Lab tests: Why Consumer Reports can't recommend the iPhone 4 July 12, 2010
Full article and video here:
another full article and video here:
" It's official. Consumer Reports' engineers have just completed testing the " iPhone 4, and have confirmed that there is a problem with its reception. " When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone's lower left side, an " easy thing, especially for lefties, the signal can significantly degrade " enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you're in an area " with a weak signal. Due to this problem, we can't recommend the iPhone 4. " " 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. We did, however, find " an affordable solution for suffering iPhone 4 users: Cover the antenna gap " with a piece of duct tape or another thick, non-conductive material. It may " not be pretty, but it works. We also expect that using a case would remedy " the problem. We'll test a few cases this week and report back.
And the two Apple RFPs for PhD-level RF and antenna designers that appeared within 24 hours of the iPhone 4 hitting the streets are still open: