Thoughts on iPhone 4

I’d like to preface my post with a small description of what I do for a living, alongside being a full-time student at Robert Morris University (RMU) in Pittsburgh, PA.  Freshman year through senior year of high school at Fox Chapel Area High School, I worked as a student employee alongside the network and systems administrator and help desk staff to provide end-user support and training to teachers, administrators, faculty, and staff.  I continue to work there today providing the same services as before, but I also am now more involved in assisting the network and systems administrator with more complex projects.  Fox Chapel has over 40 Xserves and 5,000 Macs in the district.  I also work at Robert Morris University as an IT Student Associate Systems Administrator supporting Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server.  I manage most of the Macs on campus, most of the Xserves, and OS X deployments and the associated network services that go along with the authentication and collaboration of the Mac users.  In a nutshell: I know Macs and Mac OS X pretty darned well, Mac OS X Server decently well, and I absolutely love Apple and its products.  Why did I mention all of that?  I’m not usually one to complain about Apple.  I’m not just the normal flamer who’s overreacting about the issues with the iPhone 4.  And, when issues arise, I’ve always trusted and will continue to trust Apple to make those issues right for its customers.  That all having been said, here’s my thoughts on iPhone 4.

Reception Problems

There’s absolutely no question that the iPhone 4 has generated a lot of buzz regarding its exterior antenna and the benefits and sacrifices that come with the design.  The term “death-grip” has been coined to describe the action of placing a single finger in my case, or an entire hand, over the bottom left corner of the iPhone 4, essentially bridging the two antennas together.  Many users who do this, including myself, notice an enormous drop in signal, and for many the phone drops to No Service whatsoever.  Apple released an official statement on the issue last week.  Apple still believes this iPhone is the best iPhone it has ever shipped and is convinced the issue is software related.  Apple said in its statement:

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.

Apple offered this explanation as a fix:

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

Many, including myself, however, are convinced that this is a hardware issue that was glanced over in quality testing.  Could it be due to the fact that most testers were using cases to disguise their iPhone 4s as iPhone 3GSs?  Perhaps, but that’s a far stretch.  (Using a case completely alleviates the problems, by the way.)  According to Apple’s statement, at my home, maybe instead of five bars, I should have three.  That’s not going to change the fact that when I place a finger over the bottom left hand corner, the signal drops to zero; I will just have started with fewer bars in the first place.  Another official Apple statement along with a usual not-out-of-style short e-mail from Apple CEO Steve Jobs circulating the web both offer some light into the issue suggesting that Apple may know that it is in fact hardware related.  Steve told a customer, “All phones have sensitive areas. Just avoid holding [iPhone 4] in that way.”  The other official Apple statement says something similar:

Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.

I can say this much: I’ve owned several phones before iPhone, an iPhone, an iPhone 3G, and now an iPhone 4.  I’ve always had full reception at my home with every phone prior to iPhone 4 and have never had any issues regardless of how I held any of them.  Pittsburgh itself has excellent 3G coverage and I very rarely ever drop calls.  On my first iPhone 4 which was replaced already (more on that in a moment), I was dropping between 1/3-2/3 of my calls daily.  In Washington DC, I dropped somewhere around 12 calls alone.  My iPhone 4′s modem was resetting itself exactly 66% percent of the time.  All of these, incredibly unusual statistics said the Genius, were from the iPhone behavior scan they ran at the Apple store.  Those statistics, for what is supposed to be the best iPhone Apple has ever shipped, seemed incredibly depressing to me.  Anandtech, who has some more detailed research into the issues, says:

The drop in signal from holding the phone with your left hand arguably remains a problem. Changing the bars visualization may indeed help mask it, and to be fair the phone works fine all the way down to -113 dBm, but it will persist – software updates can change physics as muchas they can change hardware design. At the end of the day, Apple should add an insulative coating to the stainless steel band, or  subsidize bumper cases. It’s that simple.

My current replacement is also dropping calls and displays the same signal-dropping issue as the first.  I refuse to buy a case for my iPhone 4 as I’ve never used one before and I shouldn’t have to use one for it to function properly. (Did Apple design the iPhone 4 this way to boost its Bumper case sales?  I doubt it.)

