Look guys, I don't want to be rude here, but it is most unlikely this has anything to do with a Sim card or tray.
At my house, I vary from no signal on O2 UK to 1 bar sometimes, 2 bars all the way to 5 full bars sometimes.
This signal issue is incredibly easy to explain from my experience and put simply, when you are in a strong signal area, you will hardly suffer it, and when you have a weak signal, you will be able to reproduce it every time.
Now the problem here is that so many people take why the signal meter is telling them as 100% rock solid evidence of how strong the signal is, which is a bad place to start because, for me, having to deal with low O2 signal for over a year, I can assure you that sometimes I get crap quality with 4 bars, and sometimes I get great quality calls with 1 bar.
So, anyway, I just tried this "fix". Had 3 bars and holding the left corner lost all bars. Took sim out, covered the edge touching Sim tray with electrical tape. Put the sim back in and had not moved an inch from previous position. Um, only had one bar now, and yep, holding the left corner lost all signal.
OK, don't want the electrical tape getting loose inside iPhone 4, so I remove it and put sim back in. Reboot each time by the way.
Wow, this time I have 5 full bars!!! Fixed it right?
Of course not, holding the left corner loses all 5 bars again. But you know what ?
I AM NOT SUPRISED OR ANNOYED BY ANY OF THIS!
For the simple reason that, where I am, at home, I already know that O2 signal is ****. It does the same thing on various other phones, including recently the Nexus One, the Nokia N97 mini, and the 3GS
In fact, the only phone I can hold onto a signal with is the Nokia E52, but, when I make an actual call it often drops it anyway, so the meter is probably wrong is all.
So having said all this, how come some people here are getting a fix?
I don't think you are guys, sorry, I think one or some or even all of the following is occurring when you play around with Sim tray and sim.
1. You are reconnecting to a different cell tower, with different signal strength.
2. You happened to reconnect to a tower with less load on it than before.
3. Atmospherics changed in the time you rebooted or changed sim.
4. Your carrier changed something at their end.
5. Your wholly unreliable signal meter reset itself when you swapped sim
Why am I so sure about this? Well, just yesterday I was playing around, and touching the left corner of the phone, in my house, and every single time it lost some bars, sometimes all, sometimes only one. Next, I went and took the dog for a walk, and I held the left corner again just outside my back door.
It dropped but mostly a little less than inside. I walked about 1000 meters from my house, and however I now held the phone, I was unable to make it drop more than one bar.
So, what I know is this, EVERY phone does this, and if anyone other than Steve Jobs said it, people would accept it, in fact if Google CEO said it, people would call him a genius for letting us know!
My iPhone 4 has way better signal strength than did my 3GS, and I am getting a low signal in places I could not get anything before, with both the 3GS and the Nexus One.
If I put this same sim into my Nexus One, and just pick it up, it loses all signal, JUST LIKE THE iPhone 4 DOES!
So, I doubt there will be any recall, or software fix, and I also doubt any of these fixes will turn out to be anymore than well meaning odd occurrences duemtomsignal fluctuation, and a strong desire not to have paid a lot of Monet for something with a supposed flaw.
Bottom line here seems pretty simple, if you use your phone a lot as a PHONE ( a lot of people don't actually) and know you live or work in a low signal area, you should consider carefully if any full featured smartphone is for you (because in my experience the more features in a phone the more chance of something being less than brilliant) or if youmshould research what phones have stellar reception.
Kev
