iPhone Signal Strength Problems In the UK

An anonymous reader writes "British iPhone users, who bought the Apple phones when they went on sale in England on Nov. 9, are reporting persistent problems with signal strength on O2, the UK's only iPhone service provider. The complaints started only 2 days later. InfoWeek blogger Alex Wolfe says there's a debate as to whether O2 or the iPhone is at fault; it appears to be the handset, which is unusual since US users haven't reported similar problems. Some 02 customers report that getting a replacement phone fixes things; others have had to do a software restore back to version 1.1.2 of the iPhone software."

signal strength

[thrillseeker]

FWIW, my sister has an iPhone and tells me that the reception is noticeably worse than her previous phone (a Razor, I think).

Re:signal strength

[Osty]

FWIW, my sister has an iPhone and tells me that the reception is noticeably worse than her previous phone (a Razor, I think).

As long as we're going with anecdotal evidence, I switched from a Razor to an iPhone a couple weeks ago and haven't noticed any signal strength issues.

Re:

[tgd]

I'm not really sure why you're getting moderated insightful... what was your signal before? There's a huge range of levels that would still show up as full strength. You could easily get a 10db drop in the signal and still show full strength without knowing it.

Did you have spotty reception? Thats where you're going to notice a change is sensitivity.

Re:signal strength

[HairyCanary]

I'm not really sure why you're getting moderated insightful...

Because he was pointing out that anecdotal evidence is worthless.

Re:signal strength

[novakyu]

Ah, but you see, as a people we rely far more on anecdotal evidences than you might think.

If we agree that anecdotal evidences are entirely worthless, what's Amazon, Newegg, Buy.com, etc, etc. doing putting up "Customer Reviews"? What about "Resellerratings"? Or even reports by Better Business Bureau, or Consumerist, or Consumer reports? Unless it's a designed-to-be-fair poll (which almost all online polls aren't) of statistically significant numbers (I usually go with 1000, because that gives nice 3% margin of error, assuming no other sources (such as sampling bias, wrong question wording, etc.) than random sampling error), it's little better than anecdotal evidences---a couple people lying, a company astroturfing will be enough to skew the results way over to the other side.

But, such quality results are hard to come by (I daresay even in clinical studies, let alone psychology survey, such quality is hard to obtain), so if you've ever listened to anyone you don't know personally (and somehow can trust his/her expertise), you have let an anecdotal evidence influence your judgment. Does that mean you are stupid? Well, not any more than me, the president (of U.S., of Canada, prime minister of U.K., anybody important, really), or the vast majority of rational population.

In fact, anyone dismissing an anecdotal evidence just because it's an anecdotal evidence (rather than, say, it can be shown to be false experimentally, or there is some logical fallacy) is simply repeating the folly of Descartes (of overt doubt). Except of course, unlike Descartes, he has absolutely no originality and a hindsight of several centuries, which should prevent all but utter fools from falling into such mistake.

Re:

[dgatwood]

Anecdotally, my iPhone does not drop out in places where my other phone (Sony Ericsson T616) did with consistency. However, this is in the U.S. (850 MHz), so this isn't necessarily an indicator of how the 1800 MHz band will behave. That's what makes most of the iPhone's anecdotal evidence worthless---the fact that the majority is from a different country at a very different frequency. :-)

And on the flip side, someone with the very same model of Sony Ericsson phone reports the exact opposite elsewhere in

Re:

[dwater]

Actually, he simply presented opposing anecdotal evidence, which is equally as valuable.

Personall, I think both are interesting, and of greater than zero worth.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

I'm not really sure why you're getting moderated insightful... what was your signal before? There's a huge range of levels that would still show up as full strength. You could easily get a 10db drop in the signal and still show full strength without knowing it.

Actually, my iPhone gets much better reception than my old phone (SE P900). I can often still get a tiny bit of signal in tunnels and the link, where none existed before (and it manages to still do EDGE/GPRS, slowly, while before, I'd lose all connect

Re:

[Trinn]

Interestingly, according to the values from the field test app, this sort of thing used to be the case, somewhere around -90dBm or worse was 5 bars, and it dropped off fast after that. In a recent software update they pushed it up to around -70 which is your more common number, and makes the signal display so much more useful. I'm not sure if this was 1.1.1 or 1.1.2, I think 1.1.2.

Re:

[tgd]

Same here. My T616 on ATT works poorly, but generally works in my house. My iPhone is unusuable in my house.

I don't think that should be a surprise -- every phone is a little different. iPhone is definitely on the "bad" end of the reception spectrum. Its bad enough that I debated most of the fourteen days I could return it if I actually wanted to return it. I looked long and hard at the Verizon Voyager but nothing else really compares with the iPhone.

