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."

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?

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: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: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:different freqs?

[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 density and the Red States are states with lower density. Which shows you that population density is a major factor in many aspects. City People need government to survive, because the government needs to manage the resources. Country People need the government to stay away because the government gets in their way because they are self reliant. City Water and Sewer vs. having a well and Sepic system, One you need tight controls to keep safe, The other you need less rules and controls to stay affordable.

Re:signal strength

[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:Ok. So?

[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: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:iphone is meh from a UK perspective.

[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 being able to afford a decent sports car he got something more practical instead. Apple Macs are seen as cool and yet most people would never buy one because there so expensive.

"Coolness" doesn't really factor in common sense I have little doubt that if I owned a iPhone and showed it to my mates they'd see it as "cool" and probably steal it off me to play with.

I think the iPhone's in the same vein as the nokia n95 and Apple Mac's far to expensive for 90% of people to ever buy since you can get most of what it does in a much cheaper phone/laptop but still cool. Unlike burberry, gold chains, big gold rings, Speedfight 2 scooters and anything else Chav.

BTW this whole post was brought to you from a person who hates the iPhone, iBooks, iPods. I just think its a testiment to the control Apple has over the media and people that it isn't seen as "uncool" just too expensive and not worth the money.

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 remember that GSM is more sensitive to certain Problems.