Turned Off iPhone Gets $4800 Bill from AT&T 951
Tech.Luver writes "Jay Levy says he has been stung by Apple's iPhone pact with AT&T after he took an iPhone on a Mediterranean cruise.
They didn't use their phones, but when they got back they had a 54-page monthly bill of nearly $4,800 from AT&T Wireless.
The problem was that their three iPhones were racking up a bill for data charges using foreign phone charges. The iPhone regularly updates e-mail, even while it's off, so that all the messages will be available when the user turns it on. ""
Off means off (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Off means off (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why things should actually be OFF when you turn them off. What if it interferes with hospital equipment like other cells, even if it's off?
I'd say hospital equipment shouldn't malfunction when presented with interference on a widely used spectrum, but that's just me.
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
(I had friends at uni who got interference from cars 200m away. They ran their experiment at 3am instead. My point being, there is always interference. You shouldn't try to legislate against it.)
J.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Informative)
Say you have an ECG machine. It's hooked up via sticky contact pads to your chest and is measuring the delicate flickerings of life in your body. It's doing this because it's trying to spot the *tiny* irregularities that could indicate Bad Things.
You can't magically design a machine that's picking up miniscule electrical currents like this and have it unaffected when some idiot brings in a portable radio transceiver and cranks it up nearby while they tell their wife what they want for dinner.
As I type, I'm within 30 feet of a ward full of such machines, and maybe a couple of hundred yards from the EEG devices that measure the brain's electrical activity. As we're testing today, I can wave my phone around and I can watch the interference it causes on the data being captured. Even when I'm not talking on the phone, it's checking in with the nearest base station periodically, and I can see that screwing the traces too. It's not causing those machines to break: but it's fvcking up the data that they're capturing - and that data is being captured as it's for diagnostic purposes. Screwing this up could have really bad consequences for someone.
This is not rocket science.
Re:Off means off (Score:4, Interesting)
Say you have an ECG machine. It's hooked up via sticky contact pads to your chest and is measuring the delicate flickerings of life in your body. It's doing this because it's trying to spot the *tiny* irregularities that could indicate Bad Things.
You can't magically design a machine that's picking up miniscule electrical currents like this and have it unaffected when some idiot brings in a portable radio transceiver and cranks it up nearby while they tell their wife what they want for dinner.
As I type, I'm within 30 feet of a ward full of such machines, and maybe a couple of hundred yards from the EEG devices that measure the brain's electrical activity. As we're testing today, I can wave my phone around and I can watch the interference it causes on the data being captured. Even when I'm not talking on the phone, it's checking in with the nearest base station periodically, and I can see that screwing the traces too. It's not causing those machines to break: but it's fvcking up the data that they're capturing - and that data is being captured as it's for diagnostic purposes. Screwing this up could have really bad consequences for someone.
This is not rocket science.
Second, I have a different definition of "broken" than you do. By my definition a machine is "broken" when it does not accomplish the task it is designed for. In this case, a machine that is designed for data acquisition is broken when it reports null or spurious results when connected to the patient. So, if a cell phone causes null or spurious results, then the cell phone breaks the machine.
Third, the reality is that the cell phone WILL be in the environment. Whether by intention or by accident, the phone will be there on a fairly regular basis. Ether someone will forget the ban, forget they have the phone, or both, or someone asserts their "Rights" to their cell phone (however bogus those rights might be) or simple is selfish enough to think their convenience supersedes any "rules" a hospital puts in place.
And Finally, There are manufacturers who have already engineered around the problem with ECG's. Since it has been done, then it obviously can be done. I can point out a multiple examples of equipment that functions correctly around cellphones, some even require them to operate, like this machine that uses a cellphone to transmit ECG data [medicalnewstoday.com], but it's one of those situations where someone is talking out of their butt without thinking it through, your limited experience does not translate into an impossibility. If you thought it through, you'd have realized that there are a number of data collecting medical devices out there that are used outside of the hospital, in particular I'm thinking of ECGS carried by EMT's or Paramedics, and the built in ECGs that are a part of the ADF equipment (some of which actually have a cell phone included in the cabinet designed to dial 911 when powered on.) They will, most assuredly, be in high-cell phone use environments (for example, at an accident scene with a number of onlookers using their phones to document and talk about the accident, as rubberneckers are wont to do)
Basically, If your machines are broken, then you need to change manufacturers. You are, as you pointed out, unnecessarily risking lives. If your place of business is in the US, considering the current litigious environment in the US, as it applies to health care, in particular. You are begging for a huge wrongful death, malpractice type lawsuit.
