across the antennas is affecting the transmission of the signal as well as the reception. Just because the phone is supposed to output a stronger signal when it thinks it is further from the tower doesn't mean that any of the signal is leaving the antenna when it is blocked.
The competition smells blood, blood of the artificial variety.The bloodhounds are stalking blogosphere and mainstream media alike to suck the living out of unfair creative practices. Users love the iPhone 4 and that is the nature of the fundamental design flaw. Admit it and a clarity of underlying purpose and corporate sponsoring of the mayhem will appear. Be it blogosphere or mainstream media co-sponsored I might add.
The competition claims equal opportunity at 'love at first sight and touch'. The iPhone simply takes the competitive out of the competition. It's that superior, ...in design, in quality of engineering, in hardware/software integration, in simplicity, in seamless continuity of the user experience. It feels good in the hand just by looking at it.
Now, if you feel like the Medieval ascetic who abhors pleasure and takes pain for an afterthought, please take the phone right back to sinful Apple and humbly submit to the android God that, though unfocused and copycat bland in it's offerings, the groundless Mole really knows how to lift a penitent's soul.
Love by subtraction and division does Arithmetic justice... and little else for a creative encore.
Oh gee, big surprise: Consumer Reports is full of shit. I have almost no respect for them at this point. They often test devices with the explicit intent of "revealing" a flaw. They did this with the iPhone 4. But they've done it before.
When I was in college, I had a part time job for a local Rainbow cleaning system dealer. These machines use water in the bottom as a filter. They pick up better than anything I've ever seen, and literally clean the air as they clean your house. They also last for many years. Consumer Reports ranked the system low however, because it didn't pick up "dirt" as well as the others. The problem was that their "dirt" was actually baby powder. Since baby powder contains lanolin (not water soluble), the system didn't pick it up well. Consumer Reports knew this, yet didn't compensate for it in their review. Are people really picking up that much freaking baby powder? Doubtful.
Another example is their Auto Buying Guide. I picked up one of these a few years ago. Their safety ratings were predicated on crash ratings, but mostly on the inclusion of Electronic Stability Control. Basically, if that feature wasn't standard, they slammed the car. It was hilarious...or maddening. Take your pick. It's like they just decided one day that this feature was essential, even though it's dubious at best to call it an essential feature.
So yeah, I put no stock in that publication any longer. My iPhone is fantastic. I think millions of others agree.
Stop over-thinking the problem. The phone has 2 antennas and they are separated, by design. If bridging them were acceptable, they would have just gone with a single antenna.
You can argue the fine points of signal propagation, but when someone touches the phone with a mere fingertip and download speeds plummet, then die, there isn't much analysis needed to see there's a problem.
Apple can go split hairs or even atoms in the lab, but for the customer they need to eliminate even the appearance of impropriety and provide a real-world fix. I guess it's possible they can find some signal-processing magic to pull the information out of the antennas even when bridged. But if so they better do it soon or go with a physical fix.
In the meantime at least acknowledge there is an issue. It's not like someone bought a Pocket Fisherman. People pay serious money for iPhones and associated service plans. If you're selling a premium product it has to be beyond reproach.
Actually, we do know for sure that it is not an AT&T issue:
I live in Japan, and the problem happens here on Japan's iPhone carrier Softbank. It is easily reproducible.
Interesting. I also live in Japan and many of my coworkers and friends have bought the iPhone 4 (at least 12 at last count) and none have said they have an issue with reception when holding the phone. I'm still waiting for mine. I'm not suggesting it's only AT&T, but you are the first user in Japan I've heard complaining about it.
I'm not discounting the antenna issue. I think Apple DOES have a serious problem here to deal with.
BUT...
Consumer Reports is not and has never been a credible source of information on anything. Allegations of faking tests, fudging data, gross incompetence, and outright malice have plagued them for many years. Anyone who knows anything about cameras, computers, cars, or home audio has had more than one occasion to read a CR article and conclude that these guys have no idea what they are talking about. Their camera articles are particularly hilarious.
Comments
Everyone is a scientist. If it's pro Apple stock, it's bound to get a mention on AI. Last week CR was a great publication known for their honesty, this week, it's ignorant and unscientific!
Under the infamous CR "test results" was the Suzuki Samurai, to which they attached huge bars and ran at 20 MPH over when they had problems going through a slalom and did it again.
They seemed to have forgotten that the World War II-era Jeep had the same problem, only in the field.
CRs really opinion poll based results (more like the user review pile) should *always* be taken with salt (maybe a pound or two at times...
And that's not to mention the cases where the intentionally fudge the test. Remember the test on car roll-overs?
CR has shown that if there's enough whining about a topic, they'll jump on board. For example, they're bashing Apple without doing any control experiments on other phones. EVEN IF their testing methodology were meaningful, the results are meaningless without testing other phones.
And you know all of these things because......?
(Hallucinations don't count).
Really? My iPhone 3G used to drop calls on occasion. I have STILL not had a single dropped call on my iPhone 4 - and I'm in a moderate signal area.
