Hacker News Reader

Comment by hayksaakian | Hacker News Reader

Talk about literally "fake it till you make it"

----- (regarding the presentation)

They had AT&T, the iPhone’s wireless carrier, bring in a portable cell tower, so they knew reception would be strong. Then, with Jobs’s approval, they preprogrammed the phone’s display to always show five bars of signal strength regardless of its true strength. The chances of the radio’s crashing during the few minutes that Jobs would use it to make a call were small, but the chances of its crashing at some point during the 90-minute presentation were high.

View on HN

Bringing a COW (Cell on Wheels) in seems like a reasonable precaution - you have a presentation with lots of people showing up, you want everything to work correctly.

i included that line for context, i was referring specifically to the "displays 5 bars regardless of actual signal strength" note

I can see that as a reasonable precaution in a demo device. It all depends on the level of showmanship you want.

Yeah, I don't really begrudge them there. As anyone who's ever had to do a tech demo should know, tech demos are the living embodiment of Murphy's Law.

Happened to me at a Microsoft event. Me and my friend got up on stage to demo our Software and BAM!! it crashed :P right in front of a hall full of big shots!

They continued to fake it (though not to the same degree) right up to the iPhone 4 when it bit them in the ass by making the antenna gate thing seem worse:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3821/iphone-4-redux-analyzing-...

Weird, I coulda sworn I talked to people on my iPhone 3GS. I guess I was hallucinating.

Did anyone say you didn't?

No, they didn't make it seem worse. If I put the phone on my flat hand, and let the signal stabilize, I could drop the signal by about 16dB with one finger (as numerically shown on a jailbroken phone). This was often enough to terminate a call. There was no "seem" about it - it was a bad design. If I could have gotten a refund AND gotten out of my carrier contract, I would have.

why didn't you? if you were in the US, you have 30 days to return and cancel contracts on all major carriers.

Pretty sure that differs state to state. In my state, the law says three days. Sprint gives me a week.

Wonder if some 4s were worse than others. I still use a 4 and have never dropped a call. I have poor coverage everywhere I use it too. I do have calls go straight to voicemail, but it's usually in my pocket when this happens.

I believe the CDMA 4s have an improved antenna design compared to the original GSM 4s (see: http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/08/apples_verizon_iph... ).

I still have and use my GSM (AT&T) iPhone 4 daily that I got years ago and haven't noticed the 'antenna gate' problem..

> There was no "seem" about it - it was a bad design

And yet until the 5s last week, the iPhone 4 was still being sold, and selling like hotcakes. Why no problems without a redesign? It is maybe possible it was that big a deal?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com