I came away satisfied and impressed with Apple's take on the 'problem.' I'll now sell my 3Gs and order an iPhone 4. If nothing else, but for the thinner form factor, 40% increased battery life and the improved camera with flash.
Don't do it! If you get one, there's only a 99.45% chance you'll be happy with it enough to keep it. And if you believe the flip-floppers over at Consumer Reports, you'll just be settling for the best smartphone on the market. You should demand more. Perhaps a cheap and clunky Nokia phone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by christopher126
Apple's products are great and superior to anything else that is being manufactured from smart phones to laptops.
Don't you want a Nokia Hello Kitty phone? A plastic fantastic Dell Inspiron craptop loaded with shovelware?
Apple Screwed Up By Choosing Aesthetics Over Functionality, They're Attempting To Appease The Masses Until They Can Re-Engineer A Real Solution, and Pointing Out (alleged) Issues With Competing Handsets Doesn't Help..
Note: Rubber Bandages To Cover Up The Flaw Is Not A Real Solution -
Vaguely true, but definitely biased.
Apple made a trade off for aesthetics, battery life, and small form factor : both of which people want over the perceived small risk of antenna detuning. I say perceived small because this clearly does not happen for a lot of people I know who use an iP4 with no case and clearly doesn't happen for the Apple directors. That being said the problem is now widely known about . Which is different from widely experienced.
What Apple have done is bought themselves time to figure out a manufactured solution. Either an antenna inside the phone - may mean trading battery life and/or form factor or a protective coating. Apple said they'd look at the situation again at the end of Sept.
Really, what more do you want from them? They've done all they can now, and they're looking for other solutions/ fixes
From my perspective - using a case is tantamount to putting the antenna inside the phone anyway - because if that's the solution the phone wont look so good and you'd probably be less interested in having it anyway.
I don't see any evidence to back up this assertion, and plenty of evidence that contradicts it. Near as I can tell, the iPhone 4 exhibits behavior that is essentially the same as what is observed on many other phones.
My point stands. Apple did the right thing by putting the rest of the industry on the defensive.
... or maybe declaring that 'Well Everyone Else Is Doing It' was their last resort ?
One would reason a company as 'innovative' as Apple would have found a viable solution to this 'attenuation problem' rather than choosing a design that actually exacerbates it.
It is, but RIM was right in what they said. Apple used other examples to divert attention to their specific problem, which is signal decrease higher than the norm in terms of dbm. There was no need to draw them into this, especially if they weren't going to be thorough in the style of anandtech and show exactly how this counts in terms of dbm and how it affects the performance of the phones.
What is wrong with pointing out deficiencies in other products? This is capitalism at its finest. Apple is simply pointing out that this is not a unique situation to iPhone 4.
The same Fandroids, RIMjobs, and NokiaNuts that are decrying the exposition of their pet technologies as being similarly deficient and that "competition is good" are the very same that are out flaming Apple on a minute-by-minute basis in a desperate attempt to keep this much ado about nothing in the limelight. Stings, doesn't it?
Sorry, but I find the comparison to other competing products ENTIRELY APPROPRIATE. Let me repeat that, in case you didn't hear:
Apple made a trade off for aesthetics, battery life, and small form factor : both of which people want over the perceived small risk of antenna detuning. I say perceived small because this clearly does not happen for a lot of people I know who use an iP4 with no case and clearly doesn't happen for the Apple directors. That being said the problem is now widely known about . Which is different from widely experienced.
What Apple have done is bought themselves time to figure out a manufactured solution. Either an antenna inside the phone - may mean trading battery life and/or form factor or a protective coating. Apple said they'd look at the situation again at the end of Sept.
Really, what more do you want from them? They've done all they can now, and they're looking for other solutions/ fixes
From my perspective - using a case is tantamount to putting the antenna inside the phone anyway - because if that's the solution the phone wont look so good and you'd probably be less interested in having it anyway.
Remember the case is now free !
I Agree Wholeheartedly... and (as I previously posted) feel strongly that there will be a redesign in the very near future.
Jobs exposed the industry's dirty little secret and now RIM and Nokia are crying about it. They need to fess-up too.
