MacRumors

One MacRumors reader emailed Steve Jobs in a followup about the widely publicized iPhone 4 signal issues that have been reported across the web. In particular, rfbandit was asking about Apple's policy on giving free bumper cases to alleviate the issue. "I love everything about the phone except my signal issues", he wrote.

Steve Jobs reportedly replied immediately with:

There are no reception issues. Stay Tuned.

The response is notable in that it is not simply a copy/paste of the official statement from Apple. Steve Jobs had previously been replying to all signal inquiries on Friday with the same generic statement published Thursday:

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 iPhone 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.

That public statement from Apple essentially described the issue as a normal phenomenon. Today's email provides users some hope that a fix might somehow be on the way. In fact, one report even claimed an iOS update as early as Monday might be able to relieve the issue due to a lag in the iPhone 4's ability to switch between frequencies causing the loss in signal.

One of the hidden benefits of the 3G iPad was improved GPS accuracy and speed over the iPhone 3GS. The improvement was attributed to a newer GPS chip from Broadcom. iFixit's teardown revealed that the iPhone 4 shares the same Broadcom BCM4750 chip as the iPad, suggesting the iPhone 4 will see the same benefits.

At least one reader experience confirms the improved GPS accuracy and speed of the iPhone 4:

I used my Navigon GPS app today for about ten minutes, nothing to long or in depth, but the [iPhone 4] got a lock in seconds and was spot on. I'll test it tonight going home from work and see how it does but I didn't notice any issues earlier today, in fact it was a huge leap from the 3GS in terms of reliability and accuracy.

Several readers have reported that the iPhone 4 does make good on its promise of increased upload speeds over 3G. ZDNet posted some comparisons between the iPhone 3G and iPhone 4 using Speedtest.

I started noticing this on Thursday after I picked up the iPhone 4. The first bandwidth speed tests that I ran showed that I was getting much higher bandwidth numbers that I was used to seeing on AT&T. I was getting over 2 Mbps on downloads and over 700K on uploads.

The ZDNet author was unable to replicate the signal loss issue at his location (Louisville, Kentucky). How much you might individually benefit from the improved HSUPA depends on the status of your AT&T wireless network in your area.

The success of the iPhone 4 launched has been otherwise marred by widespread reports of signal loss. The signal loss seems to occur when the iPhone 4 is held in a certain position resulting in the bridging of the two antenna on the bottom left of the device (see video above). Reports have been varied, however, with many still claiming that the issue does not affect them at all. It's been suggested that signal or tower differences may account for the different experiences.

We've organized this poll to see how common the problem is and broken down by region to see if there are any regional differences.

At the iPhone 4's introduction at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple made significant mention of the device's capabilities, noting that while the device carries only 5 megapixels in comparison to the 8-megapixel cameras that are becoming standard on the latest smartphones, the new iPhone offers a great deal beyond simple pixel count that contributes to superior performance.

With iPhone 4 now on the market, and samples of Motorola's new Droid X, introduced on Wednesday, coming available, objective camera tests for both still and video imaging have become possible using the latest devices.

Macworld performed a series of tests comparing iPhone 4 with its predecessor, the iPhone 3GS, as well as the Droid X, HTC EVO 4G, Samsung Galaxy and HZ35W, as well as basic Samsung and Sony point-and-shoot cameras. For video tests, the publication also threw in the Flip Video M2120. A series of images and videos was taken with the devices, and a blind evaluation of their quality was performed.

In still image testing, the two point-and-shoot took top honors, with Apple's iPhone 4 right behind, leading the pack of smartphones, supporting Apple's claim that pure megapixel count is not a sufficient measure of image quality.

The iPhone 4 had, by a healthy margin, the best exposure and color scores of the entire bunch, beating out even the point-and-shoot cameras. It did run into trouble in the sharpness and distortion categories, performing much lower than the pocket cameras and similarly to the Droid.

For video quality, iPhone 4 topped all other smartphones, as well as the point-and-shoot camera, losing out only to the dedicated Flip Video camera.

While its image quality was impressive, it was the iPhone 4's video capabilities that really stole the show in our lab tests. Of the eight devices we rated for video, only the Flip Video M2120 scored higher. The Flip, which also records 720p, 30fps video, had just slightly better video quality than the iPhone 4, even in low-light.