I can pull the SIM out of the iPhone (which has no signal

Re:

[CastrTroy]

The iPhone is great as a music player, but sucks as a phone, why not just get an iPod touch, and get a phone that actually gets good reception. I don't get reception at my house sounds like a pretty bad situation. Unless that's how you like it. If you live way out in the country, I could see that being acceptable. But anybody living in the city or the suburbs should not have to deal with not getting a signal.

Re:

[tsa]

Very good point. That way you can also get a phone with a provider you chose.

Re:

[jarich]

+1 (I have no mod points at the moment.)

My iPhone drops calls and has tons of static in areas my old junk phone did fine in... It's a great enough phone, I'm keeping it :) but it would be very nice to have better (read: decent) reception.

Re:

[OECD]

FWIW, my sister has an iPhone and tells me that the reception is noticeably worse than her previous phone (a Razor, I think).

FWIW, I moved from an old cheap Motorola on Verizon to an iPhone, and I've noticed that the speaker is worse on the iPhone. On the upside, the mic seems to be better, so I can't hear people as well as I used to, but they can hear me better. I'm wondering if the UK users aren't interpreting that as a signal-strength problem.

Re:

[LKM]

Using an iPhone in Switzerland. Switched from a P990i. No decrease in signal strength.

different freqs?

[taniwha]

GSM in the US runs on a different frequency than most of the rest of the world - could be the phone is optimised for the US freqs ... there may be other stuff - I know when I visit the US my phone's battery lasts about 1/3 as long as elsewhere - don't know whether the US environment is noisier and needs the phones to shout louder or it's just not as efficient at that freq

Re:

[microcars]

or there are not enough towers in the US.
the further away from a cell tower you are, the more power is required.
Everyone in the US wants better signal strength but they don't want any more "unsightly" cell towers.
There are more cell towers per sq mile in the UK I bet. So you use less power.

last stat is totally made up...

Re:

[jargon82]

I suspect it's not just not wanting unsightly cell towers. Given that the UK pop density is 246 per square km and the US is 31 per square km,(accodring to wikipedia) [wikipedia.org] it seems the folks in the US are just a tad bit more spread out...

Re:

[xaxa]

A better comparison would be the density of cell towers in New York vs. London, for instance. I have no idea what it would be, but I get signal almost everywhere in London (if I have no signal, I'm almost certainly in a basement). Not with an iPhone, I have a Motorola, but anyway... what about other metropoli?

Re:different freqs?

[arth1]

That's a "truth with modifications". If you subtract the areas in the US where there's no GSM coverage, i.e. most of the country, you get a GSM population density that's higher.

One difference is that in the US, the market is largely a profit-driven free-for-all, where the actors can choose to only put towers where it will be profitable to do so. That means the big cities, their suburbs, and the highways between them. In most of Europe, there's coverage requirements to get a license to operate (and consumers that historically have bought things based also on quality and not features-for-the-price alone).

Another difference is that in Europe there's not a near 100% lock-in for phones to a certain provider, like in the US. Most people in the US aren't even aware that phones don't have to be locked to a provider. Some have heard of unlocking of phone, but even of those, almost none know that you can get phones that weren't unlocked, but never locked in the first place.
In Europe, if a provider hasn't given a good enough service or coverage, you have historically been able to take your phone elsewhere and get a new plan for your existing phone. The lock-in of the iPhone to a single provider is going to be a lesson in how good the "old" system was, and make European users understand the terrible situation US users have, and why so few Americans have cell phones.

Re:

[CastrTroy]

When did quality cease to be a feature?

Re:

[Dunbal]

When did quality cease to be a feature?

      It certainly never was a feature in the software world. That was just "luck".

110 million out of 300 million is not "so few"

[The MAZZTer]

so few Americans have cell phones.

More than 1/3 is not "so few". [networkworld.com]

(Here's how I figured out the 1/3 bit from "110 million".) [google.com]

Re:

[gutnor]

Your numbers are 7 years old, a long long time ago in the mobile world. Now I think that it is closer to 60% - 220 million mobiles

However, in market penetration term, it is pathetic compared to europe. A lot of European countries have above or close to 100% market penetration ( i.e. more than 1 mobile per inhabitant )

See the numbers here: http://www.cellular-news.com/story/21065.php [cellular-news.com]

That said, even with a shitty market penetration, the US is one the biggest market for mobile phone in the world with China ( 4

Re:

[Movi]

Another thing that I would think is worthy of pointing out is that the European iPhones have a new version of the baseband radio. What most people concentrate is that this baseband doesn't have the bug that allowed people to unlock their iPhones. But I wonder if this one also differs in reception quality. Does anyone have any knowledge of any change in capabilities in the new baseband module?

