Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area newspapers are full of articles essentially repeating each other and it accomplishes nothing citing repetitious after repetitious article.
AnandTech presents an article with some good information: " " There's been a ton of discussion lately surrounding iPhone 4 " cellular reception. Even before it was officially announced, " the reason for the stainless steel band running along the " outside of the phone seemed enigmatic; many called it un-apple " and decidedly atypical of seamless apple design which eschews " hard edges. The black strips were written off as aesthetic " curiosities, possibly even markings which denoted a fake. " " Then at the WWDC announcement, we learned the truth. The " iPhone 4's antenna is the stainless steel band that runs " around the edge of the phone. The antenna for WiFi, Bluetooth, " and GPS is the smaller strip beginning in the bottom left and " running to the top, and the cellular radio for voice and data " is the much larger strip running around almost three quarters " of the phone. " " It's a design nod back to some of the earliest cellular phone " designs which packed external whips that one could manually " extend for improving reception. Since then, designs evolved, " and until recently virtually all smartphones have packed " internal antennas at the bottom of the phone. The iPhone 4's " external antenna promises improved reception over the internal " antenna in the iPhone 3GS. " " Of course, the caveat is that as with all external antennas, " the potential for both unintended attenuation and detuning " is much, much greater. When I first saw the iPhone 4's design " spelled out watching the keynote online, I immediately assumed " that Apple was going to apply an insulative coating atop the " stainless steel. Perhaps even use diamond vapor deposition " (like they did with the glass screen atop the iPhone 3GS) to " insulate the stainless steel from users. We now know rather " definitively that this isn't the case. Of course, the result " is that anything conductive which bridges the gap in the " bottom left couples the antennas together, detuning the " precisely engineered antennas. It's a problem of impedance " matching with the body as an antenna, and the additional " antenna that becomes part of the equation when you touch the " bottom left. " " The fact of the matter is that cupping the bottom left corner " and making skin contact between the two antennas does result " in a measurable difference in cellular reception. But as " we'll show, RF is a strange beast.
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Another article in the San Francisco Chronicle is entitled "The Saddest Part Of The Whole iPhone 4 Antenna Fiasco Is How Proud Steve Jobs Was When He Introduced It (AAPL)" and can be read here:
and if you have a sense of humor:
:-)