iPhone 4 Antenna Saga Finally Has an End in Sight

If you’ve been on the web or consumed some sort of news in the past two weeks, you probably know about the iPhone 4 “Death Grip,” the reception issue that seems to stem from the phone’s design.  Apple said they’d fix the issue with how signal strength is portrayed on the phone in a new update.  Shortly after, Consumer Reports said it can no longer recommend the phone because of the issue.

Apple sent out the beta of iOS 4.1 to developers today, and of course the claims that it could fix the problems were going to be tested.  Well, it looks like Apple has certainly changed the way the bars are displayed, and has made the first three bars bigger to make them easier to see.  However, the issue isn’t going away with the update.  Placing your hand on the bottom left corner still causes bars to drop, which isn’t terribly surprising given that the problems always seemed to be more of a hardware issue. {Mobile Crunch}

Late on Wednesday, Apple did more than just release a beta of the next OS update.  The company has announced that it will be holding a press conference on Friday morning to discuss the iPhone 4.{NY Times}  There’s no other details about the press conference, but it is a highly unusual move for Apple.  Apple typically has press conferences to announce new products, and those are usually announced at least a week in advance.  Perhaps this could have something to do with the “silent recall” that Gizmodo is reporting.  Or perhaps, as one Mac Rumors forum user has speculated, Apple will announce that it will give current iPhone users Apple Store credit to buy a bumper, and will institute a new return policy for the iPhone 4.  It’s all speculation, but none of it seems too unreasonable.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the iPhone 4 is a terrible phone. Anecdotally, the issue doesn’t seem to affect every iPhone 4 to the same extent (i.e. rendering the phone unusable while holding it). It can definitely be replicated, but some phones do seem to be far less sensitive than others.   But the popularity of the iPhone means that even if 25% of the phones sold have the issue, it still represents a good number of users. Apple’s denial that any problem exists hasn’t helped, but  hopefully after this week the issue will be no more, or at least put aside.  It is starting to become tiresome.






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