Re:

[Moridineas]

That's a "truth with modifications". If you subtract the areas in the US where there's no GSM coverage, i.e. most of the country, you get a GSM population density that's higher.

Wow wow, that sounds nuts to me? Where did you get the idea that in "most of the country" there's no GSM coverage? I'd love to see the statistics about that.. I don't suppose you have any? Here's the coverage map for ATT btw http://www.wireless.att.com/coverageviewer/ [att.com]. I guess it's possible that including Alaska covered vs uncovered could be CLOSE ... but I'm not sure. If you count any cell coverage, (CDMA, smaller companies, etc) you're dead wrong.

One difference is that in the US, the market is largely a profit-driven free-for-all, where the actors can choose to only put towers where it will be profitable to do so. That means the big cities, their suburbs, and the highways between them. In most of Europe, there's coverage requirements to get a license to operate (and consumers that historically have bought things based also on quality and not features-for-the-price alone).

I'm suddenly forced to realize I've been blinded by the

Re:

[xaxa]

A map [ic.ac.uk] of coverage in Europe from *1997* has about 50% GSM coverage. A current map [nyud.net] has pretty much 100% coverage.

The CIA factbook says the USA has 233M subscribers (2006), 301M people = 77%
The EU has 466M (2005), 490M people = 95%
(OK, your link is newer. But look at the subscriber ratios in the boxes on the map for the UK, Germany, Sweden etc -- above 100%! My 85 year old grandparents do have mobile phones ;-)

Re:

[Moridineas]

I wonder if the average American is just greener, and doesn't want to worry about the EM pollution, as well as the vast amount of electricity lost to charging batteries and "wall wart" chargers left plugged in? ;-)

Re:

[arth1]

As others have noted, you read the map wrong if you just look at the colour, because a coloured pixel doesn't mean coverage in the entire area under the pixel, and once you zoom in, you'll see more and more uncovered area. In addition, your coverage map includes not only GSM, but all sorts of cell phone systems.

For a more honest map of AT&T's GSM coverage, see:
http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=us&net=b3 [gsmworld.com]

There too, the coloured pixels are deceiving and gives an impression of much higher co

Re:

[Moridineas]

If counting all GSM providers, coverage is much better, but still not even close to half the area, and nowhere near the coverage situation in Europe.

Still waiting on numbers. Gifs can only tell us so much :) Besides which, the base statement about GSM is not applicable to the cell situation in the US since Verizon/Sprint have huge networks (disputably bigger than ATT).. Anyway, if you have any facts about this, I would love to see them. I haven't been able to find any.

And to those who say that the population density is higher in Europe, that's only true for some European country. The Nordic countries, for example, has a much lower population density than the US, but still around 95% geographical coverage, and a similar number of teens and adults using at least one cell phone.

Wow, you're right, America SUCKS. I don't think anyone has brought up population density, other than you? Don't quite know what your bone is... Sweden/Norway have MARGINALLY lower popula

Re:

[Moridineas]

The OP was refering to GSM exclusively. Whether this is important for a regular user or is "cell coverage of any type" is different. OTOH don't be confused by the colors of the map of ATT you provide. Zoom in one step and you will see a better picture of poor and no coverage areas.

Your theory is no more authoritative than my posting the link the graphic! I'm still waiting for numbers, which nobody has provided yet. I haven't been able to find any myself...so it's still open.

I also think you're misinterpreting the second link.

Re:

[VP]

If you subtract the areas in the US where there's no GSM coverage, i.e. most of the country

I don't think this is accurate. Most of the US has GSM coverage - you can check the AT&T coverage map [att.com]...

Re:

[jamar0303]

America really needs regulations like this. No free incoming, crap phone lineup, contracts... I can import a nice phone, but it doesn't help with the crap service plans.

Re:

[jellomizer]

Yes that is an issue, Also why a lot of "This is done in Europe, but not in America" comes into play. A big Infrastructure change in Europe is a Monumental Infrastructure change in the US. Many Laws that work in Europe Do Not work in the United States the same way. While are cultures are similar, The United States and European Countries are actually quite different in a lot of major ways. Just like when you look at the Political Map of the United States Most of the Blue States are in states with higher

Re:

[Bert64]

The US is also much bigger, and therefore harder for cellphone operators to provide adequate coverage... One way of doing this is to boost the power.
The UK is much smaller, but quite hilly...
Cellphone coverage in the netherlands is very good because the country is small, densely populated and flat.

Re:

[mikael]

There are quite a wide variety of GSM frequencies [wikipedia.org]

Which network offers you the best quality of signal depends on where you are in each city, and what materials the building you are in is constructed from.

