Anandtech found out that the iPhone 4 does indeed drop more signal than other phones when held a certain way. It drops about 20-24 db of signal when other phones like the 3GS drop considerably less.
This is not to say that the iPhone 4 necessarily drops calls more - it seems to generally deal with lower reception better, so you can place calls even when you're cupping the lower left side of the phone despite the absolute signal strength being lower. (in this spirit, Anandtech recommends that Signal-to-Noise ratio be used as the primary metric for the bars)
Part of the issue is also that Apple's algorithm for displaying bars as a function of signal power is strange - 5 bars has an incredibly high range, so dropping 24 db can either make the phone stay at 5 bars (if you had great "5-bar" signal to begin with) or drop all the way down to 1 bar (if you had bad "5-bar" signal to begin with). But in reality, a constant 24db is being dropped.
What Apple just announced is that they would be fixing the bar algorithm to actually correspond to the signal more, which means some people who have 5 bars now might see 4 after the update, etc. But it will make the signal loss from the death grip seem less dramatic, since fewer bars will disappear.
What Apple should also do is find a way to fix the actual signal loss, be it a hardware problem or software problem.
Am I getting this right?
This is not to say that the iPhone 4 necessarily drops calls more - it seems to generally deal with lower reception better, so you can place calls even when you're cupping the lower left side of the phone despite the absolute signal strength being lower. (in this spirit, Anandtech recommends that Signal-to-Noise ratio be used as the primary metric for the bars)
Part of the issue is also that Apple's algorithm for displaying bars as a function of signal power is strange - 5 bars has an incredibly high range, so dropping 24 db can either make the phone stay at 5 bars (if you had great "5-bar" signal to begin with) or drop all the way down to 1 bar (if you had bad "5-bar" signal to begin with). But in reality, a constant 24db is being dropped.
What Apple just announced is that they would be fixing the bar algorithm to actually correspond to the signal more, which means some people who have 5 bars now might see 4 after the update, etc. But it will make the signal loss from the death grip seem less dramatic, since fewer bars will disappear.
What Apple should also do is find a way to fix the actual signal loss, be it a hardware problem or software problem.
Am I getting this right?