[MistaDibs]

cleon, 02 July 2010 - 05:16 PM:

MistaDibs, 01 July 2010 - 02:16 PM:

Lol cleon defending his polished hip wonder. Sorry man, it's really not that normal for a phone to lose signal if you hold it in a pretty common position

Yes, but most normal companies place their antennas on the bottom part where no one ever holds their phone, not right on the side where people always hold it. That'd be like placing it on the front cover, just asking for faults

[syl35]

BWAHAHAHAHA

iPhone 4 signal fault leaves Apple 'stunned'

Turns out the drop in signal strength is not that great when you hold the iphone wrong... The phone displays a lot more bars than it should, and the disapperaing bars were "never real in the first place".

[eloH]

this is just a cosmetic design flaw, the signal isnt actually dropping, the phone just displays incorrectly. no big

[Lookwell!]

this is actually a topic that interests me can you faggots stop talking about nerdphones for one fucking minute

[eloH]

nobody gives a fuck about your faggoty failure of a career choice

[sinister minister]

syl35, 02 July 2010 - 08:40 PM:

BWAHAHAHAHA

iPhone 4 signal fault leaves Apple 'stunned'

Turns out the drop in signal strength is not that great when you hold the iphone wrong... The phone displays a lot more bars than it should, and the disapperaing bars were "never real in the first place".

ahahahaha hahahahaha ahahaha

at Apple, we design quality software and hardware... paying attention to your special needs... *can't get the display bars right on a smartphone*

[Stage]

Apple just seems gay to me.

[PLEASUREMAN]

Lookwell!, 02 July 2010 - 10:01 PM:

this is actually a topic that interests me can you faggots stop talking about nerdphones for one fucking minute

splitting topic

[PLEASUREMAN]

the jig is pretty much up, Cleon, in that Apple has been forced to look at their shitty software and make a partial admission that they incompetently fucked up the signal bars (i.e. the aids phone has been grossly overestimating signal strength for years...funny how Apple always seems to get caught fudging metrics)

http://www.nbcbayare...--97663404.html
(note the hipster faggot prominently featured in the article...know of many other manufacturers who inspire this level of shameful faggotry?)

it's not a full admission--they claim bizarrely that when you hold the phone the way Steve Jobs told you not to hold the phone it's actually reporting the signal strength accurately (i.e. lower) and all other times it's reporting it inaccurately...this will convince Apple zealots but to everyone else it sounds like crackhead logic...but it's the best you can hope to get from this shamelessly dishonest company

And Cleon, however many other phones with reception issues you want to point to (we know the issue of antenna interference is nothing knew in cell phone land), your pal Steve Jobs did fucking say "don't hold it like that", "like that" being the only normal way to hold a fucking phone

it's nice that you're a fan of Apple--nice for them at least--but in this case you're a brutal example of how much IQ loss the reality distortion field produces--you think this issue of signal loss, acknowledged by Jobs himself, is pure nerd fantasy when the truth is that iPhone OWNERS and websites that shill like mad for Apple (see Gizmodo among many others) are the ones who brought it to light...this is all too typical of Apple missteps, where if someone dares to bring a complaint or criticism or problem the zealots lash out like Jews

so plan B, in true Apple fashion, is to minimize the nature of the problem, "oh we've just been lying to you about signal strength for years, nothing wrong with your phone", which given Apple's motivations here you'd be a fool to take at face value...let's face it, they want to avert a recall so they're doing EXACTLY what Microsoft did with the Xbox 360 meltdowns, denying that there is any real problem or that only a tiny segment of people are affected AND ANYWAY THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME WITH OTHER DEVICES GUYS HONEST IT'S NOT THAT WE WANT TO SPIN THIS SITUATION TO OUR OWN BENEFIT

you're a smart guy, Cleon, that's what makes the reality distortion field effect so noticeable

[darkestofniggers]

i dont really care about this that much because i'm still rocking the flip phone with a blurry camera/small lcd clock on the front style, but its pretty gay they cheat up the signal like that. like if you want to buy a tape measure thats really 25' long but they jew it up to say 30' on the front. sometimes i just get so mad at steve jobs.. how could you do it to me like this steve??

my friend had an iphone and it was slick as shit tho, but he barely dropped it and the glass cracked

[Jeff Fries]

PLEASUREMAN, 03 July 2010 - 03:07 PM:

it's not a full admission--they claim bizarrely that when you hold the phone the way Steve Jobs told you not to hold the phone it's actually reporting the signal strength accurately (i.e. lower) and all other times it's reporting it inaccurately...this will convince Apple zealots but to everyone else it sounds like crackhead logic...but it's the best you can hope to get from this shamelessly dishonest company

And Cleon, however many other phones with reception issues you want to point to (we know the issue of antenna interference is nothing knew in cell phone land), your pal Steve Jobs did fucking say "don't hold it like that", "like that" being the only normal way to hold a fucking phone

I don't want to sound like a broken record but I quit last year after five years selling phones with AT&T and apart from one Nokia flip a few years back I can't remember a single device we sold that had this level of interference when you gripped it around the antenna, certainly not to the point of dropping a call. I do seem to recall a few of the older flip phones actually increasing in signal when you gripped the stub. The iPhone is several times more popular than any other phone so it's certainly possible that it's an issue because it's in many more hands, hands belonging to people who are generally more sensitive to begin with, but it seems more reasonable to me that the real cause is the innovation of putting the naked metal of the antenna around the edge, especially when you consider that they were disguised in 3GS chassis during testing. IMO.