Mobile handsets can adjust the strength of signal they need to transmit, in order for the tower to receive a reliable signal. That might explain the difference in battery lifetime. Perhaps the cell towers are more spread apart. This would depend on population density.

Re:

[Alioth]

We are also having signal strength problems with a completely unrelated bit of kit (a Datalogic Jet handheld terminal). The GSM hardware is crap - and whether it works well or not depends on which provider's SIM it's using. It doesn't work worth a damn with either of the mobile providers we have here (Manx Telecom and Cable and Wireless), but it does work with an O2 card. I don't know what might be on a SIM card that would make a radio work worse or better. (We are about to tell the supplier 'not fit for pu

Re:

[taniwha]

I visit the US a lot (5 times this year) and the issue seems relatively consistant across a wide range of areas on the West Coast (largely the SF Bay Area and Seattle) - my phone lasts 2 days in the US, a week here in NZ - AT&T/Cingular coverage does seem spotty in places

Re:

[CastrTroy]

You probably didn't stay in the cities, or did a lot of travelling. In Canada, between the cities, there's often no digital coverage, just old fashioned analog. This really eats up your battery power when travelling. I imagine the same is true in the US, where there are very large cities, with almost nothing in between.

Re:different freqs?

[dgatwood]

It is probably caused by some combination of these two things:

1. Transmit power for 1800/1900 (probably what is in use in NZ) is half the wattage allowed for the 850 band in the U.S. The 850 MHz allows for significantly greater tower spacing at a cost in cell phone life. You can't get away with that in the 1900 MHz band because the signal doesn't carry as well. AT&T uses 850 heavily, for obvious reasons, though in California, you will likely find many 850 MHz towers at much closer spacing and at reduced power to minimize the cell's overall coverage footprint to reduce the collisions inherent in high density environments with limited spectrum. You shouldn't see your cell shouting at anywhere near maximum output, though, so I sort of doubt this has that much to do with the difference, though I suppose it might be a factor.

2. GSM phones can use different encodings depending on signal strength, available bandwidth, the preference of the tower, and the intersection of modes supported by both your phone and the tower. It is much more likely that the phone is operating in one of the lower power modes in NZ. Half rate codec draws significantly less power than the other codecs, and EFR draws slightly more. IIRC, in California, AT&T's towers prefer FR if the phone supports it, because the call quality sounds better and they have enough tower density to handle it. In NZ, they may be using HR, which by itself can make a huge difference in talk time because the cell phone is essentially "talking" to the tower during only half as many time slots.

Re:

[mcbridematt]

Transmit power for 1800/1900 (probably what is in use in NZ)

Actually, it would be 900MHz first. However, 1800MHz fill spectrum is probably utilitized in NZ a lot. In Australia theres plenty of 1800MHz on top of 900MHz due to capacity issues that hit operators a decade ago. AT&T would be using 1900MHz fill in I guess - they've got 5MHz UMTS chewing into that band, but they've had a lot more time to plan out a network. (Pardon my ignorance, I have no idea about US mobile spectrum allocations)

Re:

[VCAGuy]

You're correct about UMTS 3G services cutting into existing PCS frequencies at 1900 MHz in the US. Carriers put UMTS/WCDMA traffic on 850/1900 MHz, which is why there aren't any 3G world phones...yet! Cingular/AT&T mostly uses 850 for UMTS/HSDPA since that frequency is less often used for voice service than 1900 MHz (not all GSM phones support 850 MHz here, so carriers still have a large number of 900/1800/1900 MHz devices).

Re:

[Firehed]

Quite spotty. I've got a spot about a two-inch cube that gets three to four bars (of five) worth of signal in my house, where the rest of the house is one bar or no signal (likewise for most of outside, except for a small patch at the bottom of the driveway). A couple miles from my house, it's 4-5 bars consistently.

iPhone/AT&T just outside of Nashua, NH, for what it's worth. The situation was the same on Verizon where I last lived (Williston, VT - where, for the record, the iPhone works perfectly).

No problems here...

[Richard_at_work]

I've had an iPhone since they were launched here in the UK and I cannot honestly say I have experienced any signal problems and if anything I get better voice quality on the iPhone than my previous phone (w810i).

I'm not exactly in a major metropolitan area either, out here in a commuter town in the South West, but my signal strength hasn't really been a problem - I'm always able to make calls or connect via GPRS or EDGE, so I'm pretty much happy at the moment. I've travelled a bit as well in the past 2 weeks and I've yet to experience signal loss, even out in the country side.

Re:

[porneL]

The "connect via GPRS or EDGE" is a problem for me. I'm not bothered very much that it doesn't have 3G (I've installed ziproxy + privoxy which cut down traffic), but not even having EDGE sucks (slow gets even slower!? and YouTube won't even try opening movies).

