By now, if you have an iPhone or are in the market for one, you have probably heard about the antenna placement and reception debacle which has received plenty of coverage. Well, just hitting the web today, a Consumer Reports review goes on record as not recommending the iPhone 4 due to this issue:
It’s official. Consumer Reports’ engineers have just completed testing the iPhone 4, and have confirmed that there is a problem with its reception. When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone’s lower left side—an easy thing, especially for lefties—the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you’re in an area with a weak signal. Due to this problem, we can’t recommend the iPhone 4.
Other than the reception problem (which is the most important aspect of a phone), Consumer Reports rates the iPhone 4 as the best smart phone:
The signal problem is the reason that we did not cite the iPhone 4 as a “recommended” model, even though its score in our other tests placed it atop the latest Ratings of smart phones that were released today.
Obviously you do not want to purchase a phone with a known defect that cannot be fixed outside of replacing the phone. Again, if you are in the market for an iPhone you would be best served either waiting for the problem to be fixed by Apple or going with the iPhone 3GS model.
People who have already purchased an iPhone 4, you can apply the duct tape “hack” as pointed out in the article and/or contact Apple to see what they can do for you.
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“that cannot be fixed outside of replacing the phone” How about putting it in a case? Problem solved.
Something tells me Consumer Reports was looking for a big splash with this. It isn't as if the Iphone 4 is the first phone to do this. Iphone just happend to be the most popular.
Either way, I'm likely going Droid anyway.
So don't put your finger in that spot.
I wouldn't call sticking duct tape on the side or having to purchase a case a solution to this type of design problem. It's like saying if a boat has a hole in it, stick your finger in the hole… problem solved.