Apple Confirms iPhone 4 Antenna Issue
The New York Times reports on Apple's recent confirmation of connectivity issues with the iPhone 4's antenna. Apple spokesperson Steve Dowling acknowledged that handling the latest iPhone in certain ways can decrease the phone's signal reception, thus garbling or dropping calls. The issue has triggered a wave of concern, speculation, and solutions across the Web. Unfortunately, Apple's response merely claims the problem is a "fact of life" with wireless phones, and advises users to use a case or avoid touching the phone's lower left-hand corner.
Interestingly, Neither Consumer Reports, nor Engadget are able to reproduce this problem. in an article on June 25 Mike Gikas wrote "Though the blogosphere is abuzz with reported reception problems on the iPhone 4, we haven’t been able to reproduce that problem no matter how hard we tried, as I mentioned in my iPhone 4 First Look yesterday."
The Article's link: http://blogs.consumerreports.org/electronics/2010/06/apple-admits-iphone-4-antenna-problem.html may only be available to CU subscribers
Indeed - David Pogue said he wasn't able to reproduce it either (and neither Jeff nor Glenn on our staff have been either, which is why we've limited ourselves to pointing at other publications' coverage).
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/the-mystery-of-the-iphone-death-grip/
Mine is reproducible every time.
This whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. A friend has an iPhone 4 and I tried to duplicate the problem; I couldn't under normal routine use. However I could under a very specific set of conditions: It is most likely to drop strength when 1. the iPhone 4 is held in the LEFT hand AND 2. the hand is damp with sweat.
Holding the iPhone 4 in my DRY left hand had no effect; holding it in with my salt-water dampened left hand did show a slight degradation. I suspect that if your right ring and pinkie fingers are also damp with sweat (which contains salt) it might also suffer the same way.
I've read that there have only been about 4,000 complaints about this out of the 2+ MILLION sold. Dividing 4,000 by 2,000,000 gives .2% So we have .2% (probably less) problem; and 99.8+% no problem. Definitely a Tempest in a Teapot