Audio was a bit less impressive on iPhone 4, only matching the Droid X while the Samsung Galaxy took the top spot for smartphones behind the Flip camera.

Boy Genius Report has also performed a comparison of iPhone 4's HD video capabilities to those of Droid X, which both shoot in 720p. The report awarded top honors to Apple's iPhone 4, in part due to its superior framerate of 30 fps versus 24 fps for the Droid X.

iPhone 4's use of the H.264 format also allowed it to achieve the better performance with file sizes less than half that of Droid X. Despite iPhone 4's overall victory, however, the study found that Droid X beat out iPhone 4 in both color accuracy and audio quality, somewhat disagreeing with Macworld's assessment on those aspects.

One of the key features of iPhone 4 is FaceTime, Apple's new video calling feature. Unfortunately, the feature is currently limited to iPhone 4-to-iPhone 4 calls, making it difficult for some people to try out the new feature if they don't know any other users with the device.

Apple has addressed the issue with a new FaceTime support and testing hotline at 1-888-FACETIME, mentioned in an email sent to some iPhone 4 customers by Apple. Callers to the FaceTime hotline will be asked a few questions about their phone and Wi-Fi situation before being transferred to a FaceTime session with an Apple representative. Callers can then receive information about the feature, ask questions, and test things out with the Apple representative on the other side.

The FaceTime hotline is currently available between the hours of 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM Central Time.

Hardmac reports that it has heard that Apple is considering rebranding Mac OS X under the new "iOS" name recently rolled out as a replacement for "iPhone OS". The change would serve as a means for uniting Apple's operating systems under a single naming scheme with multiple flavors.

They are currently thinking of using iOS as the default naming/branding of Apple OS. We would then have iOS desktop, iOS server and iOS mobile. The final decision is not taken yet, however, the proposal seems to be well supported by the high management, it would give a better exposure and unity to Apple OS platforms while making communication easier.

Such a change could facilitate branding and marketing if Apple were to release touchscreen-enabled Macs running an "iOS mobile" layer on top of the traditional Mac OS X.

While the "i" naming scheme has become synonymous with Apple's mobile devices, it obviously has its origins in the iMac, introduced in 1998 and carried along through multiple iterations to today's desktop computer still bearing the same name. A tighter marketing integration of Apple's traditional Mac operating system and mobile operating system could help Apple position itself for a future where lines between computing environments continue to blur.

With the release of iPhone 4, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has fired up his email account again and is responding to a number of customer emails. First it was his description of the signal strength concerns as a non issue. And in another pair of publicized responses, Jobs has briefly addressed both future wireless syncing of iOS devices and the replacement of the iPhone's on-screen "hold" button available during calls with a button for activating the new FaceTime video calling feature.

Mashable first reported on the Wi-Fi phone syncing topic earlier this week amidst the excitement of the iPhone 4 launch, noting that Jobs replied "Yep, someday," to a question from a customer about possible future wireless syncing of his iPhone to his Mac. Jobs offered no timeframe for a launch of the feature.

Earlier this year, one developer created his own Wi-Fi syncing solution and hoped that Apple would distribute it through the App Store, but the company rejected the application last month. It is now available for jailbroken devices connecting to both Mac and Windows computers at a price of $9.99.

The second issue comes to our attention via TechCrunch, which points to a LiveJournal posting from a user who asked about the removal of the "hold" button from the iPhone's on-screen calling screen to make room for a new button for initiating FaceTime video calls. Jobs' response: "Hold doesnt do anything more than Mute."

Interestingly, Jobs was neither entirely correct nor thorough in his answer. As noted in Apple's own user guide for devices running iPhone OS 3.1, the "mute" functionality silences the user's own voice in the conversation while continuing to allow them to hear the party on the other end of the line. The "hold" functionality silences both ends of the conversation.

Fortunately for users looking to make use of the hold functionality that seemed to have disappeared, a commenter on the TechCrunch piece notes that simply holding down the "mute" button for a few seconds will activate the "hold" functionality.

Long lines persist for the iPhone 4 a full day after its official launch day. The photo above was taken at the Regent Street Apple Store in London this morning.

Meanwhile, we've heard that the second round of iPhone pre-orders have begun shipping ahead of schedule. Customers who ordered the iPhone 4 from Apple after the initial batch sold out were originally quoted a July 2nd ship date, but some of those customers have now started receiving shipping notifications.