I don't agree that this is the way it should be, but it IS the way things are.
Re:Off means off (Score:4, Insightful)
By my definition a machine is "broken" when it does not accomplish the task it is designed for. Very nice, but in the real world everything has limitations and tradeoffs and outside of the brains of PHBs you gotta stick to the cold equations, and not the fantasy of arbitrary semantic definitions.
Re:Off means off (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently you missed this [reuters.com].
It's not nearly as rare as "one-in-a-million" - it's more like "one-in-one-point-two" (50 out of 61 cases tested), provided the network being used is GPRS-based. That's pretty damn significant. And these were life-threatening cases of interference, including ventilators being switched off and pacemakers running at the wrong rhythm.
Even if you're not using GPRS, it's not a hospital's job to go around testing different cell phone networks to see if they interfere with their equipment. Their job is to save lives, not test cell phone equipment. And to that end, I would certainly hope that they would require that all devices potentially able to disrupt hospital equipment to be switched off, regardless of whether or not you're "insulted" by the signs. Your personal feelings are not worth a hill of beans next to somebody's life.
Re:Off means off (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is not that electronic circuits need shielding. The problem is sensors, to use an analogy putting on earmuffs will not allow you to hear a whisper in a rock concert.
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Insightful)
Your plan involves getting on a plane, telling everyone to turn off their phones, then trusting your life to their obedience.
My plan involves making sure that the plane won't fall out of the sky and kill everyone if someone forgets they have a phone in their bag.
Still think my plan is bad?
I say systems should be robust in themselves, not just trusting that all the other people have followed the spec.
J.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a cardiologist - we get this question a lot, and I've been in many, um, discussions, about this issue.
In general, hospital equipment does not malfunction with any FCC approved wireless interference, especially from a consumer device. The trouble is, there are some anecdotes:
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0196064405007110 [elsevier.com]
that demonstrate equipment malfunction with close proximity of cellphones / radios, etc. This 2005 report was widely publicized, (sorry, system demands that you purchase the article if you want to read it) but it was a cellphone left on top an IV infusion pump that apparently malfunctioned, and was reproducible (move the phone near the pump -> malfunction, move it away and returns to normal.)
I tell people that as long as they have a digital phone, they are ok to use it in the hospital. In truth, I think that if a nurse tells you to move to another area they are probably wanting you to stop yapping in common areas, which is a much bigger problem IMHO.
As with anything that deals with life or death, physicians and health care staff are quite risk averse. If there is a very, very small chance of interference, then we err on the side of caution. Your cellphone is designed to not interfere with things, but I'm sure we have all heard our computer speakers chatter *before* a call comes in, or seen your old CRT monitor jump due to an incoming call on a nearby phone. This is interference -- making all medical equipment so that they are totally oblivious to all outside fields would make them inconceivably heavy. Don't bother with the "faraday cage" argument -- most cases are metal, but as anybody with engineering experience would tell you it is imperfect (as I've stated before, you can use your cellphone in a metal plane, also a "faraday cage.")
So, no, hospital equipment is generally ok, but generally we tell people to not use cellphones in the intensive care unit or operating rooms, where things are most sensitive and potentially could have lethal consequences. We allow answering the phone and moving to an appropriate area, and allow cellphone use throughout the hospital otherwise (the doctors do this too). If it were a big risk, equipment would be malfunctioning left and right. However, it is prudent to minimize risks, especially for nonessential communication, hence the policies.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Even if it was well-shielded, you'd have the airline problem.
Which airline problem would that be? You aren't suggesting that cell phones cause a problem with an Airplane, are you?
.02: There is no possible way that everyone will always remember to turn off a cell phone. The chances that a bit of equipment in a hospital will be exposed to cellphone signals approaches 100% unless the equipment in question is unusually isolated from the public (Surgery maybe?) This has been true for over ten years.
