But there are a lot of rumors of numerous Android devices coming to Canada in the future, and I'm sure Rogers will get in on the game.
Why would you have to wait for them to come to Canada though? Can you just buy an Android device online from anywhere in the world that is unlocked and use it here? I bought an iphone 3G in Hong Kong that was unlocked and it works perfectly with Rogers voice & data plans just by slipping in the sim card.
Even amongst Android phone makers there is competition. HTC and Motorola are going all out at each other right now to put out the best phone.
Its awesome.
Evo 4G just came out, and already the Droid X is out.
Unfortuantely, nobody has the critical mass of apps like Apple has right now which is one of the main selling points so it's essential that the competition get really good and together and for Android to pick up steam.
Why would you have to wait for them to come to Canada though? Can you just buy an Android device online from anywhere in the world that is unlocked and use it here? I bought an iphone 3G in Hong Kong that was unlocked and it works perfectly with Rogers voice & data plans just by slipping in the sim card.
You certainly could buy the Nexus One unlocked from Google right now and use it with Rogers.
I don't know about the Incredible or Droid X. They both work on a CDMA network. Would that be compatible with Telus and Rogers?
Unfortuantely, nobody has the critical mass of apps like Apple has right now which is one of the main selling points so it's essential that the competition get really good and together and for Android to pick up steam.
And to be fair Apple does make a pretty good piece of hardware.
But the Android Market is lacking. That I won't deny.
Yet the appeal of the rest of the phone is almost worth it.
Looks like Apple has responded, but I''m not sure what to make of it. Apparently, as their statement alludes to, and as other tech sites are starting to corroborate... this is a fairly common issue with a lot of wireless phones.
Is it, though? I've never heard of it before. I've also never paid much attention to it before, either. All I can really say is that the logic seems to make sense...
Anyway. Here's some snippets. I'm not commenting one way or the other, since I simply do not know enough about how this stuff works. I'm merely adding this to the existing discussion.
The "iPhone Death Grip" is somewhat real, but it's more subtle than a lot of people have been putting on. It's not a deal-breaker and it's not a reason - by itself - not to buy the iPhone. But the nearly hysterical online reaction to the death-grip news reveals what people are really thinking.
First, here's Apple's official statement, with which I completely agree.
"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."
If I hold the phone 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, signal strength is somewhat reduced. If I had to pick a number out of the air, I'd say it's by -3 to -5 dBm. Feel free to correct me if you have the appropriate lab equipment. The hand involved has to be a little sweaty to encourage conductivity, or the trick might not work.
This doesn't have any effect on connecting voice calls in areas with strong signal, but it can make the difference between connecting and not if you're already in a fringe signal area.
The death grip makes more of a difference for data. I started a speed test using the Speedtest.net app with the phone sitting on a table. When I picked it up with the Death Grip, download speeds were often reduced by 50% or more. Putting the phone down again restored the download speeds.
I couldn't duplicate the same effect with the same grip on an iPhone 3GS or an HTC phone, although editor Dan Costa has a cool (and different) death grip which can knock two signal bars off his Palm Pre. Using one of Apple's $29 bumper cases negated the iPhone 4 death grip, which means to me that it clearly has something to do with conductivity.
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:
Edit: Again, I have no idea if this is a real issue or if it's just something that is to be expected of a device with an externally-exposed antenna system. But there are a few people, I'm sure, (myself included) who would like to figure this out before we decide to buy one or wait for a hardware revision. Or do something else entirely (like keep our existing iPhones, or switch to the Robot-Jesus Phone).
Now that the three pages of derailing is done, and since the above post is part of the initial discussion...
Repost:
So, back to the original conversation...
Looks like Apple has responded, but I''m not sure what to make of it. Apparently, as their statement alludes to, and as other tech sites are starting to corroborate... this is a fairly common issue with a lot of wireless phones.
Is it, though? I've never heard of it before. I've also never paid much attention to it before, either. All I can really say is that the logic seems to make sense...
Anyway. Here's some snippets. I'm not commenting one way or the other, since I simply do not know enough about how this stuff works. I'm merely adding this to the existing discussion.
Edit: Again, I have no idea if this is a real issue or if it's just something that is to be expected of a device with an externally-exposed antenna system. But there are a few people, I'm sure, (myself included) who would like to figure this out before we decide to buy one or wait for a hardware revision. Or do something else entirely (like keep our existing iPhones, or switch to the Robot-Jesus Phone).
Seriously man, did you really just do that? This is why people call you a fanboy or call you out for stuff.
You just reposted your own lengthy post that is only a few posts up the page because you only want to talk about what you want to talk about. Everybody would have already read your first post before even getting to the bottom of this page.
Whatever the issue is with bridging two antennas, nobody will know anything definitive for awhile. No need to go the "but other phones do it too" route. It's no excuse. It may very well be that other phones exhibit symptoms of this behavior too but if it is this detrimental to the performance of the 4G as some claim, it should have been solved. It doesn't happen on the 3GS as far as I can see. First adopters are always the guinea pigs for technology unfortunately.
Last edited by Hack&Lube; 06-24-2010 at 11:07 PM.
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Hack&Lube For This Useful Post:
Should I download IOS4 for 3GS or just stick with 3.1 for the moment? Does Apple usually take awhile to iron out issues like other software usually does?
But on top of the electrical disturbances which physical contact between skin tissue and the antenna metal will result.
