In the early phases of iPhone 4 development, a senior engineer voiced concern over the antennae’s design. They warned that the design could lead to signal problems and dropped calls. Those very same problems that are currently causing such a buzz in the tech and mainstream worlds now.
Last year, Ruben Caballero, a senior engineer and antenna expert, informed Apple’s management the device’s design may hurt reception, said the person, who is not authorized to speak on Apple’s behalf and asked not to be identified. A carrier partner also raised concerns about the antenna before the device’s June 24 release, according to another person familiar with the situation.
Apple chose this particular antennae design because they were looking to create a thinner handset. By wrapping the antennae around the edge of the device, they were able to get what they wanted. There are actually multiple antennae wrapped around the device to cover different frequencies. With it in such an easily accessible place, the antennae is also vulnerable. By putting your fingers in the wrong place on this outer bezel, you can easily short out or interfere with your iPhone 4’s signal strength and possibly cause your call to drop.
Knowing that Apple had previous knowledge of the antennae issue makes their responses to customer complaints even more baffling. Since they actually had time to think about it, you would think they would have come up with a better response then telling customers to not hold the iPhone a certain way.
The latest update to iOS, the software that runs the iPhone, is supposed to fix part of the problem and it looks like it’s being rolled out at this moment. While this update will not keep your calls from dropping, it will give you a more accurate view of your signal strength. You see, Apple was “accidentally” using the wrong formula to calculate the bars on your phone, so it looked like you had a strong signal when you didn’t.
In any case, it doesn’t look like this is a problem Apple can fix. It’s a design flaw in the phone itself and the issue has been completely blown out of proportion, primarily because of the way Apple has handled it. They have announced a press conference for Friday, so it will be interesting to see how or if they will address this issue.