SOME people have problems with the phone - but that's true of any phone and network on the planet. I'm still waiting for your evidence that the iPhone is less reliable than any other phone out there. If you find it, you'd be disagreeing with the same CR that you're praising - since CR says the iPhone has the best signal of any smart phone - even with the problems.
Or, just maybe, Apple is far more rational than you are.
First, you find the problem.
Then, you do research to find a solution to the problem.
Then, you have to get regulatory approvals
THEN you can fix the problem.
All this whining that Apple hasn't created the world in 3 days is just plain absurd. They've told you a perfectly usable work around and have stated that they're working on other fixes.
The problem is that Apple heard the siren call of market domination & rushed the product to market: in true Apple style using the buying community as their Beta Testers (Snow Leopard being a more recent example...). Predictably there will now be fixes/patches etc. to remedy the problem & those of us who insist on not being in the first buying wave of ANY Apple product will benefit greatly from those of you who do.
Consumer Reports accepts no advertising, they have no vested interest in seeing Apple succeed or fail, they have NEVER lost in any valid challenge to their methodology ever. This BS regarding anechoic chambers is hyperbole and has nothing to do with the real world,
In the real world 99.999% of the users have no problem
That's probably conservative.
These were the allegations, they were not proven in court. CR has faced many of these suits, but they have never lost one.
BTW, I'm not defending CR, only accuracy.
More like CR hasn't *lost* in court, not that the allegations weren't proven. Let's have a little accuracy here...
They probably won, especially on jury cases, because what jury wants to admit they decided against Consumer Reports. They would probably get written up in their publications as a jury that should be recalled...
Apple sells what is simply a big rubber band you wrap around the phone as a case(?) that fixes the problem for an outrageous $29.99. Why don't they just start including it with the phone and give one for free to everyone else who already bought it. The thing probably costs them about 25 cents to make. How frakking cheap can you be???!?!?
The problem is that Apple heard the siren call of market domination & rushed the product to market: in true Apple style using the buying community as their Beta Testers (Snow Leopard being a more recent example...). Predictably there will now be fixes/patches etc. to remedy the problem & those of us who insist on not being in the first buying wave of ANY Apple product will benefit greatly from those of you who do.
Consumer Reports accepts no advertising, they have no vested interest in seeing Apple succeed or fail, they have NEVER lost in any valid challenge to their methodology ever. This BS regarding anechoic chambers is hyperbole and has nothing to do with the real world,
Uh, the people have personal axes to grind to eliminate Apple, jerk!
Oh. Mr Job?s, right now, silence is not golden. I?m quite sure Apple has these answers by now? If not, send me a few more iPhones ( i bought 3). I?ll find a chamber and get you some answers in a day.
What an asshat!
Under the infamous CR "test results" was the Suzuki Samurai, to which they attached huge bars and ran at 20 MPH over when they had problems going through a slalom and did it again.
They seemed to have forgotten that the World War II-era Jeep had the same problem, only in the field.
I hope we're not supposed to take any of these comments seriously.
Hasn't Apple already admitted that the bar display is erroneous?
All bars are erroneous or, more accurately, relative.
They only inform you of a weaker or stronger signal in relation to other bars shown, based on height. They are even subject to error within that measurement as they are only updated periodically, I think every ten seconds.
Perhaps what is needed is the FCC to mandate the min & max total dB range, the min & max dB range between bars, and the min & max time frame between refreshes.
More like CR hasn't *lost* in court, not that the allegations weren't proven. Let's have a little accuracy here...
They probably won, especially on jury cases, because what jury wants to admit they decided against Consumer Reports. They would probably get written up in their publications as a jury that should be recalled...
Yes, meaning, they haven't lost in court. That used to mean something, but maybe it's situational for some people.
Again, not defending CR, only accuracy.
We had apple saying people were not holding the iPhone correctly ( amazing they could say that with a straight face). Then we had lots of people posting YouTube videos holding fingers over and not. Although not scientific, it was pretty clear this is the way most folks would hold this phone (or any other) caused it to fail (ok low bars , dropped calls if in area with weak signal). Then we had Consumer Reports do some testing ( only super geeks or Apple shills would argue about how scientific the test was) and CR says phone has problem. Now we have another scientist saying the CR method was flawed because of people being in the room.
Apple no matter how you spin this your phone has a design problem and you should cut out trying to spin it and just replace the phones with new phones (and read carefully ) with newly designed antenna location. Everyone but a monkey will hold it in their palm so please hire some people to test it that will hold it ion their palm with other people around them.
Android can smell new customers.
*I* fill the tank until I see gasoline, so IMHO I'm doing my best for consistent filling.
Filling a tank to the point where you can see gasoline is asking it to spill out.
Your method, while more accurate than relying on the automatic nozzle shut off, still isn't good enough for anything but government work
Firmware will NOT fix a design flaw. It's pretty simple, actually. In an area with poor reception and you decide to lay the iPhone in your palm, you drop the call. Touch the iPhone and you go from having bars - to "Searching".
Now, if there is a software or driver error, that's one thing. We are talking about a 'new' TriQuint chip after all.
The proximity detector essentially 'works' but it needs some tweaking. Firmware should fix that. But the antenna is another matter entirely.
