Who is actually having real reception issues (dropped calls or unable to access the network) and who is just seeing a decrease in the number of bars with no actual decrease in performance?
I am trying to determine if the media is blowing this out of proportion as they often do on things like this.
I have read many of the articles and seen many of the videos demonstrating this issue, but I am not convinced one way or the other that it is having a widespread impact on the actual performance of the phone.
I live in an area with strong 3G coverage. I can reproduce the issue if I tightly wrap my left hand completely around the bottom of my phone. After about a minute 1 bar will drop. After another minute a second bar will drop. This continues until about 1-2 bars and after a let go, it restores to full strength. However, I experience no degraded performance or call quality in this situation even with 1 bar. I have run speed tests with full bars and one bar on the 3G network with pretty much the same results (sometimes it's even faster with 1 bar).
To me, if the performance is good either way, I don't really care how many bars are displaying, so this is not an issue to me. I don't normally hold my phone with a death grip for minutes on end while using it so I don't expect this to be an issue in day to day normal use.
All this makes me wonder if this is really as much of an issue as the media would have you believe or if people are just seeing the bars drop and freaking out.
All that being said, Apple's first offical statement on the topic was incredibly stupid no matter what the problem or actual effect of this issue is. They shouldn't have just blown it off in such a flippant manner or used it as an opportunity to push one of their own accessories.
I am trying to determine if the media is blowing this out of proportion as they often do on things like this.
I have read many of the articles and seen many of the videos demonstrating this issue, but I am not convinced one way or the other that it is having a widespread impact on the actual performance of the phone.
I live in an area with strong 3G coverage. I can reproduce the issue if I tightly wrap my left hand completely around the bottom of my phone. After about a minute 1 bar will drop. After another minute a second bar will drop. This continues until about 1-2 bars and after a let go, it restores to full strength. However, I experience no degraded performance or call quality in this situation even with 1 bar. I have run speed tests with full bars and one bar on the 3G network with pretty much the same results (sometimes it's even faster with 1 bar).
To me, if the performance is good either way, I don't really care how many bars are displaying, so this is not an issue to me. I don't normally hold my phone with a death grip for minutes on end while using it so I don't expect this to be an issue in day to day normal use.
All this makes me wonder if this is really as much of an issue as the media would have you believe or if people are just seeing the bars drop and freaking out.
All that being said, Apple's first offical statement on the topic was incredibly stupid no matter what the problem or actual effect of this issue is. They shouldn't have just blown it off in such a flippant manner or used it as an opportunity to push one of their own accessories.
