We’re guessing that there won’t be many tech sites lineblogging outside the Shenzhen KIRF stalls when the ePhone 4GS finally gets a release date. And it’s a shame, really: for knock-off fanatics like ourselves, this thing could be in the big leagues, right up there with the iorgane (that’s pronounced “i-orange,” by the way). Don’t let the industrial design fool you — unlike the real deal, this thing is all plastic, right up to that silver band wrapping ’round the edges. The rear of the unit boasts the Apple logo and 16GB, and while the first designation is definitely inaccurate, we harbor serious doubts about the latter. But what do you expect for $85? Get a closer look after the break.
This is a reader video found on Macrumors forums illustrating something weird. When the guy holds the iPhone in his hands, touching the outside antenna band in two places, he drops reception. Placing the phone down gets him 4 bars. More »
We’re starting to hear a few reports of the dreaded yellow spots disappearing from the iPhone 4’s display after a day or so of use. Interestingly, someone posting on the AppleInsider forums seems to know why:
Apple is using a bonding agent called Organofunctional Silane Z-6011 to bond the layers of glass. Apparently, Apple (or more likely Foxconn) is shipping these products so quickly that the evaporation process is not complete. However, after one or two days of use, especially with the screen on, will complete the evaporation process and the yellow “blotches” will disappear. How do I know? I was involved in pitching Z-6011 to Apple.
If this can be trusted, it’s very good news for those afflicted — though hopefully Apple will keep to its usually painless replacement policy for defective phones either way. We are still seeing some mentions of the spots sticking around, fading in and out based on the heat of the phone, but we’ll give it another day or two to really see how much of a problem is going to be. Let us know how yours fares.
And just like that, it’s confirmed. We’d heard through the grapevine that AT&T may be fixing to certify a third-party to sell an iPhone insurance program, and now it looks as if Asurion has been given the green light by Ma Bell, and not a moment too soon. According to the company, MobileProtect is the “only iPhone (and iPhone 4) insurance to protect against loss or theft (the reason for nearly 50% of phone claims), while also covering water or other liquid damage, accidental damage, and out-of-warranty failure.” Of course, you’ll have to shell out a borderline-ridiculous $11.99 per month for the coverage (and yeah, there’s still a deductible), which is made even more outrageous by the fact that the iPhone 4 and its Gorilla Glass is nigh indestructible. Er, wait…
*Claims of “everything” are subject to interpretation, as anyone who has ever dealt with an insurance company will attest.
P.S. – SquareTrade still works on the iPhone 4, and it’s probably worth considering. Take a look at the price breakdown after the jump.
There’s a problem with the iPhone 4’s Retina displays: Some screens have a yellow tint across the surface. 55 cases and counting. In some, it’s a yellow band. In others, yellow spots. See the gallery. [Updated with Apple support feedback]More »
Got an iPhone 4 yet? Hold it carefully by the glass, avoiding the new steel antenna band that runs around the edges. Note the number of signal-strength bars you have. Now, touch the steel band with your other hand, preferably the left and bottom sides together. You will almost certainly see your signal disappear, or drop by three or four bars.
The problem is being so widely reported that Gizmodo has managed to add 16 videos of the phenomenon, along with many, many user reports. The problem is also repeatable, making it look like a lot more than simple coincidence.
Wired.com readers are also reporting the problem: Out of more than 40 respondents, about 35 are reporting a similar pattern of problems: If you hold the iPhone 4 in your left hand, or touch the lower-left corner of the outside steel band, the signal indicator starts losing bars within a few seconds. Many respondents indicated that this led to dropped calls, and one, “Edward,” did download speed tests that showed a dramatic drop in throughput when holding the iPhone 4 in his hand, from 2Mbps to a measly 12Kbps.
Two respondents have said that they’ve observed the same diminishing-signal problem with previous models of the iPhone.
Two people have reported that keeping the iPhone 4 in its protective “bumper” case eliminates the problem, probably because it is an electrical insulator and prevents the antenna band from contacting the conductive surface of the skin.
If you have ever touched a bare-metal loop antenna for a TV, you’ll know that the water-filled human body has an effect on the reception, although in that case it usually improves the picture. In this case, it has the opposite effect. It’s possible that the antenna band is not a continuous loop, and that touching it in the lower-left corner short-circuits the loop somehow.
This, it turns out, is not entirely unexpected. Just two weeks ago, Jens Nielsen of Danish blog ComON quoted Professor Gert Frølund Pedersen of the Department of Electronic Systems at Aalborg University:
[H]uman tissues will in any case have an inhibitory effect on the antenna. Touch means that a larger portion of the antenna energy turns into heat and lost. This makes the antenna less efficient to send and receive radio signals. [Translation by Google]
Simply holding the new iPhone in the hand is enough to kill the signal. Even Walt Mossberg, in his review of the iPhone 4, had an eerily similar-sounding experience:
[O]n at least six occasions during my tests, the new iPhone was either reporting “no service” or searching for a network while the old one, held in my other hand, was showing at least a couple of bars. Neither Apple nor AT&T could explain this. [Emphasis added.]
Is it possible that a problem like this would make it into the wild? You’d think that it would have been discovered in testing. On the other hand, maybe this is what caused Steve Jobs’ connection woes at the WWDC keynote where he demoed the new handset?
One possible answer is in the way the new antenna works. Instead of just picking the strongest signal, the iPhone 4 picks the highest quality signal, the frequency with the least amount of interference. In the current iPhone firmware, this is not yet reflected in the signal display, which still indicates actual strength. Apple has said that this is known bug that it plans to fix. If true, then you shouldn’t actually drop a call, even when your apparent signal-bars drop to zero.
Or perhaps it is all a sinister plot from Apple to sell more of those insulating rubber Bumper cases?
If you have an iPhone 4, please test this out for us, and post your experience in the comments. Specifically, check to see if a decrease in displayed bars corresponds with an actual drop in call quality.
What’s more annoying than spending hourslining up for a shiny new gadget? Learning that your precious phone can’t actually connect to the network. Well, depending on how you hold it — word has it that the iPhone 4’s bottom-left corner isn’t playing nice with your skin. If you recall from the keynote, that’s where the Bluetooth / WiFi / GPS antenna meets its GSM / UMTS counterpart. So we decided to test on two brand new iPhone 4 handsets purchased today in the UK.
One iPhone 4 demonstrated the issue everytime it was held in our left hand (as a right-handed person is apt to do) so that our palm was essentially bridging the two antennas. You can see that in the video after the break. Bridging the two with a finger tip, however, didn’t cause any issues with the reported reception. If we had to guess, we’d say that our conductive skin was acting to detune the antenna — in fact, we’ve already managed to slowly kill two calls that way so it’s not just an issue with the software erroneously reporting an incorrect signal strength. That said, we had no issues when Apple’s $29 rubber bumper accessory (given to us free for standing in line) was attached, creating a buffer between our palm and the antennas. Our second UK-purchased iPhone 4 was fine, showing none of these handling symptoms. See the video evidence after the break including Insanely Great Mac’s version which got us to worrying in the first place.
P.S. Don’t forget to take our poll and let us know if you’re seeing both the yellow spots / stripes and reception issues. Unfortunately, we’re suffering from both flaws which is not a good sign for quality control on this first batch of Apple handsets.
P.P.S. Since some of you are asking, our review unit showed none of these issues.
Update: Apple responds to the issue, and boy, it’s a doozy.
There’s been a lot of fuss about the iPhone 4’s Gorilla Glass “custom glass” comparable in strength to sapphire crystal but 30 times harder than plastic. Sounds incredible, right? But make no mistake, that front glass panel will still break if dropped. Ok, it took four deliberate attempts to accomplish what you see above but it still happened. Bottom line: like any cellphone, you’ll have to worry about more than just scratches. See the destruction after the break.
You may not have an iPhone 4 yet — unless you lucked out on delivery, you’re probably still waiting in line — but if you did receive Cupertino’s latest opinion polarizing handset, you might have noticed it doesn’t come with a tool to edit all the 720p footage of jealous friends that you just shot. Thankfully that can be remedied with a portrait of President Lincoln, as iMovie for iPhone just went live — head on over to the App Store and drop your $4.99.
Update: Oddly enough, we’re not actually seeing iMovie in the App Store on our iPhone 4 — only in the desktop client.
We got up pretty close to the iPhone 4‘s retina display in our review, but we can’t say we got quite as close as PhD candidates Ryan White and Bryan Gauntt of Penn State University, who have kindly provided us with some images of the screen under a microscope (along with an iPhone 3G for comparison). According to their measurements, the iPhone 3G’s pixels measure 13 x 40 microns, while the iPhone 4’s measure 6.5 x 20 microns, which adds up to exactly four times as many pixels. As impressive as sounds that sounds, however, it’s the pictures that really tell the story — hit up the gallery below to check them out.
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