My
So yes, I expect life-saving equipment to ignore and reject
Re:Off means off (Score:4, Informative)
No, a mobile phone being operated in an aircraft causes problems with the mobile phone network. From that distance you have a massive radio footprint, and your phone appears in many many cells all at once (normally you're not in more than half-a-dozen cells, all adjacent), and roaming at a couple of hundred miles per hour when you're close enough to the ground to only hit the "normal" number of cells. The computers controlling the network routing cack themselves, and the network locks up. A couple of weeks later you get a snotty letter from Orange telling you not to do it again. See if you can guess how I know.
Re:Off means off (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sleep/Wake Doesn't mean "Off" (Score:5, Interesting)
Since you seem so inclined, I suggest you instead thank the gods that these decisions are not up to you. The fact that other people make them might save your life one day.
Re:Sleep/Wake Doesn't mean "Off" (Score:4, Insightful)
How many people has the iPhone killed when it was supposed to be off?
Re:Sleep/Wake Doesn't mean "Off" (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1659417,00.html [time.com]
The relatively informal test found 43% of the medical equipment was affected to some degree by mobile phone signals...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I have played with an iPhone in a store (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I have played with an iPhone in a store (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Insightful)
I know the article says they were off, but it also says the took the phones for voice calls, so where they really off? or did they just not use the data part?
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW, you don't want to roam internationally, at least, not without an expense account.
I remember one year I took a week's vacation in Ireland, and took my GSM phone with me. One day I was walking back to the hotel and the phone rang -- one of our customers was calling me directly, rather than use our central tech support line. It's bad enough to take direct customer calls on your personal cell phone (because the customer hasn't updated their contact info). It's even worse when that happens while you're roaming internationally.
The upshot is that I answered reflexively, before I realized what the call was going to cost. I hung up immediately as soon as I made that realization--the call must have been less than a second or two. That was still good enough to bill for a complete call, rounded up to a minute of airtime.
That second or two of airtime cost me $3.00 on my bill.
No, they didn't buy me dinner first.
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Informative)
To turn it off all you have to do is hold down the standby button for a few seconds then then hit the off button when it asks you if you really want to turn the phone off.
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Insightful)
and that's totally acceptable. A user shouldn't be able to just glance at their phone to determine if it's off, or if it's "sleeping", but not sleeping so soundly that it won't rack up a $4800 bill.
Defective by design, my friend.
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Insightful)
User interface design 101: a UI should be intuitive for users and not contain surprises.
Strange, Apple's UI people are usually pretty good. But if you really can have a phone that looks like it's switched off but isn't, and it really does require a counter-intuitive and confusing alternative action by the user to switch it off fully, then they dropped the ball big time on this one and the user is quite right to feel aggrieved at the small fortune in costs he has personally incurred as a result.
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Informative)
It is obvious - it works like every other phone. (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, how is a phone supposed to receive calls if it's really off? There needs to be a difference between a sleep mode and off, and this is obvious on the iPhone.
Re:It is obvious - it works like every other phone (Score:4, Informative)
These people were idiots, but hopefully AT&T makes things right-- that overcharge is just absurd.
The *only* difference is that the iPhone has no visible indicator of being on when the screen is black.
However, these people didn't even try to turn their phones off. They simply set them down and assumed that a darkened screen meant it was off.
Re:It is obvious - it works like every other phone (Score:5, Insightful)
The *only* difference is that the iPhone has no visible indicator of being on when the screen is black.
Well, that and the fact that with the iPhone you can apparently be racking up thousands of dollars of charges while your phone is visually indistinguishable from being switched off. According to the source material cited, the only way you'd know that is if you read small print that runs to nearly 7,000 words, since the summary of the plan features doesn't indicate it.
However, these people didn't even try to turn their phones off. They simply set them down and assumed that a darkened screen meant it was off.
Where does it say that in TFA or any of the stories from other sources linked from it?
Re:It is obvious - it works like every other phone (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the only possible scenario since when you actually power the phone off, it's completely off.