The continued strong demand bolsters analysts' recent estimates of blockbuster opening weekend sales. Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster estimated yesterday that Apple will move 1.0-1.5 million iPhone over the first three days of availability. Oppenheimer's Yair Reiner followed up with a more bullish claim of as many as 1.5 million iPhones sold on the first day alone, presumably including those that shipped to customers a day or two early.

Apple reported after last year's launch weekend for the iPhone 3GS that it had sold "over one million" units in the first three days of availability. Given claims of substantially increased pre-order increase over last year and reports of Apple's longest lines ever for launch day sales, it certainly seems likely that the company will eclipse last year's performance.

Several readers have pointed out that, as per Steve Jobs statement, other mobile phones also suffer from similar signal degradation while being held tightly. In fact, a support thread for Google's Nexus One described a very similar issue back in February:

If you go to Settings -> About Phone -> Status you will see a display for "Signal strength". When my phone is sitting on the desk, the signal stays consistent. However, the second I touch my phone, the signal drops up to as much as -20 dBm. I am able to replicate this test every single time, whether the signal is incredibly strong or weak.

Another user filmed this video of his Nokia 6230 showing the same phenomenon:

Apple's official response is that this is "normal" for any mobile phone:

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 iPhone 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.

Obviously, depending on your natural hand position while using the iPhone this may or may not be easily avoidable. Also it seems the issue may be more severe on the iPhone 4 with dropped calls. Besides a case, another simple solution that has been said to work is placing some sort of tape on the bottom portion of the iPhone 4's antenna which should prevent the antenna bridging when holding the phone.

MacRumors forum user samcraig emailed Steve Jobs about the low signal issue while holding the new iPhone 4 in a specific way. The potential issue has been generating a lot of discussion. Samcraig emailed Steve Jobs:

Question - What's going to be done about the signal dropping issue. Is it software or hardware?

To which, Jobs replied with a typically short response:

Non issue. Just avoid holding it in that way.

In a followup email, Jobs then expanded with this explanation:

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 iPhone 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.

Steve Jobs has been known to respond to emails and we were able to log into Samcraig's email account to verify the authenticity of the emails, so we believe these are real.

Update: This has been confirmed as an official statement from Apple.

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times reported on an update to Apple's privacy policy which indicates that Apple may collect "precise," "real-time geographic location" data for users of its products and share that data with unspecified "partners and licensees" in order to improve services and advertising.

The policy has apparently caught the attention of federal lawmakers, as The Washington Post reports that a pair of congressmen, Edward Markey and Joe Barton, have written a letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs requesting additional information on the company's practices.

The lawmakers said they were concerned that users appeared to automatically be included in Apple's gathering of geographic data unless they actively opt out of having information collected about them.

"Given the limited ability of Apple users to opt out of the revised policy and still be able to take advantage of the features of their Apple products, we are concerned about the impact the collection of such data could have on the privacy of Apple's customers," the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

The report cites a series of nine questions being asked of Jobs by the lawmakers, who are seeking clarification of the rationale behind the policy and details on what products and which users are subject to the collection, as well as what partners Apple is sharing the data with, what it plans to do with the data, and how user anonymity is being preserved. The congressmen have requested a response from Jobs by July 12th.

Quite a few users have reported experiencing an issue with cellular signals appearing to degrade when holding the lower left portion of their iPhone 4s. While not all users have been able to reproduce the problem, it does seem to be fairly widespread, and can be easily visualized as users watch their bars indicating signal strength drop all the way down over a period of a few seconds while the lower left portion of the device is cupped in the hand.

In his iPhone 4 review for The Wall Street Journal, Walt Mossberg did note the device's tendency to show a lower number of signal strength bars than the iPhone 3GS, but that calls did continue to go through and Apple reported that the issue is simply a software issue with the display of the bars rather than an actual signal strength issue.

The cupping issue, however, may be more significant than just a software presentation issue, as several users have reported dropping calls as they place their hand over the lower left portion of the phone.

One user has posted a YouTube video demonstrating the issue and the use of a slide-on iPhone 3GS case to eliminate it.

We have confirmed that Apple's bumper case also appears to effectively prevent the issue from occurring. It remains to be seen, however, what Apple's official response to the issue will be.

