OT: More iPhone madness - the "fix"

[Fairlight]

At Fri, Jul 02, 2010 at 04:04:54PM -0700 or thereabouts, 
suspect Bill Campbell was observed uttering:
> >On NPR's "Car Talk", Click and Clack suggest taking care of an annoying
> >warning light on a car's dashboard with black electrical tape. :-)
> 
> Depending on the warning light, that could make sense.

Actually, before we had the engine replaced, we had a light caused by a
faulty sensor.  It did make sense to tape over that, or put an eyeglass
case on the dash right in front of it, in our case.  :)  I'd forgotten
about that.

> Most of the serious reviews and evaluations of this that I've
> read have said that it's not that common, some even saying they
> had to work at it to see degradation.  Of course there are some
> Land Sharks jumping on the bandwagon with class action law suits
> for what that's worth.

The CNN video I watched did show it, but they admitted it didn't happen
every time, just sometimes.  That could theoretically be coincidental, as
every mobile I've ever had has varying signal strength.

> I tend to take these with a grain of salt, not having personal
> experience with the iPhone.  When I pick up my iPod Touch in my
> left hand using Skype, or other things, typically I have it
> with my thumb and two fingers gripping it in the upper third of
> the case with the bottom 2/3rds on the left open which probably
> wouldn't affect the signal.  As I said at the beginning of this
> thread, I would use a case to protect the iPhone when (not if) I
> drop it, as I have had with the iPod Touch since I got it.

And I just heard Bill on Skype from his iPod Touch.  Sounded great.  If it
works and you still have 3G capabilities and good throughput, signal
strength isn't necessarily all the important.

Example:  My 802.11g setup here in the apartment demonstrates things
perfectly.  I can have 100% signal strength to my own AP and get knocked
down to 36mbit or even 1mbit if the right conditions present themselves.  I
can also have 32% signal strength to an open AP somewhere in the complex
and get a full 54mbit.  People are under the incorrect belief that signal
strength is an absolute indicator of throughput/performance, and that's
simply not the case.  It's -usually- -fairly- indicative, but there are so
many fluctuations if you watch it closely enough that you find out it's not
actually worth looking into if you can do what you need to do properly.

If my Solstice can still do 3G, I don't care if it's at one bar.  And I've
had that happen in a shielded environment.  Other times I can have four
bars and the 3G drops out and I'm reduced to whatever preceeded 3G (I
really honestly don't know.  2G?  Analog?)  It's rare, but happens.  The
-really- annoying part is when you have a full charge, set the phone down,
wake up 6hrs later, and it's totally dead.  Apparently switching between 3G
and whatever the alternative is really sucks the life out of the battery.
My brother and dad hit this way more than I do, due to where they
work.  Happened to me twice sitting on our counter, though.

mark->
-- 
Audio panton, cogito singularis,