It’s official. Consumer Reports’ engineers have just completed testing the iPhone 4, and have confirmed that there is a problem with its reception. When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone’s lower left side—an easy thing, especially for lefties—the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you’re in an area with a weak signal. Due to this problem, we can’t recommend the iPhone 4.

More here: http://cl.ly/1dZW

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.

- Apple has invited select members of the media to the now confirmed media event on January 27th at 10:00 AM PST.  The title of the event is “Come see our latest creation.”  Will it be the much-rumored tablet, iLife/iWork 2010, iPhone OS 4.0 with true multi-tasking?  We’ll have to wait and see.  I will be writing a long wrap-up at the end of the day on the 27th.

- Apple released BootCamp 3.1 today for Intel Macs and finally includes support for Windows 7.  Apple promised that by the end of the year 2009, but they missed the mark.  It was finally released today.

- A rumor was published today claiming a new version of iTunes, combined with Apple’s recent LaLa acquisition, could allow iTunes users to move their entire library to the cloud so they can play their music on any device on the web.  Neat!

When he returned, I laid them all out in Corel Draw 4 and drew the rounded frame around each one in addition to the hole to put the hook through.  We ran a batch and they turned out pretty well.  Although, some dust from the plexiglass got on the mirrors, so we printed them once more.  The second time around, they turned out perfect.  Here’s what they look like, laid out:

Yes, I realize I forgot to cut out the center of the 9 on the calendar icon.  Settings and Safari were really hard to do too, so I’m pleased the laser was even able to rasterize/print them at all.  Overall, I’m really satisfied.  Here’s some pictures of them on my tree:

So, that brings me to my point.  I want something new.  I want something different.  I want people to ask to see my phone again.  I want people to go “Oooh, ahh” over my phone rather than, “My gym teacher has one of those.”  Wow, cool.  Thanks.

So what are my options?

1.) Switch to Verizon and get a Droid.  The Verizon network is far superior to AT&T, regardless of whatever scare-tactic lawsuit AT&T tries to throw at them.  The Droid also supports open development and runs Android.  This means that basically, they encourage you to do whatever you want to your phone.  You know, like the DMCA says you’re legally allowed to do?  Apple and AT&T seem to forget this often.

2.) Switch to Sprint and get a Palm Pre.  Regardless of what others say, I’ve personally used the Pre, and it’s fantastic.  The UI is gorgeous and incredibly functional, allowing one to be far more productive than on the iPhone.  The Pre unfortunately has gotten not so much a bad rap as no rap at all.  No one’s talking about the Pre.  I’m not sure why, because it’s great.  The Pre’s WebOS was also written from scratch.  The iPhone OS is incredibly bloated and slow.  It was a port from the desktop version of OSX, and it apparently even includes some line of code from the NeXT Step OS.  That’s ridiculous.  Now, that being said, the Sprint network is far from perfect, but in areas where it is decent, like here in Pittsburgh, the service is faster than AT&T.  The monthly bill would be less, too.

3.) Wait it out for either the GSM Pre or, the next iPhone.  Like Gruber said:

Right. You know who thinks the iPhone 3GS stinks? Steve Jobs. No one is working harder on an “iPhone 3GS killer” than Apple.

Right?  I think Apple knows people are expecting more from the next iPhone release as the 3GS’ was kind of a bummer, regardless of how clever the ads were.

So, what do you think?  Has the iPhone become a status quo device?  Is that OK?  What should I do about my dilemma?  Let me know in the comments!

*Thanks to digitalbear for the image

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