When Steve Jobs recently had to demonstrate an online feature on the new phone, he could not initially connect wonderful unit on some of those present WiFi networks. But due to the glaring coke in the otherwise so controlled showcase a poorly designed antenna?
Uhh... I'm pretty sure the building's wifi crashing had more to do with the lost internet signal during the keynote, than the phone which wasn't even being held the right way at the time...
Uhh... I'm pretty sure the building's wifi crashing had more to do with the lost internet signal during the keynote, than the phone which wasn't even being held the right way at the time...
That's the official story, but all the bloggers were still able to access the wifi before and after Steve had troubles weren't they? I'm not saying the random German article has any credence to it but you never know the full story and really, I would never recommend adopting first generation technology of anything anyway.
That's the official story, but all the bloggers were still able to access the wifi before and after Steve had troubles weren't they? I'm not saying the random German article has any credence to it but you never know the full story and really, I would never recommend adopting first generation technology of anything anyway.
Was that a failure of the iPhone 4 to work over Wi-Fi, or a failure of Wi-Fi to be robust enough to handle a room of thousands of people? It might be what you think if you read much of the reporting about this network failure.
But that’s not quite what happened. There wasn’t one or two Wi-Fi networks running at the Moscone conference center, but several hundred, all beating each other up. According to InfoWorld’s consultation with an Apple engineer at the event, over 500 networks were in operation at the same time.
How was this possible? Because so many people—likely a huge percentage of press attendees—were carrying cellular routers, like the MiFi. The MiFi picks up a 3G data signal and relies it over Wi-Fi, acting just like a Wi-Fi router. Some people were instead using a 3G modem plugging into a laptop, and using an easily accessible Mac OS X (or, gasp, Windows) feature to share the 3G connection via the laptop’s Wi-Fi card.
There are Wi-Fi networks that have tens of thousands of simultaneous users spread over thousands of routers over a corporate or academic campus. Wi-Fi can handle that. And there are plenty of events at which the host creates a temporary Wi-Fi network with many interconnected routers that can handle hundreds to thousands of devices at once. The Macworld Expo is a notable case: the last time I attended, thousands of iPhones and laptops worked just fine over a unified, well-managed Wi-Fi network that spanned the conference area.
Apple apparently did offer a public Wi-Fi network at the WWDC launch, according to media and attendees I’ve polled. And those who tried it said that network did work initially. But with so much media in the audience, and the history of conference/event Wi-Fi networks having glitches at peak times—with many people liveblogging and uploading photos from the event—those who had MiFis chose to use those instead.
Yes I had read all that previously already, with Apple engineers saying there were 527 networks running in that room, most of them running MiFi causing WiFi congestion and further hair loss for Steve. The issues could have been exacerbated by these antenna issues however.
Temporary_User was just pointing out an old article that shows people had recognized this as a potential problem before it really came to light it the past days.
Kudos to Jobs for using a production model and wanting to do it live anyway. MiFi's are pretty awesome though. Too bad Novatel is not an Alberta company anymore.
^ was watching and thinking to myself "wow that looks like seattle" (my hometown). Sure enough at the end of the video he confirms that it is.
Makes me a little homesick.
that said, I sort of agree with him, but don't think he needed a 7 minute video to say that.
30 seconds max
__________________
Last edited by Temporary_User; 06-25-2010 at 12:43 AM.
^ was watching and thinking to myself "wow that looks like seattle" (my hometown). Sure enough at the end of the video he confirms that it is.
Makes me a little homesick.
that said, I sort of agree with him, but don't think he needed a 7 minute video to say that.
30 seconds max
Yeah, he's definitely long winded and annoying but I watch some of his videos if I'm bored and this one seemed timely.
and yeah Seattle is cool.
Was there some special occasion or something going on in Seattle the past few days? Someone did a toast to some Seattle people for some reason and I don't know why.
I remember when the Nokia 6230 had the signal problems.
People all talked about it all the time.............back in 2005 when it came out.
I have the nexus one and yes I can get the signal to drop when I death grip the phone, drop a whopping 5db or about 1/10 of a signal bar.
This is a design flaw and a big mistake. However Apple will most likely call this feature Idrop, and market it as a new way to hang up the phone without pressing the touch screen.
Unfortuantely, nobody has the critical mass of apps like Apple has right now which is one of the main selling points so it's essential that the competition get really good and together and for Android to pick up steam.
I use a Blackberry because it does what I need, so this isn't coming from a perspective of defending what I have bought.
According to Wikipediea
Quote:
As of June 7, 2010, there are at least 225,000 third-party applications officially available on the App Store, with over 5 billion total downloads.
Quote:
On 17 March 2009, there were about 2,300 applications available for download from the Android Market, according to T-Mobile chief technical officer Cole Brodman.[1]
By December 2009, there were over 20,000 applications available for download in the Android Market.[2]
By 23 June 2010, there were nearly 80,000 applications available for download in the Android Market. Recent months (in 2010) have shown an ever increasing growth rate, recently (in May 2010) surpassing 10,000 additional applications per month.[3]
So there are 2-3 times as many Apple apps as Android apps, but the growth rate of android apps is crazy high (400% in 6 months).
Are there really a lot of apps that are available in the App store that are not available on Android Market? Especially when you consider the fact that there are obviously apps with duplicated functionalities within each group. How many racing games or spreadsheet apps do you need before you should just stop counting them?
__________________
"Wake up, Luigi! The only time plumbers sleep on the job is when we're working by the hour."