Unfortunately, that isn't true. Another possible scenario is that the users (if you follow the article links, quite a few people have now been had by this one) did something they thought would switch off their phones, but in fact didn't, and then they couldn't tell the difference. And as I've said throughout this discussion, the latter is a serious usability flaw, given the potential consequences of the mistake.
Re:Standby means no data transfer charges (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems like the real option that's needed is a 'don't make data calls on a foreign network' option.
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Funny)
Er, what if its a PHONE and if you turn it completely off people won't be able to, like, PHONE you...?
If you read on, someone posts that the iPhone (just like Windows Mobile phones) has a power-down mode if you really want it.
What other phones DON'T do is periodically phone home all by themselves - and unless AT&T/Apple have a large friendly warning* in TFM then they're probably in the wrong on that one.
(* Do not eat iPhone. Do not operate iPhone while attempting to defuse atomic bomb. Do not drop iPhone onto the head of a pedestrian from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Do not smash iPhone to pieces and stab yourself with the shards. Do not insert iPhone anally unless you are the goatse guy. If you are the goatse guy please do not return iPhone to Apple afterwards. Do not select The Lumberjack Song as ringtone while drinking in a bar in rural Canada. Turn iPhone off properly when traveling abroad. Do not take the name of Jobs in vain. Warning: this booklet may cause paper cuts if mishandled. See page 199 for more warnings)
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on. There should be a cap on the bill, say, $500. After that it can be considered flat rate. Why does AT&T need to charge $4800 for this? Do people actually use this much data service abroad on a routine basis?
If anything, cut service when it gets to $500. Because at that point, something is obviously up. Especially if the customer has never had this high a bill before. Credit card companies do this sort of statistical scanning all the time to combat fraud.
-Z
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is... who pays? If a credit card is fraudulently used, the credit card company pays. So they have every incentive to give a damn.
But guess who's going to pay the $4,800? It sure as hell won't be AT&T. As I write this, my wife is on the phone to discuss a $900 Verizon bill my daughter rang up "saving money on the minutes" with text messaging. The only thing they seem willing to do is very politely tell us to screw off.
They are used to it.
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? So you think that $4800 is perfectly reasonable for taking your phone abroad for a month with the default settings as supplied by the phone company, and not actually using it at all?
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Insightful)
Now if your phone is in sleep mode (screen isn't active, but the phone can still receive calls), then it will receive emails. My perspective is that its fairly obvious that when you set the phone to poll for emails, it will do so even if the phone is not actively being used. Thats pretty much the entire point of setting it to poll for emails.
Plus, when you get an email, the phone will alert you that it has done so.
And yes, I agree that being able to rack up a $4800 bill passively is unacceptable.
So (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, wait...
Re:So (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I've got news [209.85.165.104] for you...
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean who would have thunk that the button the iphone manual labels "Sleep/Wake button" would actually put the device in "sleep" mode and not turn it off?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
IANAL, but the customer is most likely out of luck if he tries to challenge this. After all, this is in the terms & conditions that he supposedly agreed upon.
This is another major blow to iPhone, on top of the recent price cut. Now we have an Apple spokeswoman admitting freely that the simple act of bringi
Re:The law needs to clarify things like this (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, exactly [xkcd.com]
Re:The law needs to clarify things like this (Score:5, Insightful)
For the same reason that someone who signs a contract without reading it and/or insisting on changes, deserves to be screwed.
Just out of interest, how long do you think it would take the average person to read in full, understand, and if necessary seek legal advice on every binding agreement they enter into during their lifetime?
There is a reason that legal systems recognise concepts like unequal bargaining power, contracts of adhesion, and unconscionable terms: they do it because if the legal system took the same naive view that you propose, the world would grind to a halt.
Requisite tag for this article: iphOWNED (Score:5, Funny)
Soo.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Soo.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
He probably didn't have the international data plan; that's why he left the phones turned off.
Surfing the Med (Score:3, Insightful)
"In countries outside the plan, charges can run from $5 to $20 per megabyte, said Ben Wilson, editor of iPhone Atlas, a Web site owned by the online news company CNet."
I'm guessing that the middle of the Mediterranean is outside of the covered countries. It also says they were checking a total of seven different email accounts. 7 accounts * 20$/MB could add up pretty quickly, 35MB per email account would do it.
