New iPhone 4

[studiomprd]

" The camera IS astonishingly good. "

of course, it is HD

and with 2 mic's....

[Marc Wielage]

Even Apple can't ignore a slam from Consumer Reports. This is very bad. (OK, may not "Mel Gibson" bad, but still bad.)

I bet there will be some kind of recall/software update now. Ironically, for the record, 90% of my localized cell problems have improved. I also noticed a brand spanking-new Cell tower out here over on Devonshire Street in Chatsworthless.

Coincidence? 

--Marc W.

[studiomprd]

Should have figured:

Consumer Reports suggests using some Duct Tape to fix the antenna issue

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/07/13/iphone.4.duct.tape/index.html

[Marc Wielage]

Now they're calling it a Toyota-style PR disaster for Apple...

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/07/14/apple.iphone4.problems/index.html?iref=NS1

Mine's been doing fine since I put the rubber bumper around it. Cosmic radiation? Audiophile magic? I think it's because AT&T opened up two new cell towers recently in my neighborhood.

--Marc W.

[Marc Wielage]

My guess is that Steve Jobs will get up and say, "you're all holding the phone wrong," and everyone will go home.

--Marc W.

[old school]

It took a long time to go from heroic underdog of the people to the new evil empire but this is a classic tale often told. We love to put things/people on a pedestal and then knock them off and watch them fall. Makes us feel better I suppose. BTW, I have no dog in this fight, I don't have a iPhone, only a desktop and laptop from Apple. I must say, this is the thing I love about the 'Grand Parade' of life.

CrewC

[rich]

and a press conference tomorrow that is believed to be about the antenna on the iphone and apparently a fix at the manufacturing stage.

all info sourced from www.macrumors.com

glad that for once i didnt get one as soon as i had a chance, though mostly because the queue was 4 shops long and i was on my way to work and would have been around 8 hours late if i'd joined the queue.

[Marc Wielage]

Well, they sorta/kinda admitted there was a problem... but went on to say that all smartphones suffer from the same problem: reception is affected when you cover the antenna with your hand. We all knew that wireless mikes and receivers have the same issue; phones are no different.

I agree with CrewC that a lot of critics out there were gunning for Apple, and they're an easy target after so much recent success. Coincident or not, I haven't had a single dropped call in a week. Rubber case or black magic... I gots no idea.

Love the phone so far, BTW. Great screen, surprisingly good pictures, and good sound quality. I'm finally using the calender/scheduler for the first time, and it's working well.

New favorite iPhone 4 app: Flashlight. Fantastic trick, using the flash as a momentary bright light in dark rooms. And it's free!

--Marc W.

[studiomprd]

Impressive:

" Breaking News from ABCNEWS.com:

Apple CEO Steve Jobs Offers a Free Case for  iPhone 4 Owners to Address Reception Issue ...Jobs Says 'Phones Aren't Perfect',  Won't Apologize ...saying the iPhone 4's reception problems have been "blown way  out of proportion,"  "

[Marc Wielage]

Excellent short video piece at this link:

http://www.apple.com/antenna/testing-lab.html

showing Apple's $100,000,000 antenna design lab (!), which is like some massive Faraday cage. Who even knew they had spent this kind of money just to test RF? They claim they have this lab plus 16 PHD designers on staff -- very heavy-duty.

I thought Jobs' press conference was good, but it's clear he's annoyed and combative about the situation, which the press is already calling "Antennagate." They are admitting that the new phones drop calls about 1% of the time, and also admit they need to work harder at this. Jobs seems particularly annoyed that they have problems putting up new cell towers in San Francisco, which can be a very difficult city for RF in my experience.

--Marc W.

[cmgoodin]

Gee with all that money spent on an in-house testing Facility and all those PHD RF engineers how could they miss this problem that every independent testing lab and every Yo-Yo with a YouTube account and a digital camera was able to reproduce repeatedly.  Maybe they should have saved all the money on internal RF testing lab and just handed out the beta phones to test in the real world by people who are not in jeopardy of loosing their cushy job at Apple if they point out a flaw in the design. They just need to dump all the secrecy.  100 million dollars buys a lot of advertising.

----Courtney

[Marc Wielage]

I agree -- you'd think for $100 million, somebody in the back room would say, "hey! Let's put the antenna away from where the people actually touch the phone!"

Me, I'm encountering symptom #2 below:

[John Steigerwald]

Interesting story today on Wired about the Apple/AT&T relationship:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/07/ff_att_fail/all/1

[studiomprd]

"Many customers  have been surprised to learn that the iPhone's in-built microphone delivers   robust, higher fidelity FM quality audio compared with most other phones on the  market" 

or camcorders ??

[Guest BobD]

Gee with all that money spent on an in-house testing Facility and all those PHD RF engineers how could they miss this problem that every independent testing lab and every Yo-Yo with a YouTube account and a digital camera was able to reproduce repeatedly.  Maybe they should have saved all the money on internal RF testing lab and just handed out the beta phones to test in the real world by people who are not in jeopardy of loosing their cushy job at Apple if they point out a flaw in the design. They just need to dump all the secrecy.  100 million dollars buys a lot of advertising.

----Courtney

This IS the totally unacceptable part of the story, and makes NO sense to me at all...  Heads should roll over this....  I don't think I have never seen such an obvious lapse in quality control... Reading about the "lab" only makes the situation seem... DUMBER!!!!

[Jan McL]

After a few weeks with the phone in hand, I will say this:

• Annoying that power cable from 3G phone does not quite work with iPhone 4.
  