That says more about Sony Ericsson

[_merlin]

Just about any phone will get you better call quality than a Sony Ericsson. They're atrocious! The best call quality you can get is from the NECs, but they have poor battery life. I'd be shocked if the iPhone didn't sound better than a Sony Ericsson.

Could we do away with iPhone this and Apple that?

[siyavash]

Could we please do away with iPhone this and Apple that?... I'm kind'a tired of it. We got it, it's the hype... but damn, what's next... "IPHONE GETS SCRATCHED"... why is iPhone so important? Tons of other tech products have tons of problems. Can we please have some REAL News?

Re:Could we do away with iPhone this and Apple tha

[abigor]

You can block Apple stories in your preferences. Or you can ignore them. These are but two of the many bold strategies for avoiding stories you don't like.

Re:

[Lisandro]

By the time you're blocking half the stuff that appears on /. lately, the site is simply not worth the visit anymore. Sometimes i feel the people running this site simply don't care.

One small detail

[franksands]

[...]others have had to do a software restore back to version 1.1.2 of the iPhone software.

1.1.2 is the current version of the software. It seems to me that apparently the problem is with british jailbreaken phones, which wouldn't be either Apple's or O2's fault.

Re:

[jacksonj04]

Not if you've got an iPhone. The terms of use stated on the outside of the box, the EULA you agree to when you activate it, and usually by whoever sold you the thing in the first place state quite clearly the phone is for use exclusively on the O2 network. You agreed to it.

Re:

[Achromatic1978]

Except for one trivial detail - statutory rights cannot be usurped by contract or EULA. Oops.

Problem with "smartphones"

[webmaster404]

The problem with these "smartphones" is that even though they look like a computer, have the same software of a computer and act like a computer, they are nothing but walled gardens at most (those running Linux aside) then you take Apple who releases "updates" to stop people from freeing their iPhones. Take all these together, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Re:

[webmaster404]

But commercial OSes generally are walled gardens because many parts of it are not well documented and you generally can't get the source code to look it over.

Is this really a frontpage story?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it only effects a couple of people, it is not a story.

You would need at least 03 customers before this should make a headline.

England != UK

[jackster1]

" went on sale in England on Nov. 9" Just FYI, the UK isn't just England, it's got Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in it too. Hence 'United Kingdom'.

It's not a bug, it's a feature!

[Erikderzweite]

OK, listen up guys.
What are you discussing now is actually the designer feature thoughtfully provided by Steve Jobbs himself.
Imagine, just imagine - you're listening to the iTunes music on your iPhone. Do you want to be distracted in such a wonderful moment? No!
*Especially* not by a phone call!

iphone is meh from a UK perspective.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, most people have "smartphones" (obnoxious term) that already outclass the iPhone in most areas (and no, not having buttons is not better if your life revolves around texting...). The iphone looks good in the american mobile phone market, but the american mobile phone market is a travesty.

The iphone, while being exceptionally heavily marketed, has already been deemed uncool in the 18-30 age group. Seems to be mainly older people who buy it, more susceptible to the advertising that it's "hip".

Re:

[Stevecrox]

Being in the 18-30 age group (21) I saw it as a giant flashy waste of money and worried people would buy it and help show the operators that we would pay for the phone and a overpriced contract.

My little sister (18) exact words on the matter were "why would anyone buy an iPhone cause its rubbish and you get all the stuff it does in an iPod anyway" my other little sister (16) hated it because it lacked a keyboard and was really expensive.

Then we have my ex work mates (all aged between 16-20) universally

Re:

[seanyboy]

The phone's definitely expensive in the UK. £1000.00 over the lifetime of the contract. That's a lot of money.
However, I bought one, and I love it. It's definitely better than the N95 which I also owned and used for a couple of months. The N95 is a buggy P.O.S. in my opinion. I don't know why people like it.
Texting is fast on the iPhone, but it's not really geared for one handed texting like more conventional phones.
Browsing and email is awesome. I run my life by email and this phone smacks the N95 in

Re:

[Stevecrox]

I agree with your logic but these same people have said the N95 was far to expsensive and yet when someone (not me) bought one they definitly loved it. My PSP has been described as far too expsensive to ever buy by many people but picked up a disturbing amount of interest from people whenever I dug it out to play in Student Union. No I wasn't posing but generally waiting for a uni mate to arrive. Most sports cars are seen as incredibly cool things but recently a work friend was looking for a new car despite

Re:

[stewbacca]

The iphone, while being exceptionally heavily marketed, has already been deemed uncool in the 18-30 age group.

