Plenty of uproar has been expelled at the expense of iPhone 4 reception issues (among others). While there has been plenty to suggest that it is purely a hardware or software issue, AandTech just published their own review of the iPhone 4, paying special, almost anal attention to the reception topic that’s dominated conversation. The results are rather intriguing, though still leave room for some worry. Specifically, the iPhone 4 signal meter has a solid -40db spread from 5 bars down to 4 bars. But from 4 bars all the way down to 1, a much smaller -25db of signal strength is the sole metric — a considerable difference on either end of the spectrum.
According to AandTech, holding the iPhone 4 in a non-Apple approved manner drops reception by ~-24.5db. So if you’re in a solid 5 bar area, you’re not going to witness any adverse *visual* effects. But travel into more sketchy areas and that -24.5db becomes several bars of loss. That’s precisely why some people are actually seeing bars drop when “holding their iPhone 4 the wrong way” and others are not.
So the dilemma is partially solved, right? Wrong. There’s no question that the exposed antenna was a poor design decision and physically affects iPhone cellular reception. Any software update Apple pushes out will just change the scale at which the signal bars are based off of, not fix any actual issues. In order to do that, a case (such as the Apple-approved bumper cases) or recall/re-design of the antenna is needed. That is something no software patch will be able to fix.
What do you guys think?