Roaming Charges? (Score:3, Interesting)
Last year, a colleague and I were staying in London and he called our local travel office to make some changes to the flight. He was on the phone for 30 minutes (mostly on hold) and he was presented with a bill for $600 (300 pounds). Now, you tell me what the rate was...
Anyway, he just refused to pay it, and the manager eventually took it off. But still... seems like a lot of places are set up to cheat the unwary traveler.
Re:Roaming Charges? (Score:4, Informative)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4851730.stm [bbc.co.uk]
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activitie
Though I can't see it helping much if you're using a US cell phone in the EU.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But is that $0.0195 or 0.0195 cents?
How to make BIG BUCKS with your iPhone (Score:5, Funny)
2. Submit your story to blogs, forums, and
3. ????
4. Profit
5. Pay your iPhone bill
Try turning it off instead of sleeping the display (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Try turning it off instead of sleeping the disp (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Try turning it off instead of sleeping the disp (Score:5, Insightful)
Gap in the market! (Score:5, Funny)
Coming soon to the iStore, the iCoffin, a lead lined box designed for when you need to take your phone out of the country, or near medical equipment.
Be the envy of the Intensive Care ward with your small and portable iCoffin weighing only 1 tonne, marvel at its lead casing, lick its tasty exterior and be a role model for Chinese toy makers everywhere!
Re:Gap in the market! (Score:5, Funny)
It's Tinfoil Hat Time! (Score:3, Funny)
2. Wrap that sucker up like a ham-and-Limburger sandwich
3. Explain to the nice folks at the X-ray machine why that suspicious package is your iPhone
4. Be unable to get emergency calls from your family at home while on your Mediterranean cruise
Of course, there's always the simple, brute-force power-down solution: the iHammer. (Can you tell how unimpressed I am with this overpriced, overhyped gewgaw?)
Re:Gap in the market! (Score:5, Interesting)
This had better get fixed (Score:3, Insightful)
The only correct resolution is for Apple & ATT to eat these charges until the iPhone's GSM radio can be set to OFF when not inside the coverage of the selected carrier.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This had better get fixed (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats called standby or sleep, not off. (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe they should have done that- instead of wondering why their "off" phones were still "turning on" to ring.
Yikes (Score:3, Funny)
I didn't realize organ trading was allowed in the US.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
boycott (Score:5, Funny)
"boycottcingular.com" is now the new "boycottatt.com".
Not the iPhone, but AT&T! (Score:5, Insightful)
Then AT&T bought them out, and I got a nasty surprise in the mail - instead of my normal <$50 bill, it was doubled. And the bill was no longer itemized; there was no way to do the math myself.
Then the next bill came - GULP! Four hundred God damned dollars! And still not itemized.
AT&T is run by thieves. I'm using a cheap Trac phone now until I can find another carrier. AT&T are now in my "Die, damn you" list of evil corporations. Sony replaced Microsoft as first place in my list of Pure Evil (TM) corporations when they trojaned my PC with their BMG XCP rootkit, now MS has slid to #3. AT&T is now a very close second to Sony. May their President, CEO, board of directors, and stockholders all catch cancer and aids and die horribly, and may that God damned company go bankrupt and be liquidated.
Mods, this isn't flamebait it's an informative FLAME. As I'm posting AC you know I'm not karma-whoring.
As I'm too busy unsucsessfully chasing women [slashdot.org] to blog about evil corporations [mcgrew.info] lately, this is probably all I'll have to say about these bastards.
-mcgrew (sm62704)
Airplane mode? (Score:3, Insightful)
If there were a selection called "Hotel Mode" that did the same thing, would you expect him to choose that when boarding an aircraft? No.
How about a simple "Off". Trying to be too cute with the operations makes people like this frustrated. And gives the company bad press.
Need "budget mode" for devices (Score:5, Insightful)
What I'd appreciate is a device that lets you enter an EXPECTED monetary budget for its use, and safeguards to make sure you don't use the device in a manner that exceeds your expectations for how expensive its use should be.
The instant it began international data roaming, sirens should have sounded alerting the user that the device is now operating in a mode contrary to the user's financial expectations.
I'm sure it has an alert when it's battery needs recharging. No such luck when it starts draining your bank account.
