Consumer Reports Confirms the iPhone 4s Antenna Issues – We Do Too
The one thing that can be said for sure is that there’s never been any problem or doubt that there’s something happening with the fancy antenna system on the iPhone 4. Although prior there wasn’t any massive testing on the issue proving that it’s real and severely affects all of the phones, there is now.
Consumer Reports did testing on three different iPhone 4 models and many other AT&T phones. They did this testing in their RF isolation chamber. The RF isolation chamber simulates the various levels of signals from all carriers and they found that the iPhone 4 was the one and only handset that actually suffered a loss in signal. Even more so than that Consumer Reports stated that all of their findings directly all into question Apple’s explanation of their miscalculate signal meter due to the fact that indications are pointed to the fact that the prime suspect might not actually be the AT&T network.
Consumer Reports found that when you simply put some tape over the base left corner of the iPhone 4 it’s just enough to alleviate the issue. They state that although the iPhone 4 has one of the best video cameras and one of the sharpest displays out of all of the phones they’ve tested they just can’t recommend the device until after Apple manages to come up with a free and permanent fix to the problem. Now that one hurts.
The people over at Engadget didn’t want to just sit around at wait for someone different to do testing on the iPhone 4 in a controlled manner so they asked someone from TUAW to write a bespoke signal strength application for the iPhone 4. They couldn’t of course make a submission to the Application Store but they did run it on all of the phones over at Engadget and they independently confirmed the finding from Consumer Reports. There’s a very serious problem with the signal reduction issue with the antenna on the iPhone 4 and every phone that they’ve tested displays the dropped signals anytime the bottom left corner is covered.
The one thing that isn’t known is whether or not the signal reduction consistently affects the data rates and call quality. This is something that is suspected to be more directly related to the network in the particular area as some of the iPhone 4s will drop some calls and others will experience low data rates with an alarming frequency while there are others that will almost never drop calls and almost never have data problems.
The one thing that is confirmed as well as clarified is that the antenna issue does affect every single iPhone 4. With that there is the next step which is actually sorting out the when and the where of the most severe sections. It’s either that or Apple can actually do something to fix their issue. For now, it’s really just a wait and see situation.
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Tags: iphone