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by TrevorBramble 5830 days ago
Hilarious. I read bits of the letter to my wife this morning as she dashed about before work (she ordered her iPhone 4 a few days ago) and after the bit about bar display I said "the subtext here is that this is AT&T's fault!"

The blame-shifting approaches subliminal. If you aren't looking for the hidden message, you probably won't see it.
1 comments
ttol 5830 days ago
I'll probably get downvoted for this comment but in this case, I think Apple tried to hard-code in a reality distortion field with the bars and it backfired..

A heavily-biased 3G signal meter that shows 5 bars for over half the signal range seems to have been implemented in iPhone OS 2.1 back in 2008. Problems show up with that display implementation due to antenna being on the outside on iPhone 4 and crossing the threshold from 5 bars to "other".

AT&T on the other hand is recommending a more accurate approach instead of interpretting 50% as 5 bars.

Not sure why people are reading this as an AT&T issue.

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jokermatt999 5830 days ago
>I'll probably get downvoted for this comment but in this case,

Good post except for this bit. Please don't bring that phrase to HNs. Good posts can stand on their own.

And yeah, I think the main issue is that the RDF algorithm is collapsing. It was originally a great way to alter perception about AT&T's service, but it backfired due to the issues the 4 may or may not be having with the antenna. The problem of sudden dropping calls at low has been there all along, but with the antenna holding issue (or "issue"), the bubble has been popped.

Out of curiosity, is Apple the only company that does this? Does anyone else display <100% as 5 bars, or is that strictly an iPhone thing?

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