There are thousands of invisible signals bouncing around us all the time, and the world would be a very different place if we could see them. Visualizer extraordinaire Nickolay Lamm already showed us what the Wi-Fi noise would look like, and now he's back to illuminate the cell phone signals all around us. It's trippy…
Earlier this week a New York Times article claimed that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden asked a group of lawyers visiting him to put their cell phones in the refrigerator—the idea being that it would act as a Faraday cage. But does it actually work?
As we're slowly getting back to normal in New York, cell service is still spotty (though better than feared) in a lot of areas. And apparently the only place in Alphabet City (the east side in southern Manhattan) to get service is this ONE corner. It's like a wireless internet watering hole, just without the…
AT&T's network sucked in 2008, glutted with iPhones and facing the menace of a 3G rollout. So like its competition, it put together a slapdash operation to build towers at any cost. Even a human cost, ProPublica reports.
Madeleine Morris survived Nazi-occupied France, and went on to happily marry a wonderfully trained musician. Then she went on a trip the country, where their car slammed into a ditch. Nine dropped AT&T calls later, they were both dead.
It's been several hours according to Verizon Wireless customers (some of whom work for your favorite tech site), but Verizon's LTE service shows no sign of going back up. All over the US there have been confirmed outages, with some also reporting their 3G network is down also.
AT&T Just started selling the ARMZ, a cellular tower that fits into a suitcase. It's meant to fill the air with cellular signals in the case of a disaster where existing towers cease to work or, well, exist.
Whether it's for your own passive-aggressive diarising, or you actually plan on launching an appeal against AT&T, the RootMetrics app is worth a download. It's crowd-sourcing data for coverage maps...hopefully so networks can plug the holes. [RootMetrics via Gigaom]
Now I understand why AT&T representatives react so cheerfully when I call to complain about my reception. [Shoebox]
Good cell service is hard to come by, especially in NYC, but five bars won't do much good when you're DEAD. Some New Yorkers are convinced that the AT&T and T-Mo antennas on their roof are bringing the building down.
If sitting stone still in the one corner of your apartment that actually gets decent reception sounds like a terrible way to conduct a phone call, a Bluetooth headset can act as an extender for your cellphone's terrible reception
While older cell towers were topped with those those unsightly satellite-looking antenna fixtures, newer ones can be contained entirely in sleek, featureless polls and thus disguised as trees. Nice for us, not so much for woodpeckers. [YouTube Thanks Manny]
According to the NYT, a "person with direct knowledge" of the iPhone 4's design indicated that the device's reception troubles would be fixed by a second software update—one different from the iOS 4.0.1 update made available earlier today:
According to Bloomberg, one of Apple's senior engineers raised concerns a year ago over the potential for the iPhone 4's design to cause dropped calls.
As promised, the new iPhone system update corrects the bar signal display. Also as promised, it provides another "enhancement": Taller signal bars! Free tip: If you paint flames on the back of your iPhone 4, it runs 2.3x faster.
Initial reports on Apple's iOS 4.1 update confirm what we already knew and what AppleCare is telling to customers: The iPhone software update doesn't fix the iPhone 4's antenna problems. The good news is that it fixes the bar display.
Yesterday, a reader claimed that—after exchanging his iPhone 4—he couldn't reproduce the sharp signal drop caused by the antenna problem. Now, some readers have confirmed the story. However, others haven't seen any improvement in their replacement units. [Updating]
We've received only one report, so take it with a hill of salt: A Gizmodo reader claims that, after Apple replaced his iPhone 4, he couldn't reproduce the sharp loss of signal. He says that the hardware seems slightly different:
Apple has deleted at least six threads talking about Consumer Reports' iPhone 4 tests. Customers on Apple's support boards were discussing the publication's negative report, which demonstrated that the design flaw could affect all users. [Updated]
AppleCare has confirmed what we already knew: The incoming software update won't fix the iPhone 4's transmission and reception problems. They acknowledged the antenna problem exists, offering the same solution as before: Buy a case or hold the iPhone differently.
