“Consumer Reports” on iPhone 4: thumbs down on Antenna issue

“Consumer Reports” (CR), a nationwide (US) testing firm has given new comments on iPhone 4 antenna issue. iPhone 4 was tested alongside iPhone 3gs and a Palm Pre at an RF isolation facility for its Antenna / signal problems.

It is worth noting here that previously CR reported that signal woes aren’t unique and not that much serious and more importantly all phones are subject to interference from the human who is using them. But now CR has taken an 180 degree turn confirming that iPhone 4 really have some problems with the reception.

Here is the latest say by CR on the issue:

We reached this conclusion after testing all three of our iPhone 4s (purchased at three separate retailers in the New York area) in the controlled environment of CU’s radio frequency (RF) isolation chamber. In this room, which is impervious to outside radio signals, our test engineers connected the phones to our base-station emulator, a device that simulates carrier cell towers (see video: IPhone 4 Design Defect Confirmed). We also tested several other AT&T phones the same way, including the iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre. None of those phones had the signal-loss problems of the iPhone 4.

Our findings call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4′s signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software that “mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.”

The tests also indicate that AT&T’s network might not be the primary suspect in the iPhone 4′s much-reported signal woes.

The Solution:
The solution has already been on the blogs to fix a scotch tape on the sides where antenna resides. You may also like to have a case or a bumper. See here here how your iphone will look like in a bumper!