Oh REALLY now? I wish you'd come tell the 18-30 age group to quit asking to mess with my iPhone then. I *guess* I'm older, at 37??? but I didn't buy the phone for hype or advertising. I bought the phone because it is the best phone I tried. The phone features are the best, from voice mail to the address book, of any phone I've tried. All the other stuff (email, maps, a really good web browser

Re:

[ssstraub]

I tried out three for about 20 minutes and found them a right royal pain in the ass to use, Window Mobile had a more intuitive and user friendly interface and given how bad Windows Mobile's interface is that is saying a lot.

This is nearly impossible for me to believe. The interface has been the bane of WinMo devices right from the start! You can complain about iPhone's lacking features and have credibility about it, but to say it's less user friendly than Windows Mobile is downright ludicrous. Give an

Related to unlocking?

[Durzel]

"thers have had to do a software restore back to version 1.1.2 of the iPhone software" is a telling statement, UK iPhones come with 1.1.2 out of the box - no one would need to do a software restore BACK to this version unless they had unlocked it (which currently requires downgrading the software to 1.1.1).

Isn't it possible that if UK users are applying patches/firmwares intended for US iPhones (since that's where it would appear the jailbreaks/unlocks originate) then there may well be a difference in GSM configurations?

Also how many of these users bought their phones from the US? Does anyone know for certain whether or not there are NO hardware/software differences between US and UK iPhones?

Is that the UK is more 3g then EDGE and the iphone

[Joe The Dragon]

Is that the UK is more 3g then eage and the iphone is EDGE only?

Different Handsets.

[drolli]

> it appears to be the handset, which is unusual since US users haven't reported similar problems. Some 02 customers report that
> getting a replacement phone fixes things; others have had to do a software restore back to version 1.1.2 of the iPhone software."

It is not strange. I personally assume that the UK phones use GSM and the US phones do not, so they transmit over two completely different schemes. It is sad that this point was missed by the author of the article. Althoug I am not an expert, i re

Re:

[MrPerfekt]

You are also wrong. All iPhones are GSM with EDGE for data transfer (2.75G). They're quad-band phones which allow them to operate on the varying frequencies from region to region. The 'schemes' are identical, only the frequencies vary.

The next iPhone (which will probably be released 1Q 2008) will likely be 3G, which is to say GSM with UMTS or HSDPA for data transfer. And again, will support enough frequencies to allow them to have one phone sold around the world. This reduces cost by having a unified, simpl

Re:

[drolli]

> You are also wrong. All iPhones are GSM with EDGE for data transfer (2.75G). They're quad-band phones which allow them to operate on > the varying frequencies from region to region. The 'schemes' are identical, only the frequencies vary. I did not know that a US-wide GSM coverage exists. Can i rely my GSM phone in the US (not an iphone)?

Re:

[Jesus_666]

Depends on which GSM bands your phone supports. In the USA you generally want GSM 850 and GSM 1900.

Downgrading to 1.1.2 doesn't solve anything

[pm]

The iPhone has two processors each has it's own firmware. The iPhone software is at 1.1.2 - it controls the functions of the screens, programs, the touchscreen, etc. The iPhone baseband is either 3.9, or 4.6 - it controls the radio, WiFi, bluetooth, etc. The two processors talk back and forth using highspeed Hayes modem AT commands. :)

Downgrading the main 1.1.2 firmware only changes the software - so you can reenable the .TIFF exploit should you want to. But to do anything to radio reception, you would need to change the baseband firmware. Currently no one knows how to downgrade the baseband software.

There's details in this thread:
http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/showthread.php?t=16571 [hackint0sh.org]

In a nutshell, anyone downgrading their software to 1.1.2 or 1.1.1 or lower and who says they experiencing better cell phone reception is working under the placebo effect, because the firmware they are downgrading doesn't affect the radio at all. And no one knows how to downgrade the baseband firmware - or if they do, the technique isn't being publicized.

As far as reception, on T-Mobile in the US, my reception has generally been good. There's a bit of a funky "bug" that I've seen that if the reception is low or "no service" and you move into an area with service, it takes the phone a while to recognize this. So if you are in an underground tunnel and have no reception, then when you leave the tunnel it can take minutes for the iPhone to notice it has service again. This may be a "feature" since they are trying to save power or something, but it can be annoying to wait 3 minutes or more for the iPhone to decide it has service. There's also a rare odd effect that the phone will think it has all 5 bars, but will, in fact, have no service at all. Any time I have either of these issues, they correct themselves with time - or I can just power down the phone.

Re:

[toddestan]

In a nutshell, anyone downgrading their software to 1.1.2 or 1.1.1 or lower and who says they experiencing better cell phone reception is working under the placebo effect, because the firmware they are downgrading doesn't affect the radio at all. And no one knows how to downgrade the baseband firmware - or if they do, the technique isn't being publicized.

