iPhone 4 - signal propagation issues because of "the band"?

i guess if people are having such issues, it can't hurt, and if that's all it is, then El Jobso is right that there is no issue. I guess I can try it just for kicks.
 
Decided to give it a shot just for kicks.

It doesn't help.

Upon taking the MicroSIM out, it looked very stable/normal to me.
 
If that's the case, and the SIM is "shorting" something, why the need to leave it out for 20 minutes? Seems a little strange to me.
 
The guess is over this picture (by someone at MacRumors):

simshort.jpg


Apparently that "gap" between the microSIM frame/tray and the microSIM contacts itself could be where the issue lies, as the tray is made of metal. One person commented that he found mention that the inside of the tray is supposed to be "coated with a non-conducting material" or whatever - could that be the same coating that's supposed to be applied to the metal antenna band (as rumored/speculated)? Coincidence? Hrmmm...
 
Bahamut said:
Apparently that "gap" between the microSIM frame/tray and the microSIM contacts itself could be where the issue lies, as the tray is made of metal. One person commented that he found mention that the inside of the tray is supposed to be "coated with a non-conducting material" or whatever - could that be the same coating that's supposed to be applied to the metal antenna band (as rumored/speculated)? Coincidence? Hrmmm...
Click to expand...

Perhaps. But that doesn't explain why using a Bumper case may alleviate the issue...
 
Oh, there's more than one problem plaguing these phones... this is just one potential fix for one of them. ;)
 
Now that I think of it, I did *not* have this issue when I was using a regular sim cut down to microsim dimensions in my phone. The issue started sometime after I got an offiicial microsim (it was free, and I figured it'd be for the best just in case I ever needed to make a warranty claim)
 
Gave it a shot. No go.

If the lack of a coating on the micro SIM tray is indeed the problem, it'll be interesting to see if anyone comes up with a homebrew substitute.
 
I'm sure it doesn't make much of a difference, but it's interesting that the SIM I got from AT&T(left) is quite different compared to the SIM that came w/ my iPhone (right)

rowl4134fxwuevn599fu.jpg



edit: holy shit, this seems to be working for me. I'm in a room where I don't get above 2 bars... and w/ the death grip I did not lose any bars whatsoever. I actually gained a 3rd bar for a few seconds :p
 
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Yah, most people are noting the differences in SIMs as well over at MacRumors but, I guess the potential issue this is related to is best described by this image someone just posted:

simcontacts2.png


While his microSIM card (direct from AT&T, not originally a SIM then cut to fit) does have an edge around it (meaning the SIM contacts) of some degree, when it's inserted into the SIM tray for the iPhone 4, the "gap" between the SIM pads along the edge (what's indicated where the red circle is) either come in direct contact with the SIM tray itself (creating a short of some kind) or they're so close it's causing some potential electrical issue.

The basic gist of this is: the SIM card's pads should never come into contact with anything except the "teeth" of the SIM socket they're designed to work with.

Other people are reporting random "No SIM" errors popping up also, so this could all be related and their could be a design flaw with the particular SIM socket in use in some if not all iPhone 4's.
 
opened mine up and the circled area above certainly indicates that the SIM is contacting the metal tray.

i put a piece of scotch tape over the edge but didn't seem to fix the issue for me, can still drop the signal at will.
 
I just tried a super thin strip of electrical tape on that edge that touches the frame. I can still make the signal drop. Oh well.
 
Anand has a page devoted to the antenna issue in his iPhone 4 review.

Short summary: holding the iPhone 4 the "wrong way" does indeed drop signal, but due to the way iOS 4 is reporting signal, there appears to the user a far more dramatic loss of reception than is actually occurring. (This is related to what Walt Mossberg mentioned in his review.) Despite the low bars, you're still getting a usable signal, albeit not as strong as what you'd get if you were holding the phone the "right way." Other smartphones also do the exact same thing, but the effect isn't as pronounced because they don't have external antennae like the iPhone 4.

On the flip side, the external GSM antenna DOES improve reception, and the iPhone 4 is more likely to make and hold a call in areas of low signal than the 3GS. The phone and software is more sensitive and therefore better at extending your usable range from a cell tower.

So, expect an iOS update which will more or less eliminate most of the complaining, because it'll change the way signal strength is represented in bars. And don't expect a recall or a free replacement of your iPhone 4.
 
