iPhone '4' thread

vicki83

bubblesmoney wrote: »

You could always buy an O2 payg simple for free and you would be an existing customer. If it is network locked then unlock it and use with your orange sim if you want it that bad.

But make sure they sell it to payg customers too before getting the payg sim.

i tried this but you had to have been a customer before a certain date since posting a friend of a friend has told me he works for o2 and can get me one but i want to hold off for the white one now seen as orange aint going to let me out of my contract and the buy out fee is going up by the day not down?!

bubblesmoney

vicki83 wrote: »

i tried this but you had to have been a customer before a certain date since posting a friend of a friend has told me he works for o2 and can get me one but i want to hold off for the white one now seen as orange aint going to let me out of my contract and the buy out fee is going up by the day not down?!

probably waiting might be better because apple might have sorted the antenna issue by then and released a slightly modified version of the iphone4 by then, will work to your advantage when trying to sell the phone later if you wish to do so. or there might be 'other' much better phones on the market by then, which might interest you then.

Oscar_The_Grouch

lozzaman wrote: »

Problem is, we really would need the raw data to see if it is affecting them or not. If they are in a high signal strength area of say -70dBm, then covering the antenna is not going to cause a bar drop, even though it could still be causing a major signal drop.

I used to live in a London suburb with really strong reception, so much so that I'd never see less than about -75dBm. If I had an iPhone4 there I doubt I'd have ever had the problem. That's not to say the problem doesn't exist.

This is exactly the point I wanted to make; if it does not cause you a problem, then is there really any need for all this press?

I have an XDA at present. I know that I can make calls on it in the house. I know I can make calls on it when I'm out and about. I couldn't, frankly, give a flying hoot about how many bars or Bm I do or do not have, nor whether these change depending on how I hold the phone; it just works.

I can hold the phone in a certain way that makes all the bars disappear. You could, if you wanted to be a complete pedant, say that "a problem exists", but if it doesn't affect me in my day to date life, is it a "problem" that's worth worrying about? Answer: NO!!!

So how many people are ACTUALLY finding they have issues with their iPhone and what have they done about it? Based on the complete lack of response from any iPhone owners, I'm wondering whether the iPhone signal problem is about as important as the one affecting my XDA.

Oscar_The_Grouch

bubblesmoney wrote: »

probably waiting might be better because apple might have sorted the antenna issue by then and released a slightly modified version of the iphone4 by then, will work to your advantage when trying to sell the phone later if you wish to do so. or there might be 'other' much better phones on the market by then, which might interest you then.

Or you could go into a phone shop, try the "on display" iPhone and see if there are any signal problems, get a free case and walk out with a nice phone and be very happy.

It's your choice.......

N20Y1D

Oscar_The_Grouch wrote: »

Or you could go into a phone shop, try the "on display" iPhone and see if there are any signal problems, get a free case and walk out with a nice phone and be very happy.

It's your choice.......

Depends how close you live to the phone shop, and if you are getting the free case to preserve the phone or because without it, its just an expensive paperweight but oh so aesthetically pleasing..

lozzaman

Oscar_The_Grouch wrote: »

This is exactly the point I wanted to make; if it does not cause you a problem, then is there really any need for all this press?

I have an XDA at present. I know that I can make calls on it in the house. I know I can make calls on it when I'm out and about. I couldn't, frankly, give a flying hoot about how many bars or Bm I do or do not have, nor whether these change depending on how I hold the phone; it just works.

I can hold the phone in a certain way that makes all the bars disappear. You could, if you wanted to be a complete pedant, say that "a problem exists", but if it doesn't affect me in my day to date life, is it a "problem" that's worth worrying about? Answer: NO!!!

So how many people are ACTUALLY finding they have issues with their iPhone and what have they done about it? Based on the complete lack of response from any iPhone owners, I'm wondering whether the iPhone signal problem is about as important as the one affecting my XDA.

