IPhone 4's supposed signal woes aren’t unique, and may not be serious

So I told her to bust out the scotch tape and use it to insulate the gap. I then made fun of the fact that she had to tape her $200 phone, and that the act of taping the phone actually did something useful.

Needless to say, we were both highly amused. :D

... That is, we've both been amused until this very moment. Emily left about 20min to run up to the grocery store, and I've been trying to call her ever since. Each time I do, it goes straight to voicemail. So I texted her asking why her phone was off, and she responded with "It's not". She just called me, and the call was dropped.

This never happened with her old 3GS (now my phone). To be clear, I called her 2 seconds after she walked out the front door. So the phones were almost literally next to each other at the time. We live in Petaluma, CA, which is about 30 minutes north of San Francisco, so it's not like we're out in the boonies. Our 3GS always reads full bars + 3G, so even with the inaccurate bar algorithm it should still be at least two bars of reception. Therefore the phones should always be capable of calling each other when they're almost directly next to each other.

So.... Strange. I don't know where people are getting evidence that the iPhone 4's reception is definitely improved, but, consider for a moment that perhaps it's definitely improved in certain areas, but definitely -worse- in other areas.

As the online debate continues over possible signal problems with the iPhone 4, I've been able, during informal tests over the weekend, to reproduce the signal loss that's at the heart of the controversy.

A Nokia manual has instructions on how not to hold your Nokia phone.

Specifically they refer to the antenna at the bottom of the phone.

Anyway, Apple clearly screwed the pooch on this, and should just give every buyer a free bumper-thing. They sell the things for $29 but they can't conceivably cost more than pennies to manufacture.

While other phones suffer degradation, few suffer complete and repeatable dropped calls with such predictability and frequency. The "shock" that Apple claims seems highly unlikely since I discovered this after 10 minutes of using it before the problem became well known. The shock is also unusual given that Apple is making bumpers for the first time ever. It is also a bit of a blatant assumption that I am stupid enough to believe it's solely a display issue when I have the phone.

True the gradation can be changed so it's less sensitive to dB loss at lower bars, but a dropped call is zero bars even if you signal strength is in pesos or Zimbabwean dollars.

They should try just being honest and telling the truth about it. There are advantages to the new design and with a bumper you can mitigate both the upsides and downsides of the design.