The rumor campaign against iPhone 4's antenna has even infected the legitimate news media, with the UK's DailyMail printing an entire article (which was later pulled) worrying that "iPhone 4 may be recalled," based upon a comment posted to Twitter by a joke account purporting to be Steve Jobs.
Last week, the New York Times published a report based largely upon an article by Gizmodo, without noting the site's ongoing feud with Apple, including its being refused media entry to the WWDC keynote.
Brian Lam, the Gizmodo editor who lost his existing phone in a police investigation related to the iPhone prototype theft, said his site was "paying attention to the [iPhone 4] antenna issue because it could be a big deal," but also said he bought a new iPhone 4 and is now able to place "hours of calls" that he could not place in the same location with previous generations of iPhones.
At the heart of the issue is the fact that the cell phone signal bars reported by mobile phones do not function like a gas tank meter, as most users might assume. Instead, they work more like a reserve tank light. Five full bars can indicate anything from an ideal signal down to just enough to complete a call. As bars drop, the signal meter is reporting that call quality loss is imminent. The reason why some users see no difference (particularly when they're near a strong signal source, such as a Microcell 3G appliance) and others can drop from five bars to none just by covering the antenna with their hand placement, is that the latter group's five bars are indicating much less signal to start with.
So far, the reports of the iPhone 4's antenna issues have been based entirely upon unscientific testing by users who don't understand how their signal bars work. Comments by engineers Steve Gibson and Simon Byrnand explain that the signal bar meter does not quantify a specific amount of signal available (very different signal variations can still result in five bars being observed).
That means that videos posted by users that show a drop in signal related to hand placement are nearly worthless as evidence of a real problem. Users don't need bars to appear on their phone; they need a strong enough signal to place a call or send and receive data.
Gibson writes, "Apples '5-bars' cellular signal strength display is not showing the full range of possible, or even typical, received cellular signal strength. It is only showing the bottom end of the full range of possible reception strength."
No tests so far have shown that a hardware issue is to blame for reception problems on iPhone 4. In my own testing, I could not isolate any hand placement that prevented calls from working or lowered the reported data rates available, nor even could I force down the signal bars with a "death grip."