Not the full story. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not the full story. (Score:5, Insightful)
Moreover, when I travel I very often need to have a phone immediately upon arrival at home (whoever is picking me up usually has to wait at a staging area a few minutes away from baggage claim, so I have to call them and tell them to come on ahead).
"Airplane Mode" isn't a proper name for having all external signals turned off. On my Treo, you can turn off the phone portion very easily and still use the rest of the PDA. Sounds like the iPhone is far less intuitive.
A reading from TFM... (Score:5, Informative)
I suspect Mr. Levy never bothered to RTFM on his device, and then left his phone(s) in the "sleep" mode (display off, radios on), for the duration of his cruise. From Page 14 of the iPhone User Guide [apple.com]:
Note that they call it a "Sleep/Wake button", not an "on/off" button, or a "power" button.
Other than that, he could have enabled "Airplane Mode", which does the following (User Guide, page 22):
Oh, and you can also disable automatic checking of email in the iPhone settings. The default behavior is to check every so often, but you can set it to "Manual", which means you have to tell the iPhone to check email, it won't go out automatically and try downloading messages.
There's warnings about "Additional fees may apply" plastered all over the iPhone manual when discussing international roaming, as well. So to all the people crying that this just shows the iPhone is an overhyped piece of crap, or that this is evidence of some sort of collusion between Apple and AT&T to suck their customers dry, get over it. The guy didn't read his manual, and now he's learning that that was a costly mistake. If you go to Ireland with your brand new Nokia E70 or Treo 650, and leave it on, charging, and set to automatically check email periodically, you're going to have the same fucking problem.
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
This is bullshit.
It doesn't sound like the unit was powered off. It sounds like the screen was off, and like my old RAZR, the unit will continue to operate in the background while the screen is off. Stupid, lazy consumer didn't bother reading the manual, which clearly discusses how to POWER THE PHONE OFF COMPLETELY and WHAT AIRPLANE MODE IS, which accomplishes the same task this guy required.
Seriously, who the fuck thinks a phone is "off" just because the screen isn't lit up? This is 2007, right? The age of the cell phone cowboy.
There's no flaw here. The vast, vast majority of iPhone users are satisfied that it will happily do its thing while the screen is off, in your pocket. Otherwise, I couldn't be notified of mail whenever I got it.
Next time, if you spend $600 on something, read the motherfucking manual. Apple goes out of their way to write clear, simple manuals for the very reason that people don't want to have to be computer scientists to understand them. Sucks to be you, dude.
Let me call bull on this one (Score:4, Informative)
FUD, FUD, FUD (Score:4, Informative)
1) My iPhone in standby mode does not DL my email until I hit the email button at which point it connects and begins the transfer of the email. This is a setting in the email settngs preferences. By default it is set to manual. This is where I left mine.
2) My iPhone, when it is actually turned off, as opposed to in standby mode (i.e. hold the top button down for 3 seconds rather than just pressing it) it doesn't even receive calls, much less email or anything else.
3) Does anyone on slashdot even own an iPhone? Most of the comments are completely clueless as to the actual operation of the device.
Re:There is no "Off" ? (Score:5, Informative)
It has an airplaine wireless off mode. The problem is that the users who buy these things are too hip and smart and cool to spend 45 seconds with the manual. User error, nothing to see here.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You are kidding, right? This is absolutely no user error. It should be safe to assume that turning the thing off implies radio off.
Re:There is no "Off" ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then why should an iPhone?
Re:There is no "Off" ? (Score:4, Informative)
Admittidly in this case it is easy to see the people were just ignorant of the phone's basic operation and, perhaps, international data should be opt-in. but to say this is due to bad UI design from apple is INSANE. If the iPhone sat in your pocket in sleep mode and DIDNT have a function to auto get emails, that would be bad design.
I just checked; auto fetching of email is OFF OFF OFF by default. These people are just the unlucky people who will remind the rest of you "non savvies" to think for a second. AND, if they used voice only for a week, you think they didnt see new email messages magically show up on their home screen of the unit? Yeah, RIGHT.
Typed from an iPhone.