Other Issues & A Replacement Replacement?

Many users are reporting other issues such as a malfunctioning or not-sensitive-enough proximity sensor, as well as iPhone 4s that are not recognizing the SIM cards installed in them.  My friend, Jack Amick, had his iPhone 4 replaced due to a “No SIM” error, which interestingly enough, tells the story of my “replacement replacement.”

While I was at the Apple store getting my iPhone 4 replaced for the dropped calls and signal issues I mentioned above, the replacement iPhone the Genius gave me, upon boot, displayed “No SIM Card is Installed.”  The Genius and myself were both confused, tried reseating the SIM, rebooting the phone, and we even went so far as to reset the phone.  None of that worked.  He ended up taking another replacement out of the drawer for me and chucked that first replacement aside.  When I asked him if he thought that one had the not-as-popular-as-the-reception-issue-but-still-popular “No SIM” issue, although it was an obvious question, he just said, “Anything is possible.”  He also told me he’s replaced a few for that very reason.

Luckily, I’ve not personally talked to anyone with the proximity sensor issue and none of my iPhone 4s have exhibited that behavior.

All of this makes me wonder how good the quality control on this device really is and how thorough the testing really was.  I imagine the testing was incredibly extensive, so to miss over the reception problems, or any problems for that matter, seems like a serious omission.  The No SIM and proximity sensor problems are probably more of a manufacturing issue than a quality issue, but regardless, all of these issues need to be resolved.

Call Me Unlucky

I’m scheduled tonight at the genius bar for yet another replacement.  This replacement iPhone has a loose camera assembly on the back that rattles, and it has a piece of dust or lint that’s clearly visible resting inside the front camera assembly.  This front piece of dust is hindering with its ability to handle different lighting situations and the rear camera assembly rattling is just plain annoying and seems to be messing with its ability to focus on certain items.  Perhaps the lint in the front came from my pocket?  Not sure.  But, regardless, it shouldn’t have made its way into the lens assembly.

Edit: I got another new iPhone.  This one doesn’t have dust under the front lens assembly nor does it make any rattle besides a slight noise from the vibration switch.

Is there anything good about this phone?

Absolutely!  The issues I’ve mentioned above aside, I truly believe this is the best mobile device Apple has ever shipped.  I do, however, believe this is the worst phone Apple has ever shipped.  The Retina display with a pixel density of 326 ppi is absolutely gorgeous and makes it impossible to distinguish individual pixels on the screen.  The display is ultra crisp, bright, and viewable at almost any angle thanks to the inclusion of in-plane-switching.  The front and back glass panels are incredibly strong aluminosilicate glass.  The camera takes absolutely excellent photos and the HD video is rather clear as well.  The front facing camera for use with FaceTime and self-portraits is also decent.  FaceTime works flawlessly and rarely cuts out or fails.  The ability to video conference on my phone is incredible and just plain amazing.  The Apple A4 chip inside the phone makes it super snappy and responsive alongside iOS 4.0.  iOS allows for multi-tasking which screams on the A4.  Apps are state frozen and switching between them works very smoothly.  The apps that tie into Apple’s background APIs like Pandora also work amazingly well and don’t excessively drain the battery (which lasts reasonably long, by the way).

Overall thoughts? What should Apple do?

Overall, I love my iPhone 4 because of all the great things I mentioned in the above section.  However, Apple needs to make these antenna issues right for its customers.  Apple sold tons of these phones.  It sold 1.7 million of them in the first three days.  That makes for a pretty damn expensive recall.  Do I see Apple doing a recall?  No.  Should it?  Perhaps.  I agree with Anandtech that Apple should either coat the phone with something to make it less conductive, or subsidize or give away free bumper cases and just admit that although innovative, the iPhone 4′s antenna design is ingeniously weak to human-generated interference.  There’s a paradox at play here – increase the reception dramatically by moving the antennas to the exterior… but, just don’t touch them!  That’s highly impractical, and for Steve to tell people “Just avoid holding it in that way.” is completely unreasonable.  Even if it’s a silent fix and replacements are offered over time for affected buyers who make their way into an Apple Store, Apple needs to make this situation right, and I fully expect them to after the software update in the coming weeks is shown to not help the situation at all.