Well, it depends on how they are judging their signal strength. If they are going off of what their phone tells them rather than actual performance when u

It's the antenna, not the software

[integra_antennas]

While metal is shiny and slick, when it is too close to an antenna, the bandwidth decreases. So the antenna designer has a choice of which frequencies to focus their design effort. Since their initial target market was the USA, they probably targeted GSM850 (AT&T's GSM network). From the antenna photos, the GSM 1800/1900 part of the antenna is the part closest to the battery/metal covers, which further degrades performance in this band. One of the earlier replies said their iPhone worked fine in the country-side of the UK. This is most likely due to the GSM850/900 part of the antenna being furthest away from the battery/metal covers.

iPhone disassembled:
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone/Communications-Board/105/8/Page-7/Communications-Board [ifixit.com]

One can see a small little cable going from the RF Module to the antenna. In almost 99% of the GSM phones on the market today, the antenna is right next to the RF Module. This is to minimize the RF losses between the RFIC and the antenna. By using a cable, significant losses are introduced into the system by both the cable and the miss-match at both ends of the cable. The antenna is also at the bottom of the phone and is more likely to be covered by the user's hand (further decreasing sensitivity); though there are quite a few phone on the market with antennas at the bottom--it is how they get around the SAR limits which are specified as the peak radiation a user receives next to their ear (the mouth area is not measured in the FCC/EU tests.

So, while from an anecdotal perspective, it appears the iPhone has random sensitivity issues; from an antenna engineer's perspective however, it is no surprise why the iPhone has lower performance than most phones (but would still have similar performance to other phones with poor antenna designs--of which there are several for different reasons than cable losses).

If you are interested in reading more technical reports about antenna performance in mobile phones, go to the following website:

http://antennas.astri.org/antennas_mirror [astri.org]

PDF Password = astriantennas

It's because Jobs is too far away

[SteeldrivingJon]

The Reality Distortion Field is too weak in the UK because Jobs is too far away.

Re:

[G Fab]

nothing in the summary indicated that England = the UK.

This was like saying "Chevies from Michigan suck. Canadians are complaining about the North American automaker's reliability."

Re:Clarification of the summary

[$RANDOMLUSER]

nothing in the summary indicated that England = the UK.

Nice job. Now you've assigned England == the UK.

"=" is an assignment; "==" is pronounced "is equal to". Say it! Say it and mean it!

Re:

[leenks]

Surely this depends on the language you are using. There are languages that use = as "is equal to".

Re:

[UbuntuDupe]

Oh, ha ha ha. It's all fun and games until you think about all the Scottish, Welsh, and North Irish people who have to re-register all their national documents now that they live in different countries.

Re:

[Richard W.M. Jones]

"=" is an assignment; "==" is pronounced "is equal to"

... In a certain rather poorly designed programming language where it causes problems for beginners and experts alike. Other languages use more sensible notation.

Rich.

Re:

[Richard W.M. Jones]

Just to clarify the parent posting ...

You use = for binding and equality. This is like 99% of uses in well-written functional code.

I've been a professional OCaml programmer for > 3 years and I don't recall ever having used == (pointer equality). You might use it in certain lowlevel code.

:= and <- indicate that you're using mutable fields, which you should only do when you really need C-like performance. If you forget and use = instead by accident, you'll get a compile-time error. Unlike i

Re:

[One Childish N00b]

Great concepts that the computer languages should be do their best to equal.
Do be do be do...

1st rule of the internet: If you're going to call someone out for using a primitive language, make sure you're up to scratch with your own ;).

Re:

[G Fab]

Well, I supposed I could've been nicer, but remember that I was replying to a shrieking commenter, so I think I was pretty fair.

And of course computer programs are primitive. 1+1=10 to computers. They have to go through abstractions in order to distinguish beyond "on" and "off." It's not an insult to call them primitive, it's just the way machines are, even though they are far more advanced than they were in the past, etc etc. I can look at context, experience doubt when my "code" is producing unusual r

Re:

[Dunbal]

it's not just people in Britain that are experiencing the problem, but people in all parts of the UK.

      OK I'll buy the England != UK bit, but Britain, ie "Great Britain" includes Scotland and Wales. That's why it's "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".

Re:

[Archon-X]

poor sepos. they love to cling to their tired insults [austray-leans! Y'all are convicts, har, har!, british, want a cup of tea, hoo, hoo]
you know, I was on an air france flight last week flying back to paris, when a petite donnybrook broke out between a yank and a frog.

It was priceless: all the yank could do was look angry and confused and repeat: what's your problem?! ad nauseum, as he was promptly and lucidly dressed down verbably by the french gentleman, much to the amusement of the passengers.

