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iPhone XS Max Is the mobile reception on the xs Max even worse than iPhone X ?
- Thread starter mydogeatsbeats
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Then I stand corrected.
If fix comes out soon my theory holds. Hope that is the case... unlike the 8 speaker, iPhone battery and MBP keyboards..
I love Apple products.. but I absolutely will call BS on them.
I've read mixed issues between the XS and XS Max in this thread. I was fortunate that my iPhone XS Max has no issues.
are you in a major city with cellular tower saturation ? Meaning you could be connected by more than 2 towers at anytime ?
At home, yes but at work I usually either get no signal or 3G but now I'm getting a bar or two on LTE.
Been blacklisted from apple is real....All these big time tech reviewers all know about the low signal/bad screen issues and they are all scare to report it........Low signals on smarthphone makes it unusable IMHO. It also cause low battery life cause the phone is constantly looking for the a good signal. This happened to me cause my old phone had better battery life at my house (great signal) vs my office (horrible signal)......
Chances are its hardware and they are not going to do a recall. Its up to the people to either return or live with it.
Again despite the best efforts of this thread, there really seems to be no rhyme or reason. Some say it only impacts those in fringe areas and that major cities with coverage would pose no issue. But again I am in NYC where there is tons of coverage and my AT&T XS Max gets horrible cell/LTE connection and speeds. I'm really dumbfounded and frustrated.
That's what I've been saying all along: it is a bad mix of the mediocre antenna design and the mediocre Intel modem. Apple has gotten away with many things before. Some of them were actually way worse than this. Last year year they got away by selling 2 different modems that were actually very different in real life usage. Whoever says that the difference was negligible just has no idea what they are talking about! When the 6S was released, they got away with the whole Samsung vs TSMC chip issue: the battery life difference was there, but Apple claimed only 2-3% real life difference and people ate it. There are numerous examples of Apple being disingenuous. However, people tend to have a very short memory span when it comes to Apple's mistakes. Partially, that has been attributed to very good customer service, which still depends on an Apple employee, of course, but more or less it's been mostly good. At least, for me.
The bottom line is they will not admit anything this time: the phone does work. They will totally downplay the whole low signal area thing. They are already doing it. It was pretty much the same with the Intel X and 8 last year as well. There were no statements or actions either (except for candy coated articles claiming very minimal real life difference). We can only hope they will bother to fix this design in the 2019 iPhones.
I really wish some major site would do a better write up on it than just a 3 or 4 paragraph blurb. There's obviously an issue but no one can probably pinpoint a cause and with no cause there is no way to start fixing it. It could be just software or it could be the hardware or worse case scenario it's a combination of hardware and software which would leave a lot of customers in a bad place.
Apple is probably hesitant to say anything because they don't want a mad rush of returns.
Apple is probably hesitant to say anything because they don't want a mad rush of returns.
Announce a major issue with the flagship devices heading into the Holiday season?
it's not software. I remember when the 5S was just launched, there was a gyroscope issue. It was not level on all the phones. Apple addressed that right away! I think it only took them a week to fix it via a software patch. They made a statement right away as well. They will not say anything this time.
Oh, that also. That would be bad.
Could also put people off of the iPhone Xr. All I know for sure is I'll have an iPhone by end of November. I have Apple Watch 4's ordered and I need iPhones for them. Android has been great but overall Apple has a better ecosystem.
I really hope the XS can be fixed via software. The short time I had one I loved it besides not having a great signal and Bluetooth wouldn't connect to my Fitbit. If it's not that then the XR is my next purchase.
My bad yes he does talk about it....How would anyone know with that title and background pic.
I've been working with Apple as well as Verizon, trying to ensure I am doing my part to escalate these issues in order to gain more visibility. I spoke with a network engineer from Verizon earlier who was very helpful and knowledgeable. He has been with Verizon for many years and spent ~30 minutes chatting with me. He said that he has been dealing with a flood of tickets identical to mine since the XS was released a week ago and assured me that the weak cellular issues were very widespread.
Regardless of whether the antenna in the phone is poorly designed or not, I asked him why my phone will sit with 1 bar of signal on band 2 or band 4 vs. switching to the stronger band 13 when the signal is very weak on bands 2/4 (which are higher frequency and do not penetrate buildings as well). Basically, bands 2/4 are kind of like the equivalent of 5GHz WiFi - they have more capacity and can provide better speeds vs. 2.4GHz but they don't travel as far. Band 13 is the equivalent to 2.4GHz in this analogy.
So I asked why the phone would rather drop a call (or lose voice packets numerous times during a call resulting in lots of 5 second periods of silence/"dead air" while on a call) vs. simply switching to the stronger band 13 in the same fashion that a WiFi device switches to the 2.4GHz band once you get too far from your router and the 5GHz signal gets too weak to perform reliably.
The engineer said that this was a great question and assured me that the algorithm to switch from a weaker band to a stronger one is entirely in Apple's software and that there was nothing in the Verizon carrier settings file that Verizon engineers could do to improve this behavior. It is entirely up to Apple to determine when to switch from a weaker band to a stronger one.