Re:There is no "Off" ? (Score:5, Informative)
It also has a power-off, where it essentially turns off everything except the sensor to turn it back on again. Not too many people even know this exists, even if they own an iPhone. If you press and hold the lock button at the top right, a screen will appear that says 'slide to turn off'... this is the only way to reboot the iPhone, I think.
Most people press the 'sleep' hold button once, thinking that 'turns it off', but all it does is disable the screen. its still running, and using its antennae.
Re:There is no "Off" ? (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Device returns instantaneously when pressing the WAKE button
2) Carrier already attached at full when pressing the WAKE button
3) The ability to recieve phone calls while the device is sleeping.
Those might be some hints that "hey, just because the screen is off, it's still on." And I suppose you could also add to the list that standby eats up battery because the transmitters are on. I don't buy the ignorance excuse. To rack up charges that large, you'd have to on one mighty long cruise and if that were the case, the fact that you have to charge your iPhone that's been "off" every couple days might be a clue.
Further bunk in this article:
1) Calls the device "off", actually sleeping. Most other Smartphones have the same way of sleeping, only they have LEDs. Maybe that will be in rev B.
2) Says automatically checks email. It can be configured to do so, but it doesn't otherwise. I've heard of people complaining that the iPhone grabs other data while sleeping, I've never experienced this. Only mail when configured to do so.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:ihpones (Score:5, Informative)
Re:ihpones (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:ihpones (Score:5, Informative)
Re:ihpones (Score:5, Funny)
Re:ihpones (Score:5, Insightful)
In the home network, there's free data, as I understand, and the roaming charges are high. I have cheap data in my home network, and expensive when roaming abroad. So when I step out of a plane and turn on my phone, I get a nice warning: "You're not in your homenetwork. MMS reception is off". MMS reception is the only automatic data-service on the phone.
Look in the configuration, surely enough: "MMS reception: Automatic (only home network) / Manual / Always".
It would make pretty good sense to add a similar option for the automatic email checking.
AT&T Growing Pains (Score:5, Insightful)
- Sleep/Wake vs. Power Off for iPhone
- 300 page phone bill
These issues are really more interesting than they seem on the surface, not merely as iPhone/AT&T/Apple screw-ups (which they admittedly are) but as a really curious class of screw-ups: growing pains. iPhone is causing AT&T some pain because it's bringing a whole bunch of new users to their expensive cell network services who actually use the service, not merely pay for having the service available for rare occasions where the need is so high it overcomes the pain in the ass factor. Sure, there were a handful of geek Treo users who checked email and surfed web pages every day, but they probably turned their paper-bills off after the first big one and moved on, problem "solved" for them because they really were gadget geeks.People have been using their iPhone for weeks without realizing that there is a difference between sleep/wake and power-off. That's really pretty interesting. iPhone is not different from other devices in maintaining this distinction, PalmOS devices have it, for example. However, with a Palm OS device one learns pretty quickly about the difference because they lock up and you gotta reboot 'em. Even people who have owned an iPhone since June 29 may never have had to power cycle their iPhone, and may not realize that the little Sleep/Wake button is not a "Power Off" button. It would be pretty hard to own a PalmOS device for eight or nine weeks without learning that distinction. Probably nobody at Apple thought of that, because they are all geeks and they are intimately familiar with the intended behavior of the device (e.g. how to turn it off when roaming) so they never saw this happen.
The really interesting part is that nobody at AT&T realized this would happen to people, because it probably doesn't happen to other people using other devices. Why not? Well, it certainly isn't because they don't have devices that automatically fetch IMAP or POP email. It's because they were trained by other quirks of the device to learn the difference between OFF and Sleep right away. This "trained" the users to overcome deficiencies in the AT&T billing process (and policies, really). It shouldn't cost that much to use your iPhone anywhere in the world at this point. Those rates are "rape and pillage" rates and phone companies will need to fix that by coming up with more reasonable roaming policies and prices.
It's interesting that none of the trade press analysts like that keen John C. Dvorak dude haven't stopped to ponder why nobody else in the history of AT&T customer smart phone users ever got a 300 page phone bill. The billing system was the same, iPhone users were just a type of customer with a type of device in the system.