There's really no such thing as "holding the phone the wrong way," it's patently absurd. Look at this:

attenuationvsnexusone.png


Look at the severe attenuation the iPhone 4 suffers when holding the phone exactly as it's designed to be held, how you or I more than likely hold it, as Steve Jobs holds it, as every piece of Apple marketing materials show it being held, and so on. This whole "death grip" thing goes overboard - while you can grip it tighter and cause more skin-on-metal contact by increasing (literally) the surface contact.

It's 10x worse with the iPhone 4 than it is with the iPhone 3GS on the same cell site, and ~2x as bad as the Nexus One doing the same test, and it's all caused by touching that metal band with the phone in the hand as anyone - including Steve Jobs himself - holds it.

And yes, all this is related primarily to 3G usage, and too many people focus on the "dropped calls" aspect but, when you hold the phone in your hand to surf with Safari or do something else over the 3G network and it fails just the same, it's a big problem. No calls necessary...

Proximity of organic tissue with microwave antennas is going to cause a measurably level of attenuation - if you decrease the proximity and close the space/gap, the attenuation increases, hence people experiencing MORE signal loss when they grip it tighter, which nobody really should be doing since THAT is what is abnormal.

All this centers around people holding the phone naturally, and Apple is apparently claiming (by telling their support people this) that there's no problem at all, and just as apparently based on thousands upon thousands of reports all over the place, they're wrong.
 
Bahamut said:
All this centers around people holding the phone naturally, and Apple is apparently claiming (by telling their support people this) that there's no problem at all, and just as apparently based on thousands upon thousands of reports all over the place, they're wrong.
Click to expand...

They're technically correct in that you're going to lose some signal by holding the phone, no matter what phone it is. Anand's chart proves that with the Nexus One and iPhone 3GS. The point he's making is that the antenna improves reception so greatly that even if you hold it the "wrong way" you're still able to actually make use of your cellular connection.

That's why he spends so much time talking about the signal level needed to display a certain number of bars: he's making the case that the death grip became the death grip because of the way the signal is being graphically displayed, not actually because you lose the entirety of your cellular connection just by touching a corner.

I've observed exactly the same thing as Anand: even if you touch the lower left corner and lose bars, the iPhone is still capable of functioning. You can still make and receive calls and transmit and receive data. (No, it's not as fast as with a full, clear signal, but that's sort of a Captain Obvious complaint.)

I really think that once Apple issues an update (whenever that happens; so much for the rumored Monday release) then people will realize they're still able to use the phone even while holding it in a death grip, and the complaints will generally die down.
 
This is the part that disturbed me the most "We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see"

They think people are so stupid they wont notice having a bad signal as much if the bars are taller. (Sad part is its probably true) I love my iPhone 4 but give me a break, they were STUNNED?
 
If the reception issues suddenly disappear after the iOS update, I will be stunned.
 
I just got my iPhone 4 and it appears I got a phone with the issue. However, I naturally hold it in a way that doesn't affect the signal...guess I'm lucky since it won't be an inconvenience. My room mate used my phone and he holds it to where it drops signal and he said he did notice call quality.

Over all I love this phone though. The screen is awesome and the phone is fast as hell. It would be nice if they fixed the issue though...even though I don't hold it that way.
 
Bahamut said:
If you've ever in your life wanted to see what marketing and media spin looks like, read this:

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/02appleletter.html

It's the biggest piece of bullshit in print since... well, some book that starts with a capital "B" and is the most distributed piece of fiction ever in the history of mankind...

I'm truly stunned.
Click to expand...

Just because it doesn't jive with your perception of the problem doesn't make it spin, BS, or anything else. We've known since Mossberg's review was published that a fix was forthcoming. The public letter was necessary because of the crapstorm over the issue, but otherwise, this was planned since the before the iPhone 4's release.

People can still make calls and receive data when performing the death grip. That infers that you're not actually blocking the antenna's ability to receive. That means there's a problem with the way signal is being displayed, not the way signal is being received.

There's a good chance this will more or less fix the death grip issue entirely.


darkhunter139 said:
This is the part that disturbed me the most "We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see"

They think people are so stupid they wont notice having a bad signal as much if the bars are taller. (Sad part is its probably true) I love my iPhone 4 but give me a break, they were STUNNED?
Click to expand...

You're misinterpreting "bigger bars." They're referring to making the bars themselves taller for easier viewing and counting, not altering the way low signal is represented. When you dip below 3 bars, the graphics are such that it almost looks like you have 0 bars. This is purely a UI change.
 
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Terpfen said:
Just because it doesn't jive with your perception of the problem doesn't make it spin, BS, or anything else. We've known since Mossberg's review was published that a fix was forthcoming. The public letter was necessary because of the crapstorm over the issue, but otherwise, this was planned since the before the iPhone 4's release.

