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Comment by traek | Hacker News Reader

> There was a phone that people complained about reception on that was displaying the current service signal strength using a realistic algorithm.

> Review sites, etc, complained about it compared to other phones despite it being better in actuality.

> A "fix" was issued. That fix was to use the same signal bar algorithm as everyone else. The same review sites/etc were awash with how much better everyone's reception was and gladness the bug had been fixed.

Source?

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Personal knowledge. I can't name the phone because it never became public that this is what the fix did. They were in fact, required not to say this is what happened. You'd have to find someone willing to break the NDA (and I know a bunch of these people hang out on hacker news, so maybe you'll get it!)

However, the fact that this kind of thing is required is public knowledge through source code, so i'll repeat the link someone else posted:

https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/...

(my particular story was not about LTE, however)

Actually, I remember something very similar to this happening when one of the iPhones came out. Around the iPhone 5, IIRC.

The review sites went nuts showing the new iPhone displaying four bars while sitting next to an Android phone displaying five bars on the same carrier. The perception was that the Android had better reception, but after a short while it was revealed that the iPhone was just measuring the signal more accurately.

It was about this time that the iPhone went from displaying the traditional stepped signal bar graph to a series of dots. At the time I wondered if it was related.

I still have the stepped bar graph for some reason.

iOS 11 switched back to bars (four years after iOS 7 switched to dots).

Not enough space in the ears of the iPhone X/XS displays to show the dots - at least that's my guess why they switched it back.

Not sure if this is what they're referring to, but here's a similar story

https://www.theverge.com/2011/12/21/2652862/verizon-galaxy-n...

See: iPhone Antennagate

That was an actual design/manufacturing defect, where touching the wrong part of the case would cause a short-circuit and immediately drop the call.

Not a short circuit, if I recall correctly, but it added a lot of capacitance and therefore impedance to the antenna.

And like other Applegates it was overblown. Apple kept selling the same GSM iPhone 4 design for 3 years.

As a former iPhone 4 user who lived in a house with poor reception, I wouldn't say the issue was overblown. I practically couldn't use my phone for phone calls. I don't use the phone part much, so it wasn't a deal breaker for me, but I do remember that all my connection problems went away when I switched to an iPhone 5.

Antennagate was specifically about holding the phone in a certain way that caused poor reception - that’s what I am saying was overblown.

The fact that a newer phone gets better reception was not part of antenna gate.

The "magic spot" was a big problem -- accidentally touching it dropped calls.

Reception of the iPhone 4 was significantly worse than the 3GS that came before it.

It wasn't overblown at all. They totally screwed up the antenna design, and because of their release cycle it took them 2 years to fix it (with the iPhone 5)

(Also, "a certain way"="the way a normal person holds their phone when they put it on their ear")

And it didn’t always happen. If it always happen for everyone there would have been a much bigger outcry over the next three years.

You probably live in an area with decent cell tower coverage. If you have good reception, the signal attenuation won't be noticable.

But if you live in an area with poor reception, it is very noticable. For me, it always happened when I was in certain rooms of my house. I'd typically pick up my phone, walk out of the living room to not disturb the others, and then the connection would break up.

No other phone did that. The iPhone 4 had really crappy reception. People made fun of it, and it was absolutely justified.

I still loved the phone. The Retina Display was a breakthrough, and I still think it was the most beautiful phone ever made. But the reception was crappy.

It was not overblown. I had that phone. It was unusable if you were touching it. That's a pretty major design flaw.

The issue was never that it was unusable if you were touching it anywhere. The iPhone 4 was my first iPhone. I used it for a year - before I was force to upgrade when I switched to Verizon (corporate discount) but my son used it when we switched back from Verizon and two years later, neither of us had a problem.

Besides the one specific case if you held the phone a certain way which was a universal problem, all cellphone reception varies from area to area.

> if you held the phone a certain way

Which coincidentally was exactly the way many people always hold phones. A relative had an iPhone 4 and constant connection issues which completely disappeared after she put some tape around the antenna.

I thought Christina was great.

Antennagate was not overblown. It had substantial effects on my reception — to the point of no service. I was forced to use a case, and then forgot about the problem until next time I removed the case. Apple’s software fix, still there to this day, is to make it appear that I have service when I do not.

Edge cases always look bad, a 1% drop in signal quality can result in a dropped call, but is only significant in some areas. Though it looks really bad in those areas.

The reception at my parents house is horrible and I have needed to hold several cellphones in very specific ways for them to work there. This is going back to flip phones though the number of locations phones work has been improving over time.

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