I did not make a call but I usually hold the phone in a similar grip, in my left hand, I would guess if I was in a marginal signal area that I'd have lost a call.
Now at the press conference that Apple held recently, Uncle Steve showed us how several other modern smartphones fell foul of the same problem as the iPhone 4 does.
Apple showed how holding the phones in a particular way caused the signal level to drop on these devices.
Since then they have released a web page showing these cases of signal drop. (shame the pages require Quicktime to view the videos?!)
The web pages showed the following models suffering from attenuation caused by the human hand.
- Blackberry Bold 9700
- HTC Droid Eris
- Nokia N97 mini
- Samsung Omnia II
- iPhone 3GS
Now in my opinion if the iPhone 4's signal problem is caused by attenuation from the hand, then the bumper case will move the hand a whole 0.5mm or so away from the metal, I don't believe this is far enough to counter this attenuation problem.
My opinion is that the metal band around the iPhone 4, which makes up the antenna, is actually becoming de-tuned by the conductivity of the hand/skin. This is perhaps why some people are not seeing the problem as much as others, ie there skin is less conductive perhaps? Or my other opinion is that they have become brainwashed and refuse to believe anything could be wrong with an Apple product.
Apple have cleverly designed the "bumper case" which is just a silicone/plastic band which covers the antenna strip around the case, to stop the skin making contact with the antenna and effectively stopping the antenna being de-tuned.
If they had designed the phone from the outset with some kind of plastic or glass edging covering the antenna, instead of trying to make it some kind of feature, they would have stopped any of this problem all together. Of course the phone may not have looked as appealing but it would have remained a damn site more functional than it does do at present.
I still can't believe how Apple can release a flawed product like this and I struggle to understand how people are putting up with either using a case to cover up part of the appealing feature they have paid for or are adjusting how they would normally hold a phone just so it does not drop calls?
Yes it may have been blown out of proportion slightly but when Apple are as huge as they are they have just got to get things like this absolutely spot on. Every man and his dog are out there waiting for the slightest slip-up from them.
Disclaimer.
We currently have several Apple products in our household, including an iMac, Mac Mini and recently I sold my iBook 12". I believe Apple make some great hardware and that OS X is an excellent operating system.
I'm just not being persuaded by what I believe to be a cover-up story by Apple to hide the fact they have made a glaring design error with the iPhone 4.
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