On Sun, 31 Jul 2016 13:52:14 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Jeff
Liebermann wrote:
Well, you're certainly entitled to an opinion. Personally, I prefer
opinions based on repeatable tests, measurements, numerical results,
and calculations. However, I'll accept your assertion for what it's
worth. However, I did make one mistake. The iphone wasn't 10 times
worse, but more like 6 to 18 times. Citing my web page:
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/cellular/cell-test.htm
"The worst phone I tested dropped the rx signal 16 times
(-12dB). The iPhone 4 rx signal dropped 100 times (-20dB)
to 288 times (-24.6dB). That's a 6 to 18 times worse signal
drop for the iPhone 4... "

if the iphone was 18x worse, it would not have sold anywhere near as
well as it did. people don't buy crappy phones.

Without the rubber cover, which is now epidemic, the iPhone 4 was 6 to
18 times worse in signal loss compared to various cell phones. With
the rubber cover, it's about the same as most other smartphones. At
the time when I ran the test, rubber covers for the newly released
iPhone 4 were not available. I can repeat the test if I can borrow an
iPhone 4 from a friend. So can you. It's quite easy but there are a
few tricks. Bug me if you want details.

there were fewer dropped calls with the iphone 4 than the previous
iphone 3gs.

True for AT&T because, as I previously indicated, AT&T would
disconnect if the carrier was lost for only a few seconds. That was
later increased which hid any disconnects caused by carrier loss. You
can test how it works with any cell phone. Make a call and then put
the phone inside a shielded box (microwave oven will do) for varying
amounts of time. Last time I did this on VZW, I could disappear for a
bit less than 2 minutes, and continue my call from where I left off.

I just tried it on VZW at home. I called my house phone from my
ancient LG VX8300 cell phone. I then put it inside the microwave
oven. After 2 minutes, I was still connected. However, I'm not sure
if the signal went to zero. I could see that the phone showed zero
bars through the oven door, but the VX8300 will still work showing
zero bars. I'll see if I can find a weaker signal location and a
better shielded box later in the week.

It's easy enough for you to try the same thing. Note that it doesn't
matter what phone you use. You're testing how the cell site responds
to a loss of carrier. Any phone will suffice.

at the time, the iphone 4 was the best selling iphone to date and sold
quite well for the few years it was offered for sale.

Yep, and sales is of paramount importance. Everything else, including
quality, repairability, product life, and even price are of secondary
importance. If it sells, it must be good (for the company).

once the whole antennagate bull**** blew over, nobody even thought
about it.

I thought about it. I really hate to agree with you, but the
antennagate thing had nothing to do with Apple. Apple's only
contribution was designing a phone that highlighted a bad setting by
AT&T in their cell sites. The problem disappeared when the rubber
bumper made the iPhone 4 act more like other phones of the period, and
when AT&T tweaked their settings. As an added bonus, Apple also
tweaked the relationship between receive signal level and the number
of bars indicated. Later, they graciously allowed users to see the
actual numbers in dBm. Prior to that, jailbreaking was required. You
can read about how it was necessary to get into the field test mode in
order to see numbers at:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2

it was yet another manufactured problem which was concocted by gawker
media for the traffic, just like the iphone 6 bendgate and hairgate
nonsense.

Those problems were not concocted or in any way fabricated for the
occasion. They were quite real. Whether they were significant or
worth fixing is a very different story.

These days, product lifetimes are sufficiently short that the next
generation of product is already in the pipeline when the previous
product is introduced. In some product areas (i.e. disk storage and
SSD's), there can be as many a 3 generations in the pipeline at the
same time. That means there's absolutely no incentive to fix the
current product when the next generation will be released shortly. If
there are any real problems, current owners are simply told to wait
for the next generation to be released, which will surely have those
problems solved. The reality is often quite different.

what comes around goes around, and now gawker media is bankrupt.

Hardly. There are plenty of problems still left to solve. For
example, how about product life and servicability?
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fix-out-product-repairs-get-tougher-new-age-obsolescence-n614916
Did you know that your Apple products are designed for a 5 year
product life?
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624
Ever wonder what Apple does with cell phones that have been returned
for repair?
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-shreds-old-iphones-to-prevent-real-parts-ending-up-in-fakes-2016-2

haters gotta hate.

That's only a problem when one hates something specific, like Apple.
It's not considered a problem if one hates everything equally. Don't
worry. I have plenty of bad things to say about Google and Android.

no need to jailbreak to get dbm

At the time (2010), it was necessary to jailbreak an iphone in order
to obtain signal strength numbers. The field test mode was also
initially disabled in the iphone 4. Read the Anantech article
mentioned above for a memory refresh.

you've admitted your anti-apple bias which makes what you say not
honest.

Excuse me? Since when does hating something lead to dishonesty? I
might hate a vendors products, possibly for good reason, and offer my
opinion on the matter if asked, but I certainly would not poison my
position by lying about what's wrong with their products. I might
also not like a vendor due to political, social, economic, or personal
reasons that have nothing to do with their products. From what I've
disclosed, you would not be able to determine if it's one of those, or
whether it's a quality, service, price, performance, design, or
usability problem that I might have with Apple. Assumption really is
the mother of all such screwups.

Taking your statement at face value, are only people that offer
favorable opinions of Apple allowed to comment because they're
presumably the only ones that are honest? Perhaps you might want to
rephrase your statement.

Drivel: I found my old iPhone 3G and decided to see if it still
works. I charged up the battery, turned it on, and it complained that
it could not make a secure connection. Fine, that's Apple for set the
date and time. Once I did that, I was deluged with about 4 years of
gmail stored on the Google server. That was followed by about 200
reminders and appointments, each of which had to be individually
acknowledged. When I checked for updates, it proclaimed that
everything was up to date. Not too bad for an old phone.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558