Post #3144724
2025-10-07 00:43 UTC
For context, back in 2010 when the iPhone 4 came out, people noticed you could grip the phone in a certain way and the signal bars would plummet from 5 to, like, 2.
A few weeks later, they published a letter (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2010/07/02Letter-from-Apple-Regarding-iPhone-4/) admitting fault, blaming a bad formula.
The letter was shared around and clowned upon (https://daringfireball.net/2010/07/translation_iphone_4) but nobody really looked into what the formula between 4.0 and the patch in 4.0.1
I was a stupid eight-year-old at the time, but now Iām a stupid adult with access to a disassembler.
Replies (2)
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@samhenrigold@hachyderm.io 2025-10-07 00:43
I downloaded both firmwares and started poking around. In the CoreTelephony framework, I found a promising looking binary: CommCenter. Looking at the strings gave me a pretty good sense that this is where the bar formula was.
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@ashfurrow@tenforward.social 2025-10-08 11:52
@samhenrigold@hachyderm.io neat! it kind of hurts my brain to have someone who was 8 at the time explain the flaw in the iPhone announced at my first WWDC šµāš« 2010, that was like, five years ago?