Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

July 12, 2010

Consumer Reports has confirmed earlier today that the iPhone 4’s antenna is flawed less than two weeks after Apple said the device’s wireless performance was the best it had ever shipped, prompting the leading consumer goods rating firm to decide against recommending the device for its readers.

Consumer Reports confirms that its own internal testing reveals that if contact with a user’s finger or hand on the iPhone 4’s lower left side will cause the signal to degrade enough to lose the connection altogether in an area with a weak AT&T signal.

On July 3rd, Apple had earlier dismissed the problem, saying “gripping almost any cell phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by one or more bars.” Apple claims that its antenna issue is largely an "optical illusion" caused by faulty software that causes the device to overstate signal strength by two bars! (...)

Some wireless industry analysts now think that this will most surely put a damper on sales of the iPhone 4, which up until today have been brisk.

Consumer Reports' testing of the iPhone 4 was performed on three units purchased at separate retailers in the New York area, and in a controlled laboratory environment owned by Consumers Union, the nonprofit group backing the publication of Consumer Reports.

None of the other AT&T phones that were tested in the same way, including the iPhone 3 GS and the Palm Pre, had the signal-loss problems of the iPhone 4, the consumer group reports.

Mike Gikas, a Consumer Reports writer who authored a blog on the test results, said the tests prompted the company to seriously question Apple’s recent explanation for the issue and said AT&T’s network “might not be the primary suspect in the iPhone 4's much-reported signal problems, but rather the phone's hardware or software itself.”

Gikas said the iPhone 4 got high points for its display, video camera and improved battery life, but said Apple needs to rapidly come up with a permanent and free repair for the antenna problems before Consumer Reports would recommend the iPhone 4 to its readers.

Overall, the iPhone 4’s antenna can be repaired by simply affixing duct tape or another thick, non-conductive material to the bottom left-hand area of the steel band where the problem occurs.

Covers such as Apple’s so-called '$29 bumpers' also appear to solve the problem (!) (?)

But the question is: will iPhone 4 users put up with some 'bumpers' or worse, some ugly duct tape on their shiny new iPhones?

“If you absolutely want an iPhone that works okay and without any "masking-tape fix", we continue to recommend an older model, the 3G S,” Gikas said.

At press time, Apple didn't respond to requests for comment on this issue.

On July 3rd, Apple had admitted that it has been using a totally wrong formula to calculate the number of bars of signal strength on AT&T's network on the iPhone since 2007, when it first launched the smartphone.

The iPhone actually overstates the real signal strength by displaying two more bars than it should, Apple said. This comes as a shock to some iPhone lovers, who always strongly believed in the accurary of their devices.

For example, the iPhone may mistakenly display four bars when it should be displaying as few as one or two bars.

The announcement came after Apple investigated some complaints that the iPhone 4 lost all wireless connectivity when the bottom left portion of the device's external steel antenna contacted skin.

"Users observing a drop of several bars when they hold their iPhone in their hands in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don't know it because they were erroneously displaying four or five bars," Apple said in a statement.

"Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place," Apple admitted.

The company plans to bring the iPhone's signal strength bars in line with AT&T's other wireless devices by adopting the carrier's recommended formula in a software update issued within a few weeks.

Addressing complaints about the iPhone 4, Apple said gripping almost any handset in certain ways will reduce its reception by one or more bars. It maintains that the iPhone 4's wireless performance is the "best we have ever shipped," however.

The software update, which also makes the iPhone's first three signal bars appear taller, affects the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G because Apple has been using the wrong formula since the device was first launched.

Apple said the software update would only make the bars on the phone more accurate but did not say the update would improve wireless reception on the device.

On June 17, AT&T said it had halted all pre-orders and sales for Apple's new iPhone 4 devices.

A few issues also happened when the first iPhone was first introduced three years ago and AT&T and Apple servers couldn't keep up with the huge amount of new orders.

We will keep you posted.

Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

Source: Consumer Reports.