People can still make calls and receive data when performing the death grip. That infers that you're not actually blocking the antenna's ability to receive. That means there's a problem with the way signal is being displayed, not the way signal is being received.

There's a good chance this will more or less fix the death grip issue entirely.




You're misinterpreting "bigger bars." They're referring to making the bars themselves taller for easier viewing and counting, not altering the way low signal is represented. When you dip below 3 bars, the graphics are such that it almost looks like you have 0 bars. This is purely a UI change.
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It's not a problem with displaying bars as shown by videos where loading webpages while holding the phone is ungodly slow compared to loading the same page while not holding the phone.
 
SixtyWattMan said:
It's not a problem with displaying bars as shown by videos where loading webpages while holding the phone is ungodly slow compared to loading the same page while not holding the phone.
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Mine actually does not do this, I think the whole issue has been blown out of per portion. I just don't like some of the excuses they gave it that letter.
 
SixtyWattMan said:
It's not a problem with displaying bars as shown by videos where loading webpages while holding the phone is ungodly slow compared to loading the same page while not holding the phone.
Click to expand...

Read the letter again. Signal is being overstated by the current software. The phone is telling you that you have a better signal level than you're actually getting. You're not going from great reception to poor reception when using the Death Grip, you're actually going from moderate reception to poor reception. The difference in the degree of dropoff is the key issue, and in the latter scenario, it's exactly what's expected on modern phones and is reproducible on other hardware.

So Apple is going to change the formula used to display signal strength in bars, and suddenly the Death Grip won't be quite as lethal.
 
Terpfen said:
So Apple is going to change the formula used to display signal strength in bars, and suddenly the Death Grip won't be quite as lethal.
Click to expand...

"There is no Death Grip issue." :D

It's an issue just holding the phone the way anyone (including Steve Jobs himself) does hold or would hold the iPhone 4, and a large percentage of those have noticed "the spot" where not only can you make things worse - much worse than just holding it - you can actually cause the loss of service completely. Not everyone, but a very large percentage of owners that have noted issues when they hold the phone normally.

This whole "Death Grip" thing is about as blown out of proportion as Apple's stock price... but that's taking a small hit too since all this started - and of course I'll be rebutted with "Oh, well the market overall is down since last week" and back and forth and back and forth...

"It's the phone, stupid."
 
Bahamut said:
It's an issue just holding the phone the way anyone (including Steve Jobs himself) does hold or would hold the iPhone 4, and a large percentage of those have noticed "the spot" where not only can you make things worse - much worse than just holding it - you can actually cause the loss of service completely. Not everyone, but a very large percentage of owners that have noted issues when they hold the phone normally.
Click to expand...

As I've posted before, I do own an iPhone 4, and I have the Death Grip issue on my phone. What I'm saying as an iPhone 4 owner that even with low or no bars due to the Death Grip, I can still make and receive calls, and I can still send and receive data. This suggests that the Death Grip is not rendering the antenna useless, but that something else is going on.

The issue is not that touching a corner of the phone causes complete and total loss of service. That's simply hysteria. The issue is that signal availability is not being properly reported in the first place, thus causing it to appear as if the finger is interfering with the signal to an almost absurd degree.

If the Death Grip caused a true loss of signal, to the point where you were actually getting no service--as opposed to the software erroneously reporting no service--then it would be impossible to place calls and engage in data exchange. But you can still make calls and still use data service even whilst engaging in a Death Grip.

You're correct: this is entirely blown out of proportion.

Next up on the hysteria menu: when iOS 4.0.1 drops and people complain that they've lost some signal as a result of upgrading, even though they never actually had reception that good in the first place.
 
The "drop" of iOS 4.0.1 or whatever they choose to name it is the proof that something is wrong. Period.

And the fact that you keep focusing on "Death Grip" seems to be a problem. No other than ordinary grip is required to cause a complete total loss of service (aka NO SERVICE on the status bar) and total loss of call capability, data streams (like Pandora, etc), Internet connectivity (pretty obvious), etc. There are numerous videos of people losing signal (which is somewhat understandable since Apple has kindly admitted "the phone doesn't display it correct") but loss of signal can become an interruption in service.

If people knew more about how cell phones work they'd do so much better.

Cell phones are always receiving the control channel data stream from the cell sites, 24/7. That data tells the phone which channels (in their cellular frequency assignments based on the bands they're operating in) it can use for full duplex voice or data operations (as each aspect requires a frequency, paired: one frequency to transmit, one to receive).

