NEWS: Verizon and AT&T May Both Get Apple Tablet

On the contrary -- see data from Jeff and the citation I posted.

See:

Nope. The iPhone 4 is at least between 6 and 18 times more affected by touching the antenna than the worst conventional cell phone I tested. Double that again for the typical cell phone. It's not a problem in strong signal areas, but might drop the call in a weak signal area.

So many battles. On so many fronts. Get a life.

his data is not real world, much like your claim about specs of temperature extremes not being all that relevant.

changewave just did a survey of people who actually own the iphone 4 (real world data, oh no) and found that overall, the iphone 4 is outperforming just about all other smartphones (their words), although it's a little less than the 3gs.

nearly 2/3rds of the respondents do *not* find the antenna to be a problem and an additional 14% think it's a minor issue. for the math impaired that's about 80% who think it's not a big deal.

of the remaining users, 14% think the antenna issue is somewhat of a problem and only 7% think it's a serious problem.

that's pretty good for a phone that the media would like you to believe is fatally flawed.

the survey also notes that the #1 complaint is about at&t (not the antenna) and also that the iphone 4 is dropping *fewer* calls than the previous 3gs, even though at&t's overall call drop rate has gone *up*.

also, norway tested the iphone 4 and found that it's not a problem there and is blaming everything on at&t. i know someone who uses an unlocked iphone 4 on t-mobile usa and has no issues at all.

so no, it really isn't a big deal, according to actual users.

now try real world tests.

changewave found that the iphone 4 is dropping *fewer* calls than the

3gs, and roughly 80% of iphone 4 users don't find the antenna issue to be much of a problem, but they do think at&t sucks, the #1 complaint.

Alan Baker wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.shawcable.com:

STill no answer to the question I see....

So, how much is Jobs paying you to defend the company?

temperature

temperature

Depends on your POV, I guess. If you'll recall (or Google,) I'm actually on the non-issue side myself- I think it's a design flaw, but one so easily mitigated or avoided, that it (alone) wouldn't prevent me from buying one.

I was perfectly fine with the antenna issue, but what I really objected to, was Jobs' dog-and-pony show presentation that tried to show "innocence by association," suggesting that since other smartphones drop a few db when held, the iPhone's 20-point drop is the same. I'd have respected a more brutally honest "it's a radical new antenna design, and we realize bridging the gap causes problems, but the gap had to go somewhere, yada, yada, free bumper fixes it." Instead, he gave some mealy mouthed crap about the "industry needs to do better..." Well, according to PC World's testing, the industry seems to be doing much better already.

Assuming there's a heat shutdown issue on the iPad (and other than in this thread I've never heard of it,) I expect Jobs to do another presentation showing various mobile devices shutting down in hot cars, desserts, and convection ovens, and tell us all it's not just the iPad that shuts down when overheated.

I know you meant deserts, but that made me laugh. Thanks. :-)

Is there a problem with my testing methods or results? If so, how is it not a "real world" test? Have you tried your phone?

Did you actually read the original article on which that's based? It's a customer satisfaction survey, not a field test:

In a surprising finding, iPhone 4 owners reported a better dropped call rating (5.2%) than their 3GS counterparts (6.3%).

In other words, despite the hoopla surrounding the antenna issue, in actuality iPhone 4 owners report experiencing slightly fewer dropped calls on the average than do iPhone 3GS owners.

That's a fabulous 213 iPhone 4 owners surveyed. That's out of 3 million sold in the first 3 weeks. Funny, but I don't see anything about 80% of the users not having a problem with the antenna. However, in the 3rd graph, you'll see that it's the #3 complaint, where 24% of the 213 users didn't like the antenna problems. Extrapolate that to 3 million owners, and there should be 720,000 irate users rioting at Apple's doorstep.

[snip]

Yet there don't seem to be.

You frankly can't trust people reporting that they're bothered by a problem the media has told them they're supposed to be bothered by.

Yep. That's very logical.

Once upon a time, I worked on a new computah accessory design. After shipping 3000 pieces, to about 2000 customers, I decided to re-test the included driver and diagnostic software. Nothing worked right. Yet, not one of the 2000 customer complained until we asked them if they had a specific problem with the software. They ran the floppy, watched it crash, and never said anything.

Fast forward about 15 years to the iPhone 4. If customers had not heard about the antenna problems in the press, they would probably blame the dropped calls on the much maligned AT&T wireless network.

I'm sure every iPhone 4 owner has tried the death grip test. If they were in a strong signal area, it wasn't a problem. If in a weak signal area, they suddenly have a problem. Since Apple or AT&T saw fit to remove the field test mode application in the iPhone 4, it's not possible for users to supply real numbers, resulting in some really subjective guesswork.

...our informal tests indicate that different phone models do not exhibit attenuation to the same degree--and the iPhone 4 performed far worse when attenuated than did most of its competitors in our tests. Most significantly, the iPhone 4--almost certainly because of its innovative external antenna--was the only phone we tested that has a distinct (and easily reachable) weak spot capable of ending a call with a single touch.

That's roughly the same as what I found. The iPhone 4 is far worse than the others I tested.

yep, and a good part of it is at&t. people on other carriers aren't reporting as many problems. norway said it's entirely at&t.

there's a very slick replacement called signal that plots the towers on a map. jailbreak only.

Complaint rate is very inelastic. A small change in service or conditions will cause a massively disproportionate change in complaint rate. Just below the threshold, where complaints go exponential is where most vendors try to position their services. I also have a guess(tm) that some vendors are dropping long length calls when the system gets busy in order to improve availability. The problem is that I can't prove that it's intentional, and not the result of something like CDMA cell breathing or interference.

Nifty:

Thanks, but I use my 3G as a PDA without cell service.

With all due respect, that sounds like assumptions to me. ;) My own experience is quite different:

Complaints are greatly affected by perception (like blaming AT&T for iPhone issues), level of frustration (like how annoying the issue is), how well the issue is understood (like what actually caused the problem), and offsetting factors (like how cool the device is in other ways). I can't count the number of times I've heard people say something like, "My computer crashed, I must have done something wrong."

Level of service in most if not all companies I've worked with is actually a sophisticated profitability assessment, balancing the cost of lost business against the cost of retaining business, as well as the value of reputation, a big issue at most consumer companies. They tend to find that happy customers are much more profitable than customers who are just tolerating their product or service.

Well, yes and no. A survey is data based on people's recollections. It's as "real" as their memories are accurate (more below-)

"Their words"- minus a few. Outperforming "in terms of overall customer satisfaction and meeting owners' expectations..." was the rest of the quote. It's disingenuous of you to imply the "outperforming" has anything to do with antenna or reception performance.

Or a testament to just how good cellular service is in most areas. Even so, that's 1-in-5 believing it's a problem.

Also disingenuous:

The number one complaint (27%) isn't actually AT&T service, but the _requirement_ to use AT&T. That could just as easily be an indictment of the iPhone's exclusivity with any one carrie ras it is of AT&T itself.

The second place complant was a tie between AT&T service issues, and ANTENNA ISSUES! Followed closely (23%) by dropped calls!

Is it not possible that some of the dissatisfaction of AT&T by iPhone owners is from antenna/dropped calls problems of the phone being blamed on the operator?

Again, Changewave uses surveys, based on customer recollections, to determine dropped call rates. The fact that AT&T (according to Steve's Antennagate presentation) told us that based on their _actual_ data the 4 drops more calls than the 3GS, tells us Changewave's data accuracy (meaning the fuzzy memories of their respondents) is likely suspect.

IIRC, O2 in the UK took the opposite stance. (Blaming the phone, I mean, not blaming Norway!)

4 out of 5 if you believe Changewave. 20% having issues is a pretty significant number!

Not if it's from people who had AT&T prior to iPhone 4

They really do suck. Picking them for the exclusive was a stupid marketing move.

This IS his life.

In some places. Not in others. No one carrier is great/best in all areas.

It's actually worked out incredibly well for both Apple and AT&T.

Yes it did. And for all the complaints about how good/bad AT&T is, there has been much conjecture that if any other provider had been given the iPhone exclusive, they would have had the same problems that AT&T has had with the useage patterns.

Locally I've been told by those that have the iPhone that the service is excellent. I have no need for a smartphone of any sort, so I have no direct experience.