As an aside, when I'm in a weak cell reception area (ie. where I work) I have found that I can get about ~10-12 dBA better reception if I disable the 3G. Don't understand why, but I do know that my phone works fairly reliably with 3G disabled and works poorly with 3G enabled - while I'm at work. At home, I have 5 bars (solid) and the phone works well without regard to 3G enabled or disabled.
One has far less interference at Home than in a typically urban industrialized sector.
Regarding the relationship between wavelength and frequency:
Period, T = 1/Frequency.
Angular frequency (w) = 2 x pi x F [frequency] = (2 x pi) / T.
Therefore, F = 1/T.
The higher the frequency the lower the period upon which the wavelength recycles and thus the shorter range, as you get longer waveforms with longer periods between amplitude peaks. When you are within a near proximity to a 3G tower the performance gains for down/up are visible.
When you are in far proximity to a 3G tower the performance degrades, as expected, and should shift to a 2G frequency range, but without the benefits of high up/down performance metrics.
"Bridging the antenna gap so as to make cell phone receiver deaf (or more deaf) would normally cause the output power of the cell phone to go up to compensate, not down. Eg. the cell phone thinks its further away from the tower.
"If what we see in the video is true – the received single strength went down- it would suggest two things; 1) touching the gap is actually making the cell phone more sensitive – not less, or 2) the problem is not a calibration of the signal strength software calibration as admitted by Apple. Instead suggesting there is a malfunction in the cell phone power control system, or some other screwy situation.
The quote above was from the updated article.
The more I read from this guy, the less insight he appears to have. Sure he has credentials but what he says about this issue seems slightly off target. Hard to understand his logic concerning the signal power received by the cell tower. The CR results leads me to speculate that a finger held across the antennas is affecting the transmission of the signal as well as the reception. Just because the phone is supposed to output a stronger signal when it thinks it is further from the tower doesn't mean that any of the signal is leaving the antenna when it is blocked.
The competition claims equal opportunity at 'love at first sight and touch'. The iPhone simply takes the competitive out of the competition. It's that superior, ...in design, in quality of engineering, in hardware/software integration, in simplicity, in seamless continuity of the user experience. It feels good in the hand just by looking at it.
Now, if you feel like the Medieval ascetic who abhors pleasure and takes pain for an afterthought, please take the phone right back to sinful Apple and humbly submit to the android God that, though unfocused and copycat bland in it's offerings, the groundless Mole really knows how to lift a penitent's soul.
Love by subtraction and division does Arithmetic justice... and little else for a creative encore.
When I was in college, I had a part time job for a local Rainbow cleaning system dealer. These machines use water in the bottom as a filter. They pick up better than anything I've ever seen, and literally clean the air as they clean your house. They also last for many years. Consumer Reports ranked the system low however, because it didn't pick up "dirt" as well as the others. The problem was that their "dirt" was actually baby powder. Since baby powder contains lanolin (not water soluble), the system didn't pick it up well. Consumer Reports knew this, yet didn't compensate for it in their review. Are people really picking up that much freaking baby powder? Doubtful.
Another example is their Auto Buying Guide. I picked up one of these a few years ago. Their safety ratings were predicated on crash ratings, but mostly on the inclusion of Electronic Stability Control. Basically, if that feature wasn't standard, they slammed the car. It was hilarious...or maddening. Take your pick. It's like they just decided one day that this feature was essential, even though it's dubious at best to call it an essential feature.
So yeah, I put no stock in that publication any longer. My iPhone is fantastic. I think millions of others agree.
As I've already been saying, it's amazing how reasonable and rational guys are finding their way out of the gang of open trolls on AI.
Kudos. Go on thinking.
You can argue the fine points of signal propagation, but when someone touches the phone with a mere fingertip and download speeds plummet, then die, there isn't much analysis needed to see there's a problem.
Apple can go split hairs or even atoms in the lab, but for the customer they need to eliminate even the appearance of impropriety and provide a real-world fix. I guess it's possible they can find some signal-processing magic to pull the information out of the antennas even when bridged. But if so they better do it soon or go with a physical fix.
In the meantime at least acknowledge there is an issue. It's not like someone bought a Pocket Fisherman. People pay serious money for iPhones and associated service plans. If you're selling a premium product it has to be beyond reproach.
Actually, we do know for sure that it is not an AT&T issue:
I live in Japan, and the problem happens here on Japan's iPhone carrier Softbank. It is easily reproducible.
Interesting. I also live in Japan and many of my coworkers and friends have bought the iPhone 4 (at least 12 at last count) and none have said they have an issue with reception when holding the phone. I'm still waiting for mine. I'm not suggesting it's only AT&T, but you are the first user in Japan I've heard complaining about it.
BUT...
Consumer Reports is not and has never been a credible source of information on anything. Allegations of faking tests, fudging data, gross incompetence, and outright malice have plagued them for many years. Anyone who knows anything about cameras, computers, cars, or home audio has had more than one occasion to read a CR article and conclude that these guys have no idea what they are talking about. Their camera articles are particularly hilarious.