Apple Responds to iPhone 4 Reception Problems
Apple’s response to the grip of death is:
- Pretending that previous iPhones were also subject to this problem, which as far as I know is not true—certainly not to the same extent.
- Acknowledging that iPhone has always inflated the signal strength. This explains why I usually have more bars than other AT&T phones and why calling is unreliable even with 4–5 bars.
- Announcing a free update that will reduce the number of displayed bars, thus hiding the drop.
- Not announcing anything that will improve the actual reception for people affected by this issue.
- Deflecting the blame to AT&T.
John Gruber brings his usual translation.
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I'm able to reproduce the effect using an iPhone 3G...
I've still not heard anything out of them on the proximity sensor issue. That's had me ready to throw this thing across the room. "Donavan you muted yourself again" is a VERY common phrase when I try to use my phone as a phone.
The signal strength on my 3GS does not seem to be affected at all by how I hold it.
[...] 4 seems to be following the path of the Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter, where Apple stonewalls and eventually offers a fix that still doesn’t work [...]
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After reading all this, I tried to reproduce it on my 3G. I managed to make it drop from five to one bar by gripping it tightly in my palm (like on those videos) with the right hand, thumb along the right side and fingers distributed on the left side. I alos experienced several times bad call quality with five bars. I’ll map signal strength for places where I’m often befor and after the update.