Got iPhone 4 for wife… reception and other observations

I got the iPhone 4 for my wife Saturday. And we definitely have some issues in our house. But let me backtrack a moment…

We updated our 3Gs iPhones to 4.01 before this, and were expecting to see the bars change. We normally get 4-5 bars, so all this time I'm thinking "We have great service here." Heh… well! Now we get 2-3 bars, sometimes 1 (in the living room in particular). My wife had said sometimes she doesn't hear me call, and in the living room, we do get a bar, sometimes 2, with the update. So it makes more sense now… our service was spottier than we had been led to believe.

So now… flash forward to the iPhone 4. I naturally tested it out pronto. No matter how I hold it, I end up losing the signal. If I leave it on the table, it's 1-2 bars. I pick it up, no matter how, I lose it after a few seconds. So… we don't have a case for it yet (waiting on Incase to release theirs), but I took the existing one off her 3Gs and slid it on. It was a snug fit, though the cutouts aren't quite right (for obvious reasons), but it was enough to test out what to expect with a fitted case. Holding it with that case on it, and I never was able to get the signal to drop. It consistently stayed at 2 bars, sometimes dipping to 1, but never a loss.

Now in all fairness to the iPhone 4, the 3Gs has always been in a case, so I can't say it wouldn't have lost a signal without it. I suspect it would have to be perfectly honest. Perhaps not so easily, but it's reasonably certain given what we know now. It apparently is more prone to missing calls in our living room in particular as it was.

Anywho…. I decided to do some tests over 3G with the SpeedTest app, on her new iP4 and my 3Gs, over 3G. I disabled the wi-fi on both and repeatedly ran the tests. The download speeds varied a bit, but ultimately were about the same in their peak speeds. But the upload speed… holy moley! The iPhone 4 consistently was about 5x faster than the 3Gs was. Very nice!

A couple other notes… the screen and photos are amazing! Outdoor photos are as good as we could ever ask for. The interior photos are overly yellowish, due to what's been widely reported as difficulties with the camera adjusting the white balance for some lighting conditions. Hopefully this really will get addressed in the upcoming software update. If not, this will be a downer. It's probably the only real flaw I can complain of.

The antenna thing is a non-issue as far as I'm concerned since it's more a reflection of the quality of our service in our home. City-wide, we still get 4-5 bars, so case or no case, the iPhone 4 will not be losing service regularly. And since it was destined to get a case anyway, and since judging from the reviews by Anandtech and AntennaSys, we can expect an improvement in the ability to hold on to a call in poor areas (like our living room!) with a case on it, we're both happy with it all.

You might want to call AT&T about it and threaten to switch carriers. See if they will offer you a free micro cell for the trouble. After all it is only fair that AT&T start to show some decent customer service of their own for people who have stuck with them through the years.

applebjesus said:

You might want to call AT&T about it and threaten to switch carriers. See if they will offer you a free micro cell for the trouble. After all it is only fair that AT&T start to show some decent customer service of their own for people who have stuck with them through the years.

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Not a bad idea... she'll ask about it since she'll be up there to fix her mother's data plan (she inherited the old 3Gs), but we're not going to be pushy about it. 1 bar, 2 bars, who really cares so long as the calls are good and stable. Although to date, I guess they really haven't been. But I'm expecting better once she gets a case anyway. We'll see.

applebjesus said:

You might want to call AT&T about it and threaten to switch carriers. See if they will offer you a free micro cell for the trouble. After all it is only fair that AT&T start to show some decent customer service of their own for people who have stuck with them through the years.

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you will NOT get a free one unless you are a major customer, besides these are going to go away soon, or they will stop selling them, because there is an increasing amount of interference to the Macro network, and some issues with the microcell not working all the time

james515 said:

you will NOT get a free one unless you are a major customer, besides these are going to go away soon, or they will stop selling them, because there is an increasing amount of interference to the Macro network, and some issues with the microcell not working all the time

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Well she asked about it, and as expected they said no. I'm not particularly put out by it. Whatever dropped/missed calls we have experienced in the past (I actually never have and we only think she may have… she more likely just never heard it ring. LOL!), they are uncommon. We were very satisfied with our service before… just because I'm seeing fewer bars doesn't really change that, and since we know a case will stop her iP4 from losing a signal, and since we know from Anandtech's tests in particular that we can actually expect improvement, if anything, in the ability to hold a call in a poor service area, I'm good about it all.

The point of my post was really more to provide my perspective on the matter as a regular here who can replicate the antenna attenuation issue. Before we got an iP4, it's been my position based on various reports from real technical people that this was blown way out of proportion. Now that we have one and are in that crowd that can be affected… I still say it's a non-issue, though Apple stepping up and giving out cases was the right thing to do (they did drop the ball, after all, by not shielding it better from the get-go). We'll get a case and call it a day. Couldn't be happier, really.

Thanks for that report. I don't have an iPhone 4, but I shared your pre-owning conclusions and am glad to see my theory was correct.

@lifeisabeach: thanks for the update. It's good to hear some real experiences like this. Nearly everyone I have spoken to about this 'issue' doesn't actually own an iPhone 4 and therefore hasn't been able to try it properly like this. Whether this is actually the whole thing being blown out of proportion or actually a fair number of people with more serious hardware faults, I'm not sure. Either way, for me, I'm still interested in upgrading my iPhone 3GS to an iPhone 4 and that fact that where I currently live (Cologne, Germany) seems to have good reception (nearly always 5 bars) this is another plus.

i have an iphone 4 and while i can't replicate the dropping bars issue while the phone is naked, it does not with a case on. I never plan on not having a case on it so it doesn't bother me.

Just an aside, white balance can easily be edited in iPhoto and most other photo software programs.

EvoRoadster said:

Just an aside, white balance can easily be edited in iPhoto and most other photo software programs.

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Yah... I actually found a cheap photo editing app for the iPhone that I plan to experiment with a bit. Hopefully that will work well.

In other news... she suddenly started experiencing the "NO SIM" error last night, continuing on through today. It just keeps coming and going. She went to AT&T and they replaced the SIM card twice... no fix. At the moment, their advice is to call Apple for a replacement. I'll be trying out a couple things beforehand though.

Now this is interesting. I haven't been able to get her iPhone 4 to replicate the NO SIM error all night. Just now, I was in the living room, and noticed she had 3 bars… normally she's only had 1-2. I just tried holding it in "that spot"… it dropped to one bar but never none, even though I have been able to reliably make it drop as recently as last night. She then told me she's been getting an extra bar since they swapped out the SIM card at AT&T. They did do a reset of the network settings, so perhaps that is part of the reason I can't get her iPhone to drop the signal now. Still… this is very curious. It makes me wonder if that "problem" is more related to the SIM card somehow.