UK iPhone

The updated version of the iPhone’s operating system, IOS 4.0.1, has been released, and it fixes the problematic signal strength display in all iPhones. Anand Lal Shimpi of Anandtech was the first to spot the fact that the old software showed a full signal even when the actual signal strength had dropped by half, and he now confirms that the new software has a much more evenly spaced indication.

I’ve always felt that there was something a bit odd about the iPhone’s signal strength indicator: it always seemed an “all-or-nothing” thing, either full-strength or minimum, very few indications inbetween. And unfortunately I think that this has been convincing people that the “iPhone 4 antenna bug” is a bigger problem than it really is. When you touch the new phone’s metal case, especially at the critical bottom-left corner area, it does reduce the phone’s signal a bit. But because the phone had such a drastic response to signal changes, it made it look as if you were going from 5 bars to nothing.

Anandtech reports that under the new software, the drop is only two bars, so it won’t look as if the phone’s reception is completely compromised. And if you look at all the reports by people with the “problem”, they mostly talk about the signal indicator dropping. Very few people are talking about actual dropped calls (and it would be hard to know that the call was dropped specifically for that reason anyway). I know from my own experience that the antenna is so much BETTER than the old iPhone that holding it “wrong” does not reduce the performance much, and Anandtech confirms that the new iPhone holds onto a weak signal much better than any other phone.

I feel that a lot of commentators are indulging in the usual Apple-bashing, or are jumping on the bandwagon to get publicity for themselves (why else is Consumer Reports constantly changing their story?) The truth is that the iPhone 4 has an amazingly good antenna; the (small) price for that is that it doesn’t perform at 100% in certain circumstances. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with the phone; it certainly performs better as a phone than any previous iPhone. The whole thing reminds me of the “non-replaceable battery” nonsense that attended the iPod’s launch. Some people will find fault no matter what you do. “Haters gonna hate!”

This entry was posted on Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 2:00 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.