I think we just have some poor losers, Gizmodo, out there that want to take Apple down a few notches if they can.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PaulMJohnson
I agree with you that I don't think they were way out of line, but a response like this was probably to be expected. RIM and Nokia have probably been in something of a panic as they have seen the rise of Apple, and you can't blame them for poking at a chink in the armour.
First, most of these vendors already tried to take advantage of the problem - as long as they could pretend it was only Apple's phone affected. You don't think they (and/or their fans) helped stir up the anti-Apple nonsense? Saying that Apple is just bringing them in to distract people from Apple's problems is disingenuous, at best.
More importantly, it doesn't take much to predict that this will backfire on RIM. When Nokia tried blasting Apple, it didn't take more than a few hours for YouTube videos to appear showing that Nokia's phones had the same problem.
There are already videos showing RIM phones to have the same problem, this will step it up quite a bit.
Bottom line, if RIM had kept their mouths shut, the issue would have gone away. Now, they're simply focusing attention on themselves.
People tend to not get angry unless you have hit a sore spot or pointed out something that they don't want you to know, THEN the get Angry because you have pointed out weak spot.
Apple correctly pointed out that all cellphones are affected by your hand. the media had been ignoring that simple fact - including CR - in making a big deal about the iPhone 4's behavior. of course few will admit they have been overlooking anything, and will resent Apple even more for showing them up. so they will keep whining, starting with CR.
the only real difference is the extra vulnerability of the iPhone's external antenna gap. in weak signal areas it matters. which is what got noticed. the bumper or a case fixes that. and now they are a free option when you buy one, and refunds are going to earlier buyers. so yes, the design is not "perfect" - jobs started his remarks admitting that - but the problem is fixed in terms of actual use.
continued whining about this is simply gratuitous Apple bashing by the whiners and bashers - of which there are many here and elsewhere. of course Apple's generally arrogant attitude does invite such negativity. plus the Android fans and other rivals.
that said, a hardware fix is of course coming. maybe it is as simple as a clear insulation coating over the antenna gap - which could be instituted in a few months - or simply moving the gap to the bottom of the phone, instead of on its side, where it is unlikely to be touched - which would take longer with FCC review. i dunno. but to claim the whole external antenna concept is intrinsically flawed is wild overstatement at this point.
most people i know use a case on their phones anyway, and i suspect at least half of consumers do. for them there is no need to wait for a hardware fix and they should go ahead and buy an iPhone 4 without hesitation. but for folks who like their phones naked - i do - i would suggest they wait and see if a revised model comes out mid-cycle. if i were Apple i would not wait a full year cycle to fix an admitted weakness.
But a huge to do is being made of the Apple issue, when this is not a solely Apple-related problem. People in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones and all that. Apple is perfectly in their rights to defend themselves. Consider the examples they use as court evidence that they are not alone. This kind of thing could well end up being very important in keeping class action lawsuits from coming Apple's way if the judge is able to look around and freely see that it isn't an Apple-only issue.
I Agree Wholeheartedly... and (as I previously posted) feel strongly that there will be a redesign in the very near future.
Or a different product - semantics I know but the fix could just be a clear durable coating that hardly anyone notices. That would require a manufacturing change but not a design change.
As for fields test mode (FTM) - I don't want FTM back until it tells me what I need to know and it's comparable to FTM in other products.
So:
1 I want all smart phones to have FTM
2 I want them to use the same formula to detect signal strength, interference etc
3 I want the results to be accurate
4 I want the results to be comparable
I'm sure there are other things I'll need but that's it for now
I don't see any evidence to back up this assertion, and plenty of evidence that contradicts it. Near as I can tell, the iPhone 4 exhibits behavior that is essentially the same as what is observed on many other phones.
My point stands. Apple did the right thing by putting the rest of the industry on the defensive.
Check the anandtech review, they show the decrease in dbm instead of the decrease in bars. I'm not just talking out of my ass, I have no reason to slight apple.
The iphone 4 in a case performs extremely well, and outside of a case has the most signal loss in dbm of all 3 phones depending on how its held--including the 3GS. What's good about the design is it hangs on to calls better. The loss of signal from holding it in a fringe area would be the real issue. For everyone else with GOOD service it's a neat party trick.