OT? Absol

Re:

[irn_bru]

It'll be the fog... probably.

What's really wrong

[Aqua OS X]

Actually, UK iPhone users have noted that their iPhones seem to be missing .5G.

Re:

[Dunbal]

bloody geordies

Re:

[CrossChris]

Nope - O2 have good coverage throughout Britain. The iPhone has poor receive sensitivity and low transmit power compared to other models. It's an overpriced piece of junk.

Re:

[digitig]

I abandoned O2 for Vodafone because the O2 coverage was terrible where I live (a suburb of London); no signal at ground level, I was able to get a weak signal by the window in one bedroom. Coverage isn't so great.

But aren't we on a different frequency here in ths UK? It would be quite easy for the UK experience not to be the same as the US experience.

Re:

[digitig]

Maybe, but that doesn't affect coverage does it? Unless you get your revenge launching RPGs at their masts.

Re:Sounds like

[Stevecrox]

I have a O2 phone (XDA Mini S in fact) I have had pretty good coverage everywhere (not yet found an area where I couldn't get a signal) and my phones reception quality isn't that great when compared to most phones (my Orange m500 using a O2 sim card had a much stronger signal in the same areas.) In the UK the big phone operators Orange, Vodaphone and O2 have around 98/99% coverage of the UK for 2.5G phone and 3G coverage is increasing rapidly (I believe its over 70% coverage.)

The issue isn't the operator.

Re:

[FrostedWheat]

I have a O2 phone (XDA Mini S in fact)

You have my deepest sympathy. :-(

Re:

[Stevecrox]

Two years ago I would have completly agreed with you, Orange's reception in the south west was unmatched (so everyone in the south west I knew owned a Orange phone) but in the last two years reception has been decreasing in the area. An example two years ago I bought a Orange M500 I had a signal strength of 5 bars in my old house. I gave the phone to my dad who is still with Orange and all of the Orange phones he's tried (Motorolla V3i, Sony Erricson w800i, M500) are no longer able to get any signal in the

Re:

[bigstrat2003]

If Jobs had not made so many proclamations about the ability of the iPhone to walk in water, then maybe people wouldn't be picking on the reception issues, which all new products might seem to suffer as they enter new markets.

QFT. To be fair, the Apple fanboys were also proclaiming this even louder than Jobs. I was so glad when the iPhone launched, because we could stop hearing about how it was going to revolutionize the whole phone landscape. This story is only newsworthy because of how much ridiculous amounts of hype the damn phone got.

Re:

[Ngarrang]

Heh. I post a message that doesn't put Apple down and it gets moderated down. Typical Slashdot. If it doesn't denigrate Microsoft or Apple, it must be modded down! Well, karma was meant to be burned, not saved.

Feh!

Re:

[LKM]

You post flamebait and it gets modded down. Seems to me the system works.

What else than flamebait would you call your post? Let's see:

"If Jobs had not made so many proclamations about the ability of the iPhone to walk in water"

Show me one single claim Jobs made about the iPhone's abilities that is false.

Re:

[arivanov]

Whatever...

The O2 home page says it all:

http://www.o2.co.uk/ [o2.co.uk]

It no longer features an iPhone on half a page. There is a Sony there instead. Nuff said.

The Jobs in your Mind

[LKM]

Jobs did not claim a single thing about the iPhone that it does not do. Which is a stark contrast to most other tech companies.

Also, walking in water does not seem too hard to me to begin with.

Re:

[MrPerfekt]

You're a tool. 3G refers to the UMTS/HSDPA (and losely EDGE though it's considered only 2.75G) part of the signal used for data transfer. The part of the signal used for voice is always plain standard GSM. A GSM phone from 10 years ago is just as usable today for voice. The only part that has been evolving is the data services.

Re:

[nxtw]

The part of the signal used for voice is always plain standard GSM.

That could be true for some networks, but not the GSM/UMTS network I use. I set my phone to use only 3G service; consequently, all voice calls go over the UMTS network. Even without forcing the phone to use 3G, the majority of my calls went over 3G. By default, UMTS/HSDPA service is preferred and GSM/EDGE is used when UMTS is unavailable.

A GSM phone from 10 years ago is just as usable today for voice.

And this is going to be the case on an

Re:

[integra_antennas]

Comparing signal bars on various models of mobile phones is not a good test of field strength. In order to compare sensitivity in a scientific manner, need to rip apart the phones and measure their various RF parameters like antenna efficiency RF power levels, TIS, and TRP. Various phone-makers have been caught "cheating" with their signal bars as to show better reception than their rivals--so this is not a reliable comparison method. There is also a problem with multi-path, so phone reception will vary