The control channel is always there, it never goes anyplace, and the cell phones are not required (by design) to send any signal back at all on that frequency - they're just listening to it, constantly. Reception of the control channel is a non-issue - it's a fairly strong signal that actually operates at a higher power output than the normal voice/data channels do.

When the cell phone associates with a cell site, it receives and looks at the control channel, finds an open channel for voice/data, sends a request (transmission) for service on the channel it found, and the cell site responds on the paired frequency and the cell phone receives it (receiving). At that point, the cell phone is fully associated with the site, and information, either voice or data (same thing to be honest since it's all digital at that point), can be sent from and received by the phone.

From a computer standpoint with respect to networking, a good analogy for this is the DHCP stuff on routers. You "associated" by plugging into the network (your phone waves "Hi, here I am...") and the router announces "Ok, I see you, here's your lease" which means it's giving you a connection, a pipeline through the router and a specific address (in cell phones that would be the channel you're using to connect to the cell site for full duplex operation).

Now, in this analogy, the loss of signal would be if you disconnected the router from the LAN - you are still connected to the router (analogy: the cell site) but you're not getting anything happening. If that happens in the middle of a call or surfing the web, anything that has data flowing back and forth from the cell phone (analogy: no actual Internet connection in operation), you're dead in the water but you're still connected to the "network" (analogy: the router, and you even still have your lease, your address, everything).

Loss of service happens when you're disconnected from the network (analogy: not only was the cable yanked from the router connecting it to the LAN, but someone yanked the cable from your computer connecting you the router!).

You are dead in the water.

Loss of signal happens something interrupts that aspect of the communications circuit - when you lose signal and service degrades, you can have dropped calls, loss of data streams, audio streams disconnect and rebuffer, etc. You're still showing service because you do see bars, none of them but it hasn't lost service - if it had, you'd see NO SERVICE.

This is where people get all this shit so completely wrong, all the time.

It is entirely possible to be on the cellular network, have 0 bars of signal, and still not be able to do a damned thing at all. That's what happens with signal degradation.

Loss of service happens when the signal degradation becomes so severe the cell phone can't even receive the 24/7 control channel, and when that happens, again you're dead in the water.

Apple's so-called "fix" is a Band-Aid, and won't address the actual reasons all this crap is happening: the flawed design of the antennas.

Lots of bites on that Apple of late...
 
Terpfen said:
Read the letter again. Signal is being overstated by the current software. The phone is telling you that you have a better signal level than you're actually getting. You're not going from great reception to poor reception when using the Death Grip, you're actually going from moderate reception to poor reception. The difference in the degree of dropoff is the key issue, and in the latter scenario, it's exactly what's expected on modern phones and is reproducible on other hardware.

So Apple is going to change the formula used to display signal strength in bars, and suddenly the Death Grip won't be quite as lethal.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah read the Apple PR clean up letter they'll fix everything with magic.
 
Apple dropped the ball on this one, I love everything the new iPhone does but it's still a phone first and foremost.
 
I get my new iPhone on Tuesday courtesy of the July 4th weekend. I hope I do not have this issue but no biggie since I always have a case on my phones.
 
SixtyWattMan said:
Oh yeah read the Apple PR clean up letter they'll fix everything with magic.
Click to expand...

The English language desperately needs a sound effect for eye-rolling. Anand came to the same conclusion well before Apple released their PR letter. When you've got an independent source saying the same thing as a press release, it ceases to be spin or self-serving.

But thanks for proving my earlier point about people still finding ways to complain even with a fix in sight.
 
Spencer Webb, who gained notoriety last week by posting an article at his website (AntennaSys.com) about his very short hands-on experience with an iPhone 4 and what he believed could potentially be the problems and why they exist (original article here) received his own personal iPhone 4 this week and did more basic testing (like most people), and apparently has "seen the light":

http://www.antennasys.com/antennasys-blog/2010/7/7/the-iphone-4-smartmodule.html

He's planning to do more in-depth "official and scientific testing" in the coming days and post his results and findings, but just from the new article it's plain to see that yes, something is wrong with the iPhone 4 at least for a great many people, now including Spencer himself.

Remains to be seen precisely what that something is, however...
 
Wel I have had my iPhone for a day now, I can tell you this it doesn't have bad reception when I try to bridge the gap but will randomly lose bars when I leave it alone. I do have a bumper on it and it still does that so IDK what the issue is.
 
Ok, it's official, I'm waiting til iPhone 4G. My 3GS will do fine til then. ;D
 
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