Reports on The Register & BBC websites suggest that early adopters of the latest iPhone 4 are having trouble with signal strength if they hold their phones.<\/p>\n
The phones appear to suffer big drops in signal strength when held by human hand. Apparently, a small metal band on the outside<\/em> of the chassis acts as the antenna – in most other phones that part is internal.<\/p>\n This might have something to do with skin resistance, as using a leather or plastic case seems to mitigate the effect. Previous versions of the iPhone didn’t use external metal parts of the case as an antenna – the antennas were inside behind plastic panels in the otherwise metal chassis.<\/p>\n Others have suggested that touching the iPhone 4 shorts the WiFi & 3G radio parts somehow – we don’t think so … it’s much more likely that your body is acting like a signal sink, try wearing rubber gloves… You’ll find big differences in natural skin conductivity between different people – if I touch a badly earthed piece of electrical equipment I can feel a buzzing where some others can’t. I’ll be surprised if this problem is fixed by a software upgrade!<\/p>\n The simple act of holding the phone appears to cause the user to absorb maybe half of the RF power output of the phone. Using it hands-free causes no such problem. Maybe Apple are trying to get us all to use phones several feet away from our heads – a highly commendable goal!<\/p>\n Others are moaning that the screens scratch easily<\/a> and that edges of the screen suffer discolouration<\/a>, allegedly.<\/p>\n Article from The Register<\/a><\/p>\n