As with the sleep/wake issue, again here nobody at AT&T realized this would happen because users of other smart phone devices are clearly not using them the way iPhone users use the iPhone. iPhone users caught AT&T by surprise because they are clearly surfing the web more often than users of other smart phones, as evidenced by the scale of the paper bill problem. This difference will probably start showing up in the web browser usage statistics within a few months once there are a couple million iPhone users, enough to compare to other platforms. The stats will reveal undeniably different usage patterns, as though it were not a pain in the ass and they could actually read the web pages they fetched.
Suddenly AT&T has a million ordinary non-geek users surfing the web on their phone every day (including google maps). That's what broke their billing system. The sleep/wake issue is just like that. A million smartphone users who haven't had to power cycle their device in two months so they don't even realize that sleep mode isn't "off". It hasn't happened before, apparently.
Re:AT&T Growing Pains (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, I don't know how different AT&T's billing is from Verizon's but we have about 10-15 users on Treos that have their e-mail pushed down from Exchange to them and that surf the Internet. I've seen our bills and they're only a few pages. Every e-mail that comes to them (some get 50+ a day easily) goes to their phone, yet we still don't have endless bills. The bill for our entire company's set of cell phones, wireless data cards for laptops and regular phone lines combined adds up to the same number of pages that some of these people have been getting for ONE phone. I'd be interested to know why iPhone / AT&T chose to go the route they did. It's obviously related either to the way iPhone does data transfers, the way AT&T tracks them, or both.
Re:AT&T Growing Pains (Score:4, Interesting)
Regarding bad press, I'd say there has been plenty of bad press about both of these iPhone issues. I was merely pondering why these issues only showed up with the iPhone, when in point of fact, AT&T have sold several million WIndows Mobile and other devices that, in theory, offer their users the same services. If those users had been, oh, routinely using the data access features to surf the web and so forth they would have seen 300 page bills and the problem would have been fixed ages ago. Clearly it wasn't. I find that interesting. I think we'll see a few more of these types of issues crop up as the iPhone population grows, but also as other new phones come on the market which make it easier for people to actually use these network services.
It's the difference between Push and Pull (Score:5, Insightful)
Pull is not necessarily a bad thing, provided that it is used as intended. Pull has some definite advantages. The problem comes in when Pull is (ab)used to act like Push, by having the mobile device continuously poll. Even worse is to download content that the user never wanted downloaded. The whole point of IMAP is selective download with the user being part of the selection process.
Blackberry is a Push based process, and (unlike Internet) email it does not do huge content.
iPhone imitates the user experience of Blackberry's Push with Internet email, without any adjustment for the realities of mobile devices. That works only when you have lots of free bandwidth.
The IETF LEMONADE working group, mobile device manufacturers, and mobile phone service companies, have spent considerable effort at defining procedures for using IETF protocols with mobile devices. Critical to this is a mechanism called notification, which in effect is a Push that tells the mobile device to Pull. Done right, it combines the benefit of both strategies.
iPhone doesn't use any of that. Apple thinks that it knows better than anyone else.
Re:ihpones (Score:5, Insightful)
My phone, a treo, functions basically the same and like basically every phone with a "standby" mode -- when you hit the power button, it turns off, but as the anonying blinky light indicates the cell phone function is still active, meaning it's communicating with the base station. It will receive incoming calls, and receive other updates from the network. However what it doesn't do is automatically make phone calls, or activate GPRS and start downloading crap off the internet, or otherwise doing anything that will cost me money.
That is what is broken about this. Not the difference between "off with wireless enabled" and "really off". It's the difference between "wireless enabled but not used" and "wireless enabled and being used with no consideration of where you are and how much it's going to cost you". It's the difference between merely being connected to the cell network, and using the cell network in ways that result in charges.
It sounds like a matter of defaults. Setting up the phone to by default automatically download emails is a bad decision, because it causes the phone to work contrary to how most people expect -- which is that in standby mode, you aren't accruing data transfer charges.
Re:ihpones (Score:4, Insightful)
I am a little surprised that you apparently can't disable the GSM/GPRS without also killing the WiFi. Were I on a foreign trip I might find it worthwhile to have my favorite WiFi enabled gizmo handy for websurfing in Starbucks and the like even when I didn't want to use plan minutes.