Yesterday, we reported that a number of iPhone 4 users have noticed yellowish or brownish splotches on their device's screens, obviously causing a fair amount of concern for some of those users.

According to a forum post at AppleInsider, however, the issue should resolve itself over the next several days, as it is claimed to be caused by a bonding agent in the screen that has not yet fully dried following the manufacturing process.

Apple is using a bonding agent called Organofunctional Silane Z-6011 to bond the layers of glass. Apparently, Apple (or more likely Foxconn) is shipping these products so quickly that the evaporation process is not complete. However, after one or two days of use, especially with the screen on, will complete the evaporation process and the yellow "blotches" will disappear.

How do I know? I was involved in pitching Z-6011 to Apple.

The veracity of the poster's claim has not been verified, but it does offer some hope to those affected by the issue. Adding to those hopes are reports from users that their blotches are in fact fading with time and usage, indicating that affected users should probably take a wait-and-see attitude for a few days rather than rushing out to their local Apple Stores in hopes of exchanging for new units.

I had major yellow spots on the bottom corners of the iPhone 4 this morning when I received it (as shown in the other thread) and as of right now they have COMPLETELY faded away. I have no idea what caused this but it happened. So keep an eye on it over the next day or so if you have the issue. . . It just seemed like the more I used the phone today the more it faded. It's really odd but I'll take it.

Update: Gizmodo is reporting that Apple support staff are issuing conflicting recommendation to users with this issue, with at least one user reportedly receiving confirmatory word from Apple that the issue is "residue from manufacturing" that should clear on its own within a few days while others have been told to bring in their phones for replacement.

Despite early ordering problems and possible reception issues, the iPhone 4 has had a successful launch worldwide to large crowds. Japan was the first country to see the iPhone 4 go on sale and over 300 people lined up at the flagship store for Softbank, the iPhone 4's Japanese mobile carrier. Softbank sold out of the iPhone 4 by early afternoon.

France, Germany, and the UK were the next to launch the iPhone 4 and just followed by the U.S. East coast. The lines have been reported to be very long at many of the locations we've heard from. Our own local Apple Store (Richmond, VA) reports their longest lines for any iPhone launch.

Helpful iPhone 4 Resources

Join our iPhone forums to share your experiences or get help with your new device. We've started a few threads for people to get started:

- First Impressions to iPhone 4
- Examples of Photos Taken with iPhone 4
- Examples of Videos Taken with iPhone 4

There's a great example in the Photo thread of how powerful the iPhone 4's camera flash is.

AppShopper is a useful site to find new apps and price drops existing apps. Apple has let loose an enormous number of app updates have been released in the past 24 hours to offer support for iOS multitasking as well as support for the iPhone 4's retina display and gyroscope.

The are over 220,000 apps available, but here are a couple of guides to get you started:

- AppShopper: Essential Apps: Getting Started with iPhone 4
- TouchArcade: So You Just Got an iPhone 4 - An App Store Gaming Guide

Earlier this evening, iPhone 4 signal drops had been reported from individuals holding their new iPhones in their hand. The issue seems to have been isolated to a specific location on the device itself. It is demonstrated well in this video by Insanely Great Mac:

The video shows that calls were consistently dropped when the iPhone 4 was held in the left hand while touching the bottom left corner.

It's not clear if the bottom-left sensitivity is a problem with every iPhone 4 or if there is only a batch of iPhone 4s that are affected. Of course, the solution for now would be to avoid holding the iPhone in the manner demonstrated.

Note: the lower number of bars on the iPhone 4 as compared to the 3GS is a known software issue. Apple told Mossberg that it would be addressed in a future software update.

Update: A couple of commenters have said they have been unable to replicate on their iPhone 4, while others have, so it may not affect every device.

Apple has released their version of iMovie into the App Store. The new App is $4.99 and requires an iPhone 4.

Make beautiful HD movies anywhere with iMovie, the fun, feature-rich video editing app for iPhone 4. Create a video postcard of your day at the beach and publish it to the web -- without ever leaving your spot in the sand. Or make a movie of your childs birthday party and send it to your parents -- while the party is in full swing. With iMovie for iPhone, you can start several projects and finish them whenever you want and wherever you are.

Apple introduced the App during the WWDC keynote, and has since confirmed an iPhone 4 is required. We suspect the requirement is due to the faster processor and more RAM that the iPhone 4 uniquely offers.