This post has been edited by Jeff Fries: 03 July 2010 - 04:18 PM

[cleon]

Number of people that have actually used an iPhone 4 on here:

Me.


I'll bet good money that no one else here has even seen one irl


http://blogs.consume...roblems-in.html


I dont really care if you like apple or not, its just super lol how enraged they make nerds.

[eloH]

buyers remorse is real

[PRCalDude]

The part about the added bars sounds like bullshit. Here's the equation for a link budget:
http://www.rfcafe.co...link-budget.htm

Which numbers in there did they fudge deliberately? Receive antenna gain? Transmit antenna gain? Power radiated? Power received?

If the "bars" represent SNR, again, which numbers did they lie about deliberately?
http://www.rfcafe.co...ctrical/snr.htm

Sorry, the math's not complicated. How'd they screw it up?

[darkestofniggers]

total bars displayed = nerdy equations + a couple bars???

= wow my iphone works so good

[PLEASUREMAN]

Apple has never been good at software...OS X is "stable" and "modern" because it relies on BSD for a ton of heavy lifting...Safari is a rebadged open source browser...iTunes is a huge mess...and the Finder has long been the most noticeable stall point in the OS...Dashboard is a straight-up rip-off of Konfabulator (I've seen both--they photocopied wholesale, although Apple clowns wrote elaborate denials of this fact). Am I particularly surprised that they can't figure out how to show signal strength? Not really.

But while I think it's possible that incompetence played a role in the bars issue, considering Apple's history of endless lies about performance metrics (too many times to note), originality of features, and features of competing products, it was probably a combination of incompetence and a culture of massive prevarication (a culture abetted by the media's fannish coverage of the company since Jobs took over). I think it is interesting that while this kind of prevarication is commonplace in today's corporate culture, Apple takes it to the limit--they go for the big lie, the "our CPU is twice as fast as theirs" lie which doesn't even make any sense when you put it in the context of the rest of the industry's efforts.

I don't want to give Cleon too much shit because he's not as crazy as many Apple apologists I've seen, but just look at the update tacked on to the CR article that Cleon linked:

Consumer Reports:

[UPDATE JULY 3, 2010: Since posting this report, Mike Gikas has also experienced the 'dropped call' issue which many of our readers have been attesting to in our Blog readers' comments section. For a recount on Mike's latest iPhone experience, see: iPhone 4 signal debate rages; we experience signal loss in some calls. —Ed.]

Apple apologists tend to reach for the "it doesn't happen to me SO YOU'RE FULL OF SHIT" argument immediately, and the whole piece is, considering CR's mission statement, a bizarre attempt to bend over backwards to explain away reports of signal loss as "not a real problem"--it's hard to believe CR writing such a weird "don't believe the consumer reports" post about any other product under the sun.

The Anandtech report is simply an amateur attempt to reproduce the issue in a single area with a single person doing a random series of tests with only two other phones and no real control, and not even any method for determining if AT&T's network performance influenced the results (hint: network load and performance varies by the minute--you simply have to isolate it to do real tests). Anand assumes that the iPhone is reporting signal strength correctly--BUT GUESS WHAT, IT'S NOT. To cite his hobbyist results as proof of anything is just an announcement of gullibility. I've done real product and performance testing, and this isn't remotely close to an acceptable example of that (for the record, Anand mostly outputs stuff like Quake FPS results for randomly thrown together hardware--he's not a sophisticated tester, he's mostly just a nerd with time on his hands).

Likely the signal issue is influenced by many factors, but CR's conclusion is abjectly servile to its affinity for Apple (an affinity many reviewers share, and which grossly distorts their perspective):

Consumer Reports:

Bottom line: There's no reason, at least yet, to forgo buying an iPhone 4 over its reception concerns. And even if those do materialize, Apple's Steve Jobs helpfully reminds new iPhone buyers that "you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund."

Sorry, this is laughable and wrong. The proper advice, for those not worried about putting a damper on Apple's sales figures, is to hold off on the iPhone 4 until a full resolution of the reported problems is made, and a full assessment of Apple's own reaction to the issue is performed by an unbiased third party (not all third parties are unbiased, of course). And it is mildly scandalous for CR to jump the gun on its blog and react before fully exploring the integrity of Apple's statements on both this and past issues relating to its products. Apple has now admitted, on record, that its signal metrics are simply not reliable. There is simply no other company on the planet that would get the free pass CR is giving Apple here. Not one.

I'm sure plenty of nerds are happy to put the boot in Apple, but then again there are plenty of nerds who want to do nothing more than suck Steve Jobs' AIDS-ridden cock:

Daring Fireball:

Who am I supposed to believe, the sensationalist hacks at Consumer Reports, or the straight-shooters at Gizmodo?

http://daringfirebal...onsumer-reports

Actually, you're supposed to evaluate the claims on their merits--CR not only covers for Apple in its blog piece (which isn't a full product review or test), it mainly regurgitates the useless amateur testing done by a single computer nerd with no experience in product testing beyond running personal benchmarks of video cards and CPUs (i.e. no professional experience at all).

But you know an embattled Apple nerd will react this way. They always do.

[Jeff Fries]

:naderpalm:

Quote

Consumer Reports said Monday it cannot recommend the iPhone 4 after testing confirmed " there is a problem with its reception."

The highly regarded publication said its engineers tested three iPhone 4s, and found that complaints by others about the phone's reception are valid. Apple, contacted for comment, has not yet responded.

"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," Consumer Reports said. "Due to this problem, we can't recommend the iPhone 4."

There is, the magazine noted, an "affordable solution for suffering iPhone 4 users. Cover the antenna gap with a piece of duct tape or another thick, non-conductive material. It may not be pretty, but it works. We also expect that using a case would remedy the problem. We'll test a few cases this week and report back."

[PLEASUREMAN]

So basically they are reversing themselves and also providing evidence that Apple's story was a lie. OH WAIT NOT AT ALL

Consumer Reports:

UPDATE: Some commentary suggests we've retracted an earlier recommendation of the iPhone 4. In fact, our first blog on the iPhone 4's performance, and a followup comparing it to the Motorola Droid X, were based on preliminary testing, as we stated. Those earlier tests did not address antenna performance. We recommend products only after all tests are complete, and as part of our full smart phone Ratings, which will be published shortly. —Paul Reynolds

Where did I read this?

Consumer Reports:

Bottom line: There's no reason, at least yet, to forgo buying an iPhone 4 over its reception concerns. And even if those do materialize, Apple's Steve Jobs helpfully reminds new iPhone buyers that "you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund."

Bottom line: Consumer Reports scrutinizes some companies more closely than others. Rather than caution consumers to wait until its testing was complete, CR gave a jovial "bon voyage" and a nudge towards the nearest Apple Store (where some spindly armed nerd will feed you more sweet corporate lies about their products). And when called on it, CR prevaricates about its own past statements, giving itself an easy pass for keeping things cheery.

Maybe amateur testing isn't worth very much. And yes, stating that there is "an absence of evidence" about a flaw just days after it has been revealed is pure shilling. CR will have to claw back the credibility its reality distorted bloggers gave up.

[PLEASUREMAN]

The degree to which Apple shills fill comments everywhere is also noteworthy. Take this comment on the original CR article about the iPhone's problems:

Quote

My blackberry drops calls all the time (using Sprint, in a big techie city). Why doesn't anyone ever talk about that? Why does the iPhone get so much publicity?

BLACKBERRY OWNER HERE, JUST CHECKING IN TO SAY IT IS SO UNFAIR FOR THE IPHONE TO BE CRITICIZED...REPEAT, BLACKBERRY OWNER, BLACKBERRYS HAVE TONS OF PROBLEMS, STOP TALKING ABOUT THE IPHONE PEOPLE NOTHING TO SEE HERE...THIS COMMENT SENT FROM MY BLACKBERRY, WHICH I OWN

[PLEASUREMAN]

The reality here is that Apple has behaved like this for years. It is ironic because Microsoft and most other tech companies are comparatively ultra-tolerant of abuse and criticism on their own forums. Only Apple users commonly find it acceptable for Apple to censor technical reviews that show Apple products in a bad light:

Financial Times:

Apple was on Tuesday facing a growing backlash over poor iPhone 4 reception after the technology group blocked links on its user-support pages to a negative review by an influential US consumer watchdog.

Consumer Reports, the non-profit magazine, on Monday published a review online that stated it had tested three iPhone 4s in controlled settings and found that touching the lower left corner “can significantly degrade” the signal, causing dropped calls.

Apple deleted references in several online discussions to the consumer group’s online posting, leading VentureBeat and investment blogs to pounce on what they described as censorship in the Apple-hosted forums

It's inexcusable but again this is how Apple has been run for years and years, and any conscious industry observer knows it. But tech coverage of Apple has been the definition of supine for all those years. Speaking of which:

Consumer Reports:

Consumer Reports praised other features in the iPhone and actually ranked it higher than any other smartphone it tested recently.

This is consistent with CR's apologetic tone regarding their lab's findings (I would bet good money that their testing lab wrote a report much harsher than the language that came out). It blows my mind that in this crowded phone marketplace, the iPhone 4 is top-ranked despite having a critical design flaw that affects the core feature of the phone. But maybe after so many years of watching Apple get treated with kid gloves by pseudo-reporters like Walt Mossberg, I should be used to it.