• The phone sometimes (5 times so far) freezes to non-responsive black screen and must be re-set by simultaneously pressing the 'home' and 'power' keys for 10 seconds until it re-boots. This has twice happened while on a phone call. Weird. Software update in process that presumably corrects this unfortunate bug. If not, I'm going back for a new one.
  
• I have not experienced attenuation of the antenna having installed the bumper from day 1.
  
• Last week got a credit to my credit card in the amount of the price of the bumper.
  
• Both Bluetooth headsets make me sound like I'm under water.
  

I'd be way surprised if heads were not rolling in droves over in Cupertino.

-- Jan

[Bondelev]

• Annoying that power cable from 3G phone does not quite work with iPhone 4.
  
• The phone sometimes (5 times so far) freezes
  

Ironically, the bumper is why the power cord does not fit. If you remove it, the old cord fits fine.

I have not had to reboot yet (knock wood).

[Jan McL]

Ironically, the bumper is why the power cord does not fit. If you remove it, the old cord fits fine.

I have not had to reboot yet (knock wood).

I thought that might be the case (so to speak), but when I tried to slide the bumper off to more directly access the input, it was too difficult to be practical. Guess I'll have to get a new case or a bunch of new power cables or a new )(*R&#@( phone.

Sigh.

-- Jan

[Jan McL]

So today I plugged (or tried to plug) the iPhone into a speaker in order to see if we might better hear a phone call in the room. Well don't 'cha know, the bumper prevents the stereo jack from fully engaging.

For crying out loud.

Bumper's off. A lotta good that bumper refund did me. New case it is, unless I implode first.

Meanwhile, I got a new Plantronics Pro Bluetooth headset that I'm told sounds equally underwater on the far end. Harrumph.

In other news, after updating to 4.0.1 and restoring, I've not experienced the Black Screen of Death. So there's THAT.

-- Jan

[Marc Wielage]

A friend of mine has an iPhone 3GS and just showed me the Black Screen of Death today, hours after he installed iPhone 4.0.

Anybody remember the good old days, when a phone was not a computer? And it just worked? 

--Marc W.

[Eric Toline]

A friend of mine has an iPhone 3GS and just showed me the Black Screen of Death today, hours after he installed iPhone 4.0.

Anybody remember the good old days, when a phone was not a computer? And it just worked? 

--Marc W.

Yes indeed and I have one. A nice ordinary $20 Nokia cell phone that does nothing but be a phone for $20 a month from Consumer Cellular. Helps keep life simple.

Eric 

[Jan McL]

Already, an after-market solution for the ill-designed iPhone cases that don't permit charging via older cables:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/cellphone/dbc6/?cpg=137H2&image

From the site:

It's really annoying having to undress our iPhones before plugging  them into a charger. Reminds us of getting bundled up in our snowsuits  as kids. After all, as soon as you got the snowsuit, boots, mittens, and  hat firmly in place, that was the exact moment when your bladder would  pipe up. "Oh hai," it would say, pulsating gently. "I probably should  have told you I needed emptying like five minutes ago, but you seemed  busy." Did anyone ever manufacture snowsuits with easy-access flaps?  Goldmine, we say.

    The Innodock Jr. Desktop Cradle allows you to dock your iPhone or  iPod Touch without removing it from its protective case, assuming said  protective case has an open connector bottom. Just pop your iDevice into  the cradle, plug the cradle into your computer or USB hub, and it'll  happily sit up and charge while you work or play online.

-- Jan

[Marc Wielage]

I found I can just barely fit the new iPhone 4 (with bumper cover) into an original Apple USB iPod dock, using the widest snap-in slot available (I think designed for the original "fat" iPod from about seven or eight years ago). No undressing necessary.

--Marc W.

[wolfvid]

i can still tell insanely often when i talk to an ATT phone - it sound insanely bad insanely often,  but there is a good reason to  rent one of those computers:

Performanceaudio.com

http://www.performanceaudio.com/apps/

  - Decibel Meter Pro: Sound level measurement (decibels) with analog & digital displays.

  - Bit Calc Pro: Quick and easy way to calculate drive space needed for recording.

  - Audio Atlas: Vast audio reference at your fingertips, with search feature. 

there is a tedious alignment tool for the audio level meter.

I have seen other audio level meters with similar features.

of course there are now 2 timecode slate displays. they run at a different speed (satellite time) than the 29.9 TC we generate  but if there is nothing else it gets the editor in the ballpark.

how can I live without Apple?  HOW  HOW  HOW???        wolf :-)  wolfvid.com

[RadoStefanov]

When the connection is bad I usually ask

Are you on a car speaker or your phone is an IPHONE?

i can still tell insanely often when i talk to an ATT phone - it sound insanely bad insanely often,  but there is a good reason to  rent one of those computers:

Performanceaudio.com

http://www.performanceaudio.com/apps/

                    - Decibel Meter Pro: Sound level measurement (decibels) with analog & digital displays.

                    - Bit Calc Pro: Quick and easy way to calculate drive space needed for recording.

                    - Audio Atlas: Vast audio reference at your fingertips, with search feature.                   

there is a tedious alignment tool for the audio level meter.

I have seen other audio level meters with similar features.

of course there are now 2 timecode slate displays. they run at a different speed (satellite time) than the 29.9 TC we generate  but if there is nothing else it gets the editor in the ballpark.

how can I live without Apple?  HOW  HOW  HOW???        wolf :-)  wolfvid.com