I disagree that Apple was out of line in any way here.
Remember the Toyotas-won't-stop problem from a few months ago? If the issue wasn't a Toyota issue, but instead a problem that was universal to all cars (or all sedans, regardless of the carmaker), you're damn right that I'd have wanted Toyota to point that out.
In fact, it bothered me that the media did not not pursue this angle of the story at all. One would have thought that it would have been a great start to the career of some investigative reporter to explore whether and which other cars had similar electronic hardware, similar Toyota-like design of accelerator, similar software, reports of 'automatic' speeding and brake failure, etc. and probe whether it was happening elsewhere. Whether the answer was 'yes' or 'no,' what an important story that would have been!
A similar opportunity existed with iPhone versus other smart-phones, on the issue of signal attenuation. Yet, all the hordes could do was to look over each others' shoulders and report the same thing that each other was reporting.
What an utterly lazy, uninformed industry it has become!
Apple Screwed Up By Choosing Aesthetics Over Functionality, They're Attempting To Appease The Masses Until They Can Re-Engineer A Real Solution, and Pointing Out (alleged) Issues With Competing Handsets Doesn't Help..
Note: Rubber Bandages To Cover Up The Flaw Is Not A Real Solution -
Please go away. You add little or nothing to any discussion. All you spew is negativity.
How can you live like this?! Don't you have happier/better/more productive ways to spend your time?
Comments
I came away satisfied and impressed with Apple's take on the 'problem.' I'll now sell my 3Gs and order an iPhone 4. If nothing else, but for the thinner form factor, 40% increased battery life and the improved camera with flash.
Don't do it! If you get one, there's only a 99.45% chance you'll be happy with it enough to keep it. And if you believe the flip-floppers over at Consumer Reports, you'll just be settling for the best smartphone on the market. You should demand more. Perhaps a cheap and clunky Nokia phone.
Apple's products are great and superior to anything else that is being manufactured from smart phones to laptops.
Don't you want a Nokia Hello Kitty phone? A plastic fantastic Dell Inspiron craptop loaded with shovelware?
Bottom Line:
Apple Screwed Up By Choosing Aesthetics Over Functionality, They're Attempting To Appease The Masses Until They Can Re-Engineer A Real Solution, and Pointing Out (alleged) Issues With Competing Handsets Doesn't Help..
Note: Rubber Bandages To Cover Up The Flaw Is Not A Real Solution -
Vaguely true, but definitely biased.
Apple made a trade off for aesthetics, battery life, and small form factor : both of which people want over the perceived small risk of antenna detuning. I say perceived small because this clearly does not happen for a lot of people I know who use an iP4 with no case and clearly doesn't happen for the Apple directors. That being said the problem is now widely known about . Which is different from widely experienced.
What Apple have done is bought themselves time to figure out a manufactured solution. Either an antenna inside the phone - may mean trading battery life and/or form factor or a protective coating. Apple said they'd look at the situation again at the end of Sept.
Really, what more do you want from them? They've done all they can now, and they're looking for other solutions/ fixes
From my perspective - using a case is tantamount to putting the antenna inside the phone anyway - because if that's the solution the phone wont look so good and you'd probably be less interested in having it anyway.
Remember the case is now free !
I don't see any evidence to back up this assertion, and plenty of evidence that contradicts it. Near as I can tell, the iPhone 4 exhibits behavior that is essentially the same as what is observed on many other phones.
My point stands. Apple did the right thing by putting the rest of the industry on the defensive.
... or maybe declaring that 'Well Everyone Else Is Doing It' was their last resort ?
One would reason a company as 'innovative' as Apple would have found a viable solution to this 'attenuation problem' rather than choosing a design that actually exacerbates it.
It is, but RIM was right in what they said. Apple used other examples to divert attention to their specific problem, which is signal decrease higher than the norm in terms of dbm. There was no need to draw them into this, especially if they weren't going to be thorough in the style of anandtech and show exactly how this counts in terms of dbm and how it affects the performance of the phones.
What is wrong with pointing out deficiencies in other products? This is capitalism at its finest. Apple is simply pointing out that this is not a unique situation to iPhone 4.