I truly believe Apple could improve things by changing the threshold at which the iPhone switches to a stronger band with a lower frequency (i.e. band 13) when the signal on bands 2/4 get weak enough. No, that won't fix any potential "design" issues with the phone itself (if there are in fact design flaws), but it would certainly mitigate some of the problems.
Regardless of whether the antenna in the phone is poorly designed or not, I asked him why my phone will sit with 1 bar of signal on band 2 or band 4 vs. switching to the stronger band 13 when the signal is very weak on bands 2/4 (which are higher frequency and do not penetrate buildings as well). Basically, bands 2/4 are kind of like the equivalent of 5GHz WiFi - they have more capacity and can provide better speeds vs. 2.4GHz but they don't travel as far. Band 13 is the equivalent to 2.4GHz in this analogy.
So I asked why the phone would rather drop a call (or lose voice packets numerous times during a call resulting in lots of 5 second periods of silence/"dead air" while on a call) vs. simply switching to the stronger band 13 in the same fashion that a WiFi device switches to the 2.4GHz band once you get too far from your router and the 5GHz signal gets too weak to perform reliably.
The engineer said that this was a great question and assured me that the algorithm to switch from a weaker band to a stronger one is entirely in Apple's software and that there was nothing in the Verizon carrier settings file that Verizon engineers could do to improve this behavior. It is entirely up to Apple to determine when to switch from a weaker band to a stronger one.
I truly believe Apple could improve things by changing the threshold at which the iPhone switches to a stronger band with a lower frequency (i.e. band 13) when the signal on bands 2/4 get weak enough. No, that won't fix any potential "design" issues with the phone itself (if there are in fact design flaws), but it would certainly mitigate some of the problems.
The reality still is, as has been stated multiple times in this thread by those of us who aren’t just losing their **** without any real evidence, that this could be software, firmware or hardware or be a carrier issue, especially given the variety of experiences and the test results from various publications that are at variance with what some posters in this thread are seeing. No-one outside Apple knows, certainly no-one here does. Plus this is likely to be an order of magnitude more complicated than a bug in the gyroscope software, so that really isn’t a meaningful comparison.
We just need to wait and see what comes in the way of updates in the next couple of weeks or, if we really don’t want to chance it, return the phone before the 14d window is up. It really is that simple.
Great thanks for the write up. Like others mentioned, I think those of us experiencing the issues have to do our part with raising Apple support tickets and getting as much visibility as we can.
As mentioned I had raised a support ticket with Apple last Monday and have now spent a total of 3 hours with an engineer to produce system diagnose files to send to them including screenshots from my impacted XS Max as well as information from my wife's 6s and our iPad Air 2 to use as comparisons.
Not going to lie, it's been a huge hassle. I'm happy to help and hope this gets Apple closer to identifying the root cause, but on the other hand it's been 3 hours of my personal time (2 hours Saturday and then 1 hour last night) that I would much rather spend doing other things. From my convo with Apple last night, it still seems we are a long ways away from any information...
Good luck waiting! It is what it is and I wouldn't put my hopes too high for this. I personally dealt with the Intel modem last year on both X and 8 Plus and I know what a bad piece of electronics it is. Apple decided to save money by taking the Intel route. Also, as I previously mentioned, it's already indicated that the antenna design in Xs leaves much to be desired. The Qualcomm modem would've mitigated this issues by a bit. Apple can't really tweak the signal by software. They can offer you a free case or a bumper though, but that wouldn't help this time LOL
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iOS 12 Beta 2 is out for devs. Anyone able to test whether it resolves these issues?
As I noted previously the jury is still out on the antenna design’s adequacy in real-world usage (as opposed to in the opinion of a random guy with no apparent qualifications on a website no-one had ever heard of before last week). Plus PC Mag and Ars Technica’s testing seems at variance with what people here are seeing, which seems odd if it’s a design issue. Plus none of the major tech website reviews mention reception issues (YouTube click baiting doesn’t count). Plus here in the UK we’ve had intel modems in all iPhones since the 7 with no major issues prior to this. Maybe it copes better on our range of frequency bands, or maybe it really is a firmware/software issue in the XS as seems suggested by Verizon in the post above.
You will not really see any major outlets posting that! Nobody wants to be blacklisted by Apple. Just like I said before, good luck! You will really need it with the Xs!
If I was near an apple store I would go pickup my 4th XS and some do some testing for you but I am not near one
I never had one, but I wanted to upgrade to an Xs Max from my X. I can't really take my chances with it. Last year I had such a bad experience first with an 8 Plus and then an X, both with Intel. It was such a downgrade after my 6S Plus in terms of reception/signal. You can really see it on the NYC subway where it is very crucial for a phone to be able to reconnect and maintain signal between train stops. Luckily, I managed to return my Intel X and got a Qualcomm X instead. It helped a lot. However, I still see how my BF struggles with his Intel 8 Plus sitting next to me on a train. It barely connects to LTE while on a train. He's constantly on 4G. The exact same behavior I had with both Intel phones. My Qualcomm X holds LTE between the stops all the time. Also, we are on different carriers, but the Intel vs Qaulcomm behavior is consistent on these phones. The Intel modem is fine in good signal areas, hence many people don't even experience any issues with it.