GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

There’s an old joke about a man who visits a doctor, complaining that his arm hurts whenever he moves it a certain way. The doctor’s response? “Stop moving it that way.”

That pretty much sums up Apple’s response to the people who have complained that holding the iPhone 4 in their left hand can cause signal strength to fall, dropping calls and reducing bandwidth. For these people — over 40 of whom have contacted Wired.com — touching the lower left corner of the iPhone’s metal band is the source of the problem.

Here’s what Sascha Segan on Gearlog.com said Apple had to say about that:

Gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your Phone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.

Despite numerous reports from Wired.com readers, we have been trying to replicate the problem without success. According to Wired.com writer Brian X. Chen, if he grips the iPhone 4 firmly in his left hand while downloading a web page, one or two bars disappear from the signal strength indicator. I haven’t been able to reproduce the problem at all.

Segan was able to reproduce the problem using what he calls a “death grip,” holding it “in a slightly sweaty left hand, with my fingers covering the three black lines on the phone’s edge and the bottom left corner in my palm.” In that grip, he guesses, signal strength drops by about 3 to 5 dBm.

Solution: Don’t hold your phone in a death grip, especially if you’re left-handed and inclined to have sweaty palms.

And if you’re one of the people who sees this problem even when holding the phone gently, put your iPhone 4 in a protective case — or add a strip of black electrical tape to the lower left edge. Both break the electrical contact between the phone’s antenna and your skin, and prevent the signal-loss from happening.

Photo courtesy Thomas Barnes

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Wired.com reader Ryan Rhea says he found a way to double the download speed of his new iPhone 4 with nothing more than black electrician’s tape.

Rhea, clearly a graduate of the Home Depot School of Gadget Hacks, simply applied a thin strip of black tape on the lower left corner of the phone’s outer metal band, starting right below the volume buttons and extending down to the edge of the speaker on the bottom of the phone.

That was enough to stop the reception problem reported by many iPhone 4 customers. For those with this problem, touching the lower left corner of their new phone causes signal strength to drop, often cutting off calls and sharply decreasing data download speeds.

Wired.com has not been able to duplicate the problem, although more than 30 readers have reported experiencing it.

That metal band forms the phone’s antenna, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs explained when announcing the iPhone 4 earlier this month. And while touching a radio or TV antenna can often improve reception, by making the conductive surface of your skin into an extension of the antenna, it seems to have the opposite effect on the iPhone 4.

Several readers have reported that putting the iPhone 4 into a protective case, such as the $30 “bumper” case sold by Apple, solves the problem.

The electrical tape achieves the same result at a much lower cost, by putting an electrical insulator between you and the phone’s antenna. In Rhea’s case, his 3G download speed as reported by Testmyiphone.com went from 0.41 Mbps without the tape to 0.82 Mbps with the tape (in both cases, with the phone gripped firmly in his left hand).

The cost for a roll of electrical tape? About $4 for a 66-foot roll of 3/4″ tape, which should be enough to fix your iPhone — and about 790 others.

As a bonus, electrical tape also works great for fixing nerdy glasses.

Photo courtesy Ryan Rhea

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

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The iPhone 4 has finally arrived here in Gadget Lab. Some of you may have seen this before.

We’ve spent only a few hours with the iPhone 4, but our first impressions of the device are quite positive. The 960-by-640 screen is gorgeous, and the thinner profile feels nice in the pocket. FaceTime video conferencing was problematic probably because of our weak Wi-Fi network here but once it got working it was neat.

We’ll have a full review of the iPhone 4 by Friday, but for now enjoy the video above re-introducing the famous device at the center of perhaps the greatest drama in gadget history.

This episode of the Gadget Lab video podcast was produced by Annaliza Savage, with editing by Michael Lennon and audio engineering by Fernando Cardoso. If you want the audio version of this podcast, subscribe to the Gadget Lab audio podcast on iTunes.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Those of you still holding out for a white iPhone 4 are going to have to be mighty patient. Citing manufacturing problems, Apple has officially stated that the white version of the sellout new iPhone won’t be in stores for another three weeks. Here’s the entire, short press release:

White models of Apples new iPhone 4 have proven more challenging to manufacture than expected, and as a result they will not be available until the second half of July. The availability of the more popular iPhone 4 black models is not affected.

My assumption had been that Apple has just switched all production over to the black handset just to keep up with the extraordinary demand. Now it would seem that there is some problem with making the glass case white.

This may be similar to an issue with the old iBook of several years ago. These were made from clear polycarbonate and painted on the inside, presumably to avoid scratches. The trouble was that the paint wasn’t always applied so well. One of mine had a rather patchy finish.

