Apple has issued an open letter to iPhone 4 users, revealing that the formula used to calculate bars of signal strength on the device is inaccurate, and will be corrected in the coming weeks through a free software fix.
If this wasn’t found on Apple’s website I’d be doubting whether this letter was genuine at all.
“We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising. 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.”
Really? And…
“We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same- the iPhone 4′s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped.”
I think it’s the language used that rubs me the wrong way. It’s almost movie script like…”back to our labs” “totally wrong”. Who actually wrote this?
The full letter can be found below.
CUPERTINO, Calif., July 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ —
Dear iPhone 4 Users,The iPhone 4 has been the most successful product launch in Apple’s history. It has been judged by reviewers around the world to be the best smartphone ever, and users have told us that they love it. So we were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them. Here is what we have learned.
To start with, gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones. But some users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band. This is a far bigger drop than normal, and as a result some have accused the iPhone 4 of having a faulty antenna design.
At the same time, we continue to read articles and receive hundreds of emails from users saying that iPhone 4 reception is better than the iPhone 3GS. They are delighted. This matches our own experience and testing. What can explain all of this?
We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.
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.
We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.
We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same- the iPhone 4′s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. For the vast majority of users who have not been troubled by this issue, this software update will only make your bars more accurate. For those who have had concerns, we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused.
As a reminder, if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.
We hope you love the iPhone 4 as much as we do.
Thank you for your patience and support.
Apple
If the signal strength only drops when you hold it a certain way, it’s clearly a hardware problem, right?
I’m a bit skeptical… Aren’t they just going to let it show more bars instead of really fixing the problem…?
Not necessarily. You can probably hold any phone and make it drop a bar or so, a software error could misinterpret the figures given to it and report a complete loss of service.
Still, that release looks like it was written by the tea boy.
All the software fix is doing is to properly display your signal strength graphically. The extreme loss of bars is what initially tipped people off. This will have no impact in the data and voice connection loss currently being seen by many iPhone4 users.
@Farid : exactly
And they’ll just have to tell the problem is coming from bad 3G network from 3G operators.
Between us, we know they won’t be able to fix this without taking back every single iPhone sold (impossible), but this letter is a wey to say “okay we at least tried something and this is working in our labs (with all our engineers wearing plastic gloves ) so this may com from something else”
They don”t even need to do this, 4G this just gonna be the best seller of the family, and next march, they’ll annouce a brand new 4G+ with no such kind of network problem, a good reason to sell it 600$.. ?
“Who actually wrote this?”
a company that employs a proof reader…
“If this wasn’t found on Apple’s website I’d be doubting the whether this letter was genuine at all.”
hey, either you get the news from us first with the occasional typo or you get it late with none. Typo’s mean that much to you?
And hey, Apple had days to get that letter right.
Btw, where are your balls? Show your real name and URL.
at last an open letter by Apple – much better than Jobs’ short oracle-like replies to user e-mails
I’ve been trying to submit this comment for the past 24 hours, but the interweb keeps timing out – perhaps I shouldn’t be hugging my iPad so tight !
hey, so was it something on our side?
I’m an fanboy for sure, but Apple is absolutely lying about this. Placing a finger over the bottom right seam degrades the data speeds. Not sure about voice, but data absolutely slows to a crawl and then dies. So, no matter how many bars may be displayed, the fact is that bandwidth is next to zero when the seam is covered with a finger.
Further evidence that this is a hardware issue … when the phone is in a rubber case and the same grip is used, there is no signal degradation and bandwidth is unaffected.
Okay, so testing shows that this is absolutely a hardware issue. That being the case, I still have to say that after using the phone for a week now, I haven’t had a dropped call and 3G has been rock steady.
When the phone is in a ru
Technically they aren’t lieing. They are just being smart to try dance around the issue. What they’ve said here was that while investigating the reception issue they found a problem with how it displays the bars on the phone. So they are going to release a software fix for the bars.
Techically the phone does offer the best reception yet. Except for when you’re holding it in your hand (sans case).
It’s all damage control.
It’s an apology. To be honest, more companies should do this, and why not give us some kind of standard so it’s easy to compare phones.
typos not typo’s
This won’t fix anything. All it will do is appropriatly display your reception in bar form.
Anandtech did a study on the bars and were able to get the phone to display the signal in db rather in the graphical representation. Their studies concluded that by holding the phone your reception will drop 24db. To put this into context remember that the db scale is logarithmic and this would equate to roughly a 95% loss in reception.
Essentially if you have anything other than a legitamite five bar signal, by touching the side of the phone you’ll lose data connection and drop calls.
It’s a hardware design flaw and they’re just trying to play damage control.
Anand article:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2
Gizmodo article:
http://gizmodo.com/5577812/why-apples-iphone-4-update-wont-fix-your-reception-problem
(contains a nice graph showing what situations will result in dropped calls)
You WILL have significant signal degredation on the iPhone4 while touching it. The only thing up in the air is whether or not you’ll drop a call. My hypothesis is that they didn’t notice the issue in internal testing due to them having a cell site on campus and while doing external testing the phone was always in a case so they couldn’t touch the sides of the phone.
Software will not fix this issue. They aren’t really even saying it will in the article. All the software ‘fix’ will fix will be the graphical representation of your signal strength and nothing more.