No Antenna Issues – “ranger_one” writes:
Knock on wood, but I’ve still never had a dropped call on my iPhone 4 — not one. I spend up to a couple hours a day on conference calls and my 3GS would drop several times a day just sitting in the office. My 4 works in every corner of the building and I can even ride the elevators or drive all the way home without fear of dropping.
I did hesitate to buy because of the antenna complaints, but feel stupid for doing so. It’s hands-down the most reliable phone I’ve ever used.
No Antenna Issues Either – “eightzero” writes:
[...] I have a iP3G, and never had any problems with it or ATT at home in Seattle or when I’ve travelled. My wife has an old dumb phone, and an older iPod touch. She was in need of some tech upgrade, so I decided to get the an iP4 for her birthday. I’ve read a lot about the antenna issues, and have casually asked a few iP4 owners in passing if it is a problem for them. Not a scientific sample, but it didn’t seem widespread.
I walked a few blocks from my office to the ATT store. Staff was friendly, was asked w/i 30seconds of entering if they could help. Store had a few customers shopping, I casually asked if they had any iPhones in stock. “We have a few.” Made a quick call to my wife to see if she could do with her phone being deactivated for a couple hours – just until I could get the new one to her at home that evening.
The ATT purchase / activation took all of about 10 minutes. Guy asked me to pick out a case, and tossed it in the bag, no questions or charge. My wife doesn’t need huge data, so we got her the 200MB one. (Be nice if the tech ‘tards at work would give her access to their wifi tho.)
Set up on iTunes for my wife was flawless. There have been no reception issues. She loves it.
Will replace my iP3G with iP4 shortly.
Simply put, Apple stuff just works for me. Was watching a colleague wrestle with a PC last night. The furrowed brow syndrome was evident. My Apple stuff just…works.
“michaeldavidcohen” on FaceTime:
It’s very smooth video and works great for one or two people. If you’re attempting to shoot video of three or four people, get ready to be up close and personal with your fellow callers on one end of the stream. It’s doable but it’s tight. There is no zoom or pan that I could find so you likely should pass the phone around during calls to get the best video.
Also, don’t forget to enable FaceTime in Settings (I had to to do that). If you still don’t see the option when you make a call, reboot. Then, FaceTime shows up as an option instead of the Hold button during a phone call.
Just a note, I cannot confirm this but some people think you need a data plan or a messaging plan, which seems odd since it’s all done over WiFi. I already had one so just switching on FaceTime in Settings and rebooting did the trick.
Overall, it’s the best experience I’ve had doing video over the Internet. Well done, Apple!
“chrisdejabet” explaining the non-requirement of making a phone call before initiating FaceTime:
This is not necessary. I made a transatlantic FaceTime call with TUAW alumnus Nik Fletcher by simply tapping the FaceTime button on his contact card. The trick is to assign the iPhone label to the phone number. I have never called Nik’s phone, as that would be ridiculously costly. But I was able to ring him via a WiFi FaceTime call by tapping the FaceTime button on his contact card. Easy as pie.
[...]
The call across the pond wasn’t even on my AT&T bill. If you manually label a contact’s iPhone 4 number as iPhone (it’s one of the selection, like home, work, or mobile. Also, once you do call someone else’s iPhone 4, you’ll notice that number gets auto labeled as iPhone as well) then you’ll be able to just hit the FaceTime button at the bottom of the contact card and establish a WiFi call, without having to turn on Airplane Mode first. The FaceTime button from contact card completely bypasses AT&T (or insert name of carrier).
AnandTech reports that the iPhone 4 antenna is improved:
From my day of testing, I’ve determined that the iPhone 4 performs much better than the 3GS in situations where signal is very low, at -113 dBm (1 bar). Previously, dropping this low all but guaranteed that calls would drop, fail to be placed, and data would no longer be transacted at all. I can honestly say that I’ve never held onto so many calls and data simultaneously on 1 bar at -113 dBm as I have with the iPhone 4, so it’s readily apparent that the new baseband hardware is much more sensitive compared to what was in the 3GS. The difference is that reception is massively better on the iPhone 4 in actual use.
With my bumper case on, I made it further into dead zones than ever before, and into marginal areas that would always drop calls without any problems at all. It’s amazing really to experience the difference in sensitivity the iPhone 4 brings compared to the 3GS, and issues from holding the phone aside, reception is absolutely definitely improved. I felt like I was going places no iPhone had ever gone before. There’s no doubt in my mind this iPhone gets the best cellular reception yet, even though measured signal is lower than the 3GS.
Conference call with three calls going at the same time, and transacting data, all at minimum signal. Impressive.That brings me to the way that signal quality should really be reported – Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). SNR is essentially a measure of how much of the signal is compromised by noise or interference. It’s readily apparent that because the iPhone 4 works almost perfectly fine at -113 dBm, it has much better sensitivity. The deciding factor for reporting the signal quality metric is then SNR, something Apple and other handset manufacturers will have to move to eventually instead of just power. In reality, reporting based on SNR makes a lot more sense, since I couldn’t make calls drop driving around an entire day cupping the phone, despite being at -113 dBm (1 bar) most of the time.
