US consumer organisation Consumer Reports has confirmed there is a problem with iPhone 4 reception.
Mike Gikas of Consumer Reports posted a blog and video explaining the problem on the organisation's website:
Engineers have just completed testing the iPhone 4, and have confirmed that there is a problem with its reception. When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone's lower left side – an easy thing, especially for lefties – the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you're in an area with a weak signal.
Due to this problem, Consumer Reports won't recommend the iPhone 4.
It reached this conclusion after testing three iPhone 4s (purchased at three separate retailers in the New York area) in the controlled environment of Consumer Reports' radio frequency isolation chamber. In this room, which is impervious to outside radio signals, test engineers connected the phones to a base-station emulator, a device that simulates carrier cell towers (see the video below).
Consumer Reports also tested several other AT&T phones the same way, including the iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre. None of those phones had the signal-loss problems of the iPhone 4.
The findings call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4's signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software that "mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength."
The tests also indicate that AT&T's network might not be the primary suspect in the iPhone 4's much-reported signal woes.
Affordable solution
Consumer Reports did, however, find an affordable solution for suffering iPhone 4 users: cover the antenna gap with a piece of duct tape or another thick, non-conductive material. It may not be pretty, but it works.
It also expects that using a case would remedy the problem. Consumer Reports will test a few cases this week and report back.
Not recommended
The signal problem is the reason Consumer Reports didn't cite the iPhone 4 as a "recommended" model, even though its score in other tests placed it atop the latest ratings of smart phones.
The iPhone scored high, in part because it sports the sharpest display and best video camera Consumer Reports had seen on any phone, and even outshone its high-scoring predecessors with improved battery life and such new features as a front-facing camera for video chats and a built-in gyroscope that turns the phone into a super-responsive game controller.
But Apple needs to come up with a permanent – and free – fix for the antenna problem before the iPhone 4 will be recommended.
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*mutters about new fangled technology etc and tucks away her aged 6yr old cellphone*
What the feck is an iphone?
I hated every cellphone I owned with a vengeance til I stumped up for an iPhone soon after they arrived in NZ. For a piece of technological stuff, it's pretty amazing (painless synchronising with my Macbook, and GPS, for example). Yes, it's a proprietary Apple phone, and no doubt Android will provide competition... that's fine. Let users decide for themselves!
Ive never been interested in the iPhone and to much marketing hype and yes the reception problem from holding it from the left lower base is poor design! The most important thing with a smart phone is reception.I use a Android a HTC and i am very happy with it with light apps and place my own music on it,not from the iTunes store and place my 3rd party apps on there.No to iPhone!