The same Fandroids, RIMjobs, and NokiaNuts that are decrying the exposition of their pet technologies as being similarly deficient and that "competition is good" are the very same that are out flaming Apple on a minute-by-minute basis in a desperate attempt to keep this much ado about nothing in the limelight. Stings, doesn't it?
Sorry, but I find the comparison to other competing products ENTIRELY APPROPRIATE. Let me repeat that, in case you didn't hear:
ENTIRELY APPROPRIATE RESPONSE BY APPLE
Vaguely true, but definitely biased.
Apple made a trade off for aesthetics, battery life, and small form factor : both of which people want over the perceived small risk of antenna detuning. I say perceived small because this clearly does not happen for a lot of people I know who use an iP4 with no case and clearly doesn't happen for the Apple directors. That being said the problem is now widely known about . Which is different from widely experienced.
What Apple have done is bought themselves time to figure out a manufactured solution. Either an antenna inside the phone - may mean trading battery life and/or form factor or a protective coating. Apple said they'd look at the situation again at the end of Sept.
Really, what more do you want from them? They've done all they can now, and they're looking for other solutions/ fixes
From my perspective - using a case is tantamount to putting the antenna inside the phone anyway - because if that's the solution the phone wont look so good and you'd probably be less interested in having it anyway.
Remember the case is now free !
I Agree Wholeheartedly... and (as I previously posted) feel strongly that there will be a redesign in the very near future.
Jobs exposed the industry's dirty little secret and now RIM and Nokia are crying about it. They need to fess-up too.
I think we just have some poor losers, Gizmodo, out there that want to take Apple down a few notches if they can.
I agree with you that I don't think they were way out of line, but a response like this was probably to be expected. RIM and Nokia have probably been in something of a panic as they have seen the rise of Apple, and you can't blame them for poking at a chink in the armour.
First, most of these vendors already tried to take advantage of the problem - as long as they could pretend it was only Apple's phone affected. You don't think they (and/or their fans) helped stir up the anti-Apple nonsense? Saying that Apple is just bringing them in to distract people from Apple's problems is disingenuous, at best.
More importantly, it doesn't take much to predict that this will backfire on RIM. When Nokia tried blasting Apple, it didn't take more than a few hours for YouTube videos to appear showing that Nokia's phones had the same problem.
There are already videos showing RIM phones to have the same problem, this will step it up quite a bit.
Bottom line, if RIM had kept their mouths shut, the issue would have gone away. Now, they're simply focusing attention on themselves.
People tend to not get angry unless you have hit a sore spot or pointed out something that they don't want you to know, THEN the get Angry because you have pointed out weak spot.
What happens if I claim that you are retarded?
Bottom line, if RIM had kept their mouths shut, the issue would have gone away. Now, they're simply focusing attention on themselves.
Word and true.
the only real difference is the extra vulnerability of the iPhone's external antenna gap. in weak signal areas it matters. which is what got noticed. the bumper or a case fixes that. and now they are a free option when you buy one, and refunds are going to earlier buyers. so yes, the design is not "perfect" - jobs started his remarks admitting that - but the problem is fixed in terms of actual use.
continued whining about this is simply gratuitous Apple bashing by the whiners and bashers - of which there are many here and elsewhere. of course Apple's generally arrogant attitude does invite such negativity. plus the Android fans and other rivals.
that said, a hardware fix is of course coming. maybe it is as simple as a clear insulation coating over the antenna gap - which could be instituted in a few months - or simply moving the gap to the bottom of the phone, instead of on its side, where it is unlikely to be touched - which would take longer with FCC review. i dunno. but to claim the whole external antenna concept is intrinsically flawed is wild overstatement at this point.
most people i know use a case on their phones anyway, and i suspect at least half of consumers do. for them there is no need to wait for a hardware fix and they should go ahead and buy an iPhone 4 without hesitation. but for folks who like their phones naked - i do - i would suggest they wait and see if a revised model comes out mid-cycle. if i were Apple i would not wait a full year cycle to fix an admitted weakness.
Jobs exposed the industry's dirty little secret and now RIM and Nokia are crying about it. They need to fess-up too.