A drop of 20dB *is* severe though and would mean in a large proportion of the country there will be dropped calls, when there wouldn't be otherwise. Where I lived in London wouldn't have been one of those areas but where I am now certainly would be. Number of bars is fairly meaningless and as Steve Jobs correctly said, isn't standardised. If the signal is -60dBm or -80dBm it doesn't really matter, but if it is -95dB in the first place, a drop of 20dB is going to cause the call to drop.

http://video.consumerreports.org/services/player/bcpid21495733001?bctid=111613310001

Oscar_The_Grouch

lozzaman wrote: »

A drop of 20dB *is* severe though and would mean in a large proportion of the country there will be dropped calls, when there wouldn't be otherwise. Where I lived in London wouldn't have been one of those areas but where I am now certainly would be. Number of bars is fairly meaningless and as Steve Jobs correctly said, isn't standardised. If the signal is -60dBm or -80dBm it doesn't really matter, but if it is -95dB in the first place, a drop of 20dB is going to cause the call to drop.

http://video.consumerreports.org/services/player/bcpid21495733001?bctid=111613310001

OK; back to the original question: How many people is this ACTUALLY affecting and ACTUALLY making them drop ACTUAL calls? I don't give a hoot (as I've mentioned before) about dB!

Oscar_The_Grouch

N20Y1D wrote: »

Depends how close you live to the phone shop, and if you are getting the free case to preserve the phone or because without it, its just an expensive paperweight but oh so aesthetically pleasing..

Oh come off it! There are O2, Tesco, 3 and Carphone Warehouse shops all over the UK. If you live in Shetland, I can understand that a trip to the shops may not be as easy for you as the rest of us, but otherwise the, rather camp "Depends how close you live to the phone shop" line is just not an issue.

As for the "dropped calls", read my post again about checking out the "on display" iPhone for signal issues first. I'm still waiting for someone to post on here who is an ACTUAL iPhone owner who has suffered this burning problem that I can replicate on my XDA.

bubblesmoney

Oscar if you look at the 3g maps for all the networks that I posted on a separate thread recently you will see that vast parts of the uk are not covered by 3g and even the coverage released by the government bodies are for 110dbm range for 50% of the time, so there is just a leeway of 3dbm before one can lose the signal if one were those 3g maps. This will be an issue on 3g network like three. And for anyone interested in decent data speeds. Of course I too am interested in seeing how many it affects but I guess only a small percentage would actually cancel the contract.

I know you don't care about the dbm, but it will be the factor deciding whether the call drops and not some !!!! bar shown on the phone whether you like it or not. Physics is the same for everyone including the iphone. You can't defy physics and expect the phone to work. Please read the gizmodo and anandtech analysis i linked earlier, it shows how fudged the signal bars are. It stays 4bars till dbm drops below 100dbm or something likethat. In that scenario and drop off 13dbm is enough to drop the call while it actually drops 20 - 25dbm. So as I said the bar shown in the shop will be different from where you use the phone at home or work. Best to borrow someone's iphone 4 and check at places you mostly use the phone. Or you could use signal meters easily available from the net or use any phone that shows the raw signal values. Many android phones show it in settings menus or you could use dialler codes on even the iphone 3gs and see raw signal strength but don't try that on the iphone 4 as this menu has been deleted by apple for obvious reasons .

The tricorder app on the android market also gives the signal strength in dbm and so does the antennas app on android. See if equivalent apps on iphone 3gs show the actual signal strength in dbm.

N20Y1D

Oscar_The_Grouch wrote: »

Oh come off it! There are O2, Tesco, 3 and Carphone Warehouse shops all over the UK. If you live in Shetland, I can understand that a trip to the shops may not be as easy for you as the rest of us, but otherwise the, rather camp "Depends how close you live to the phone shop" line is just not an issue.

It was more to do with the signal strength in a town centre being different to that of someones home/place of work. You could get full signal if the shop is right next to a mast, that may not be the case a few miles away.