Still, at least now we know how long it will be, and those who want the white iPhone can choose to wait or just change their mind and get a black one. But then, it wouldn’t be a surprise if you had to wait until mid-July for one of those, too.

Statement by Apple on White iPhone 4 [Apple]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

The iPhone 4 isn’t even officially on sale yet and already there are widespread reports of problems with the new retina display.

The iPhone 4 has already been delivered to some lucky customers, and some of them have discovered nasty yellow-brown “stains” on the ultra hi-res screen. These come in the form of a small blob of discoloration in one or more screen corners, as you can see in the photo above from the Apple Discussion forums, posted by user elitemrp.

The problem is echoed across various other sites, including the MacRumors forums, and Jesus Diaz of Gizmodo Tweets that his blog is also being deluged with reports.

Right now we have no direct experience of the problem, or any idea what may be causing it. Our guess would be that it is related to the new production technique Apple is using to bond the glass cover, the LCD panel and the digitizer together into one layered unit, but that’s just a guess.

This could turn into rather a big problem for Apple. If the internet is already this noisy after just a few iPhones were delivered early, imagine how loud things will get when the rest of the 600,000 pre-orders are in people’s hands.

Flawed screen [Apple Discussions]

Some iPhone 4s Experiencing Display Discoloration? [MacRumors]

Uh-Oh – Anyone got yellow spots on their 14 screen? [MacRumors Forums]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

The iPhone 4’s $200 price tag can be mesmerizing, but we’re all aware it’s going to cost a lot more over time thanks to monthly bills. Just how much will you ultimately spend on an iPhone 4 versus, say, a comparable Android handset? Fortunately for the non-mathletes, a website called BillShrink has done the tedious number crunching for us.

The chart at right (click to enlarge) does a nice job summing up the total costs of ownership for the iPhone 4 compared to three highlight Android phones: the Droid Incredible, HTC Evo 4G and Nexus One. Bottom line: If you opt for minimal data and voice plans, you can potentially spend the least on the iPhone 4 over two years.

That should be comforting for owners of the 600,000 iPhone 4s that were already preordered, though of course it doesn’t factor in the amount you’ll be spending on apps. Considering there are 215,000 apps in the App Store compared to Android’s 70,000 apps, we’re guessing iPhone 4 owners will be spending a lot more than Android users over time with all that additional software available.

Via BillShrink

Image courtesy of BillShrink

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Just when you thought a few lucky customers beat the rest of the world to getting an iPhone 4, some technology journalists with early access to the device just published their reviews.

Apple typically handpicks a select group of publications to get early review units, and the first round of reviews comes from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Engadget and others.

The reviewers agreed that the iPhone 4’s hardware is state-of-the-art industrial design. However, they debated about whether the handset solves the iPhone’s biggest recurring problem: handling phone calls on the overloaded AT&T network.

Priced at $200 for the 16-GB model and $300 for the 32-GB model, the iPhone 4 hits stores Thursday (though a few lucky pre-order customers are getting theirs as early as today).

Excerpts from the early reviews are as follows:

Josh Topolsky, Engadget:

The big question is obviously whether or not this fixes or helps with the constant dropped calls iPhone users on AT&T’s network have gotten used to. Well in our testing, we had far, far fewer dropped calls than we experienced on our 3GS. Let’s just say that again: yes, the iPhone 4 does seem to alleviate the dropped call issue.

Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal:

In both hardware and software, it is a major leap over its already-excellent predecessor, the iPhone 3GS.

It has some downsides and limitations– most important, the overwhelmed AT&T network in the U.S., which, in my tests, the new phone handled sometimes better and, unfortunately, sometimes worse than its predecessor.

Xeni Jardin, Boing Boing:

The fourth incarnation of Apple’s iPhone is an incrementally improved, familiar device — not a new kind of device, as was the case with the recent introduction of iPad…. Apple’s focus on improvement is as much key to the quality of its products as innovation. But there’s one flaw it doesn’t eliminate: the unreliable quality of calls placed over AT&T, which remains the iPhone’s only U.S. carrier.

David Pogue, The New York Times:

With the iPhone 4, Apple tried to relieve the wigginess [of phone calls]. Sound is much better on both ends of the call, thanks in part to a noise-canceling microphone and an improved audio chamber (which also helps speakerphone and music sound). The stainless-steel edge band is now part of the antenna. The new phone is also better at choosing the best channel for connecting with the cell tower, even ifs not technically the strongest one. (Ever had four bars, but a miserable connection? Then you get it.)

Edward Baig, USA Today:

Cutting through the hype, Apple has given longtime diehards, and first-time iPhone owners, plenty to cheer about.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews