Apple on iPhone 4 reception. It’s better then fine. We only had a bad bar calculation formula…

Julien  By on 02 Jul 10

The reception issues on iPhone 4, and advice on how “to hold it the right way”, has become the joke of the week around internet.

Almost every competitor with  a grudge against iPhone had to chime in with their own version of “you can hold our device anyway you want and it still works” quip.

Looks like Apple is feeling the heat, and now they decided to address  issue head on. Their conclusions?

Reception on iPhone 4 is just fine. Every phone gets weaker reception, when you hold it the certain way :)  But we had a wrong formula to calculate the number of bars indicating signal strengths. We actually used this faulty formula for the last 2 years, in iPhone 3G and 3Gs too. We are working on a new formula for the next firmware update. As soon as it’s out, the problems will go away and you will be able to hold your iPhone anyway you want… If there’s enough signal, that is…

Here’s the relevant part of the press release:

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

It actually correlates quite well with the detailed analysis of iPhone 4 reception issues the AnandTech did.

But it still doesn’t address the the problem of the lack of insulating coating on external antenna, which is the primary reason for the problem, and why bumper cases fix the issue right now.

Let’s hope Apple at least quietly adds a thin insulator layer in the next iPhone 4 production runs.

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  • TriAdX

    this excuse is ridiculous… The logic doesn't even connect the 2 issues. This is just a smoke screen they are hoping will blind the idiots from seeing there is still a real reception problem.

  • http://twitter.com/jefylymna jefylymna

    OK, they are admitting they don't have good signal strength. And it is even worse when you hold the phone in a normal manner. Their fix is, to give you a software fix that will tell you how poor your reception quality really is???

    That sounds like a great fix. We're going to stop lying to you about the poor quality of our phone, that should settle everything. Acai Max Cleanse

  • lsimo

    NO idiots, this sounds correct to me. Do you know any other phones on the market with a similar antenna design. Stop whining like a baby and grow up please, your mmad you can't afford one is all.

    Who is gonna buy this phone and not use an external case anyway? OH and most of the 2 million users don't have a complaint in the world so go buy a google phone, retards

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