Consumer Reports: Skip iPhone 4
Wall Street Journal
By NIRAJ SHETH
Consumer Reports magazine said Monday it can't recommend the iPhone 4 to shoppers because of persistent reception issues caused by touching the Apple Inc. phone.
The products-review magazine, on its website, also questioned Apple's explanation for the glitch, saying it tested other smartphones in its labs, including the older iPhone 3GS, and "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.' Consumer Reports said.
Apple wasn't immediately available to comment.
The comments by Consumer Reports add to a pile of complaints about the iPhone 4's ability to handle voice calls. Consumer Reports said it tested three iPhone 4s and found that touching a spot on the left side of the phone can cause reception to "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," the magazine said in a statement. The conclusion was an about-face for Consumer Reports, which said in a July 2 blog post that the iPhone issues weren't yet a reason to forgo buying the device.
The publication also took some of the heat away from AT&T Inc.'s network, which has been criticized for not being able to adequately handle the load of data-guzzling iPhones. "The tests also indicate that AT&T's network might not be the primary suspect in the iPhone 4's much-reported signal woes," Consumer Reports said.
