Issue with Proximity Sensor during calls - Continued v2

Got to the Apple store and set about checking the verizon iphones. Only had time to check two, but here is what I found:

1. Proximity sensor seems fine.

2. I could get the signal bars to drop when using the standard approach of holding it in my left hand, with the palm cupping it across the plastic divider. It dropped to bars in my test on one of the phones. Hard to remember, but I think on the ATT model, without a case, I would lose 3 bars.

Hi again,

I was just reading on Macrumors.com that someone who has both AT&T and Verizon iphone 4s has the proximity sensor issue on both. So it would appear that there really is no hardware change with the sensor.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=11898989&postcount=3

A-pax wrote:
Last week ( Thursday Aug 26th) I received a new iPhone 4 that I had ordered on-line from AT&T. It was on my front porch (FedEx) when I arrived home from work that evening.

Thursday night: Activated phone, everything works great. No problem setting-up email, restoring contacts, etc.

Friday: Used phone all day with no problems, however, all conversations were two minutes or less in length.

Saturday: Used the phone most of the day with some long conversations. Proximity sensor going crazy. During one half-hour in length call, it disconnected three times, tried to start face-time twice, went to mute at least once, etc., etc., etc.

Sunday: I do some research and discover this thread.

Monday: Drive over to the nearest AT&T store, return the phone, and roll-back to my 3G and original contract that is on a month-to-month basis.

Everything about this phone is great, except the PHONE (pm) ...it is totally unusable as a phone.

If and when Apple fixes it, then I will re-purchase. Until then, no way.

Thought I would give it one more try.

I just purchased another new iPhone 4 the other day, from the AT&T store. I first checked the serial number to ensure a recently manufactured phone.

The serial number is 80106xxxA4S.

Looks like this new phone was manufactured at the end of Jan, or early Feb of this year.

So far, so good. No proximity sensor problems at all. Works fine, unlike the first one I had (referenced above) that was horrible/unusable.

My iPhone 4 was replaced for prox sensor after I wasted many hours reinitializing, restoring, etc., during which I lost a lot of important saved e-mail drafts!!! Then the replacement is exactly the freakin' same!! They didn't even check it to make sure it works. It hung up on a customer several times, always tries to facetime people, dials numbers randomly. GARBAGE

We'd need more that a couple reports to really mean much. Millions of phones sold means at least some will be messed up. I, so far, have tested two of the verizon phones and they passed my test. I hope to test more.

With the ATT version, every one prior to week 38 failed the test. Every one starting with week 40 has passed (a week 39 was in between in the results).

These seemingly isolated cases of newer phones not working makes me suspicious that Apple made some sort of hardware change, but I don't think it may have been actually changing to a different hardware sensor. I'm think they may have found a problem in how it was mounted. It is quite possible that a tiny adjustment in positioning could correct a lot of problem.

If that is what they did, it may be that a small number still don't get mounted precisely enough. It could be fore finicky than most.

You don't mention when your first and second phone were manufactured. Your serial number tells you, at least with the ATT version.

The third digit is the last number of the year (thus either a "0" or a "1"). The next two digits are the week of the year.

The pattern so far seems to show that anything prior to week 39 can really be a problem. After week 40 (especially after week 46) of 2000 seem to be much much better.

If both yours are older, I'd insist upon a more recent serial number. The employees may not know about the way that works, but you can tell them what to look for before giving you another one.

A very strange business going on with my iphone 4. I have, as mentioned above, been bedevilled by intermittent proximity sensor issues, resulting in my generally putting a conversation on speakerphone. This would happen a few times a day but I was not ready yet to go back to the Apple store and have my phone exchanged. I have the Call Guard app which I have used intermittently but oddly enough I have never registered a "touch" on the screen while using it.

Anyhow, I decided, unrelated to this issue to not bother with a case when using the phone in my apartment or office. This was about 4 days ago. Oddly enough, despite averaging some 40 calls a day not one case of a proximity sensor issue. Within such a timeframe I would have had roughly 20-30 instances of this.

The case I am using - Griffin motif - does not come anywhere near the proximity sensor so I am baffled.

In my case, is this issue affected by capacitance eg of my hand? The day before I took my case off I would have easily 5-8 instances of this problem.

Week 42 phone which worked all right in relation to PS issue is not when upgraded to 4.2.1. The speakerphone once switched on and then off causes or triggers the PS issue again. The screen will not shutoff. My guess the device still thinks the speakerphone is active.

Anyone reported this variation of the PS issue. Otherwise phone is or seems ok.

Okay, now using iOS 4.3. I know nothing was supposed to change the proximity sensor with this update, but that same situation applied to 4.2.1 and I KNOW something changed because every phone I checked that failed one of my tests passed the same test after that update. Unfortunately, it was not a test that would matter much in the real world, but it did show something could be changed without being announced.

So, I ran that test with 4.3 and it still worked. Then moved to my main test - the one that does apply in the real world - and, well, doesn't seem to have changed from 4.2.1. I can get the screen to come on as low as 3/16ths of an inch with a bit of effort.

There are other things I can check, but don't know if I will. None are is important as that test.

Haven't had enough calls since 4.3 to know for sure -but- my PS issue was REALLY getting bad (again) last week on 4.2.1. This is my 4th model. WIll let you know. If it returns with a vengeance, i'm returning this thing & will accept nothing less than a brand-new 4 in the box, sealed.

I have proximity sensor issues when I use the Otterbox Defender on Iphone 4. When I take the case off the proximity sensor works just fine.

Anyone noticed an big improvement after 4.3 update?

Mine seems much, much better. They seem to have done something even if it's not documented.

John

I couldn't tell any difference with this one (4.2.1 did improve something - all phones that failed one of my tests prior to that would pass it after the upgrade).

If you are interested, I have a series of tests on video here:

http://picturehawaii.blogspot.com/201009_01archive.html

As I recall, #6 and #3 are most important to the real world.

I have had an excellent week/2 weeks with my iphone 4 with perhaps just one or two issues with the proximity sensor. However, out of choice I have had the phone not set to auto-brightness. Just a brief. Yesterday I was out in the bright sunlight and turned on the auto-brightness to look at an email. Later on, all the wonderful experience I had had with essentially no proximity sensor issues went out the window when I had a phonecall. During a period of about 5 minutes I put the caller on speakerphone.

This really disappointed me greatly and at the time I did not know why this had happened out of the blue. So I did another dfu install of 4.3 as a new phone. Since I was not using a backup (and the previous installation of 4.3 was also not a backup) I had to go through various settings and I set my phone to no auto-brightness. That was yesterday. 3 hours of calls since and not one proximity sensor issue. I then realised that the time I had the bad call experience was after I changed the setting from no auto-brightness to auto-brightness.

Now, I had read previously here and at Macrumors.com but some tie-in between auto-brightness and the proximity sensor.

I am NOT saying that you should change to no auto-brightness if you are having the problem as I do not think the fix is to do that. I do think however that in changing from one to the other - auto-brightness to no auto-brightness and perhaps vice-versa something can get screwed up. As I said, the previous excellent performance with 4.3 (and 4.2.1) was each time after an installation as a new phone. Prior to the last couple of weeks or so, I had had problems as I had mentioned here (and then prior to that no problems whatseoever with 4.1).

I ran my main test with auto brightness on and got the usual result. Then turned it off and tested again. Same result.

Of course, one quick test doesn't prove much. But another factor could be what your normal brightness setting is. Mine's kinda in the middle. when I turned auto brightness off (in a room which isn't bright), the phone's screen got brighter.