Exactly right. Every RIM and Nokia phone drops calls when you have it in your hand. That's why those Crackberrys use bluetooth headsets so much.
But a huge to do is being made of the Apple issue, when this is not a solely Apple-related problem. People in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones and all that. Apple is perfectly in their rights to defend themselves. Consider the examples they use as court evidence that they are not alone. This kind of thing could well end up being very important in keeping class action lawsuits from coming Apple's way if the judge is able to look around and freely see that it isn't an Apple-only issue.
Excellent observations. +1.
I Agree Wholeheartedly... and (as I previously posted) feel strongly that there will be a redesign in the very near future.
Or a different product - semantics I know but the fix could just be a clear durable coating that hardly anyone notices. That would require a manufacturing change but not a design change.
As for fields test mode (FTM) - I don't want FTM back until it tells me what I need to know and it's comparable to FTM in other products.
So:
1 I want all smart phones to have FTM
2 I want them to use the same formula to detect signal strength, interference etc
3 I want the results to be accurate
4 I want the results to be comparable
I'm sure there are other things I'll need but that's it for now
(a technical issue that is trivially solved by using a case on your smartphone was never a real issue anyway).
I've seen custom-made Band-Aids that work too. Most iPhone 4 owners are having fun with this, but the media blew it all out of proportion.
I don't see any evidence to back up this assertion, and plenty of evidence that contradicts it. Near as I can tell, the iPhone 4 exhibits behavior that is essentially the same as what is observed on many other phones.
My point stands. Apple did the right thing by putting the rest of the industry on the defensive.
Check the anandtech review, they show the decrease in dbm instead of the decrease in bars. I'm not just talking out of my ass, I have no reason to slight apple.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/t...one-4-review/2
The iphone 4 in a case performs extremely well, and outside of a case has the most signal loss in dbm of all 3 phones depending on how its held--including the 3GS. What's good about the design is it hangs on to calls better. The loss of signal from holding it in a fringe area would be the real issue. For everyone else with GOOD service it's a neat party trick.
That probably explains the Nokia X5 then:
I guess they care a lot more about the way it works rather than the way it looks. They have no taste at all. Apple has the right idea.
I disagree that Apple was out of line in any way here.
Remember the Toyotas-won't-stop problem from a few months ago? If the issue wasn't a Toyota issue, but instead a problem that was universal to all cars (or all sedans, regardless of the carmaker), you're damn right that I'd have wanted Toyota to point that out.
In fact, it bothered me that the media did not not pursue this angle of the story at all. One would have thought that it would have been a great start to the career of some investigative reporter to explore whether and which other cars had similar electronic hardware, similar Toyota-like design of accelerator, similar software, reports of 'automatic' speeding and brake failure, etc. and probe whether it was happening elsewhere. Whether the answer was 'yes' or 'no,' what an important story that would have been!
A similar opportunity existed with iPhone versus other smart-phones, on the issue of signal attenuation. Yet, all the hordes could do was to look over each others' shoulders and report the same thing that each other was reporting.
What an utterly lazy, uninformed industry it has become!
And, even if they do move it inside the case, you will still have attenuation as it is a common problem no matter where you put the antenna.
Every phone has exactly the same problem as the iPhone, but nobody except Apple is honest enough to admit it.
Bunch of WHINERS!!!
I Agree Wholeheartedly... and (as I previously posted) feel strongly that there will be a redesign in the very near future.
You smoke too much.
The iPhone 4 is the only phone that can go from 5 bars to 0 bars with the touch of a single finger at a small part of the case.
That is only when you have zero bars to begin with. The new software has fixed that particular "problem".
And every phone has a magic spot. Apple's only mistake was to put a contrasting black bar there, so everybody knows where it is.
Bottom Line:
Apple Screwed Up By Choosing Aesthetics Over Functionality, They're Attempting To Appease The Masses Until They Can Re-Engineer A Real Solution, and Pointing Out (alleged) Issues With Competing Handsets Doesn't Help..
Note: Rubber Bandages To Cover Up The Flaw Is Not A Real Solution -
Please go away. You add little or nothing to any discussion. All you spew is negativity.
How can you live like this?! Don't you have happier/better/more productive ways to spend your time?