“As proof, a YouTube user has posted a video of his iPhone 3G, held in a similar fashion as the iPhone 4s in the YouTube videos we showed you yesterday, losing signal strength as soon as it is clutched,” Bettiol reports.
“As this did not happen with iOS 3.0, this suggests a software bug which affects the signal meter the user sees,” Bettiol reports.
Bettiol reports, “Even more interesting is the fact that despite displaying a weak signal — and in some cases no signal at all — many users report that the iPhone 4 is still able to make calls as if nothing were wrong.”
Full article, with the video, here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we reported earlier today, “We can reproduce the issue of diminishing or disappearing AT&T bars on our units by blocking the lower left corner completely with our hands on iPhone 4 units without cases, but do not believe it to be a hardware issue. In fact, with 3+ bars, we don’t notice any loss of reception, even if we make the bars go away. According to a trusted source, there are multiple points on the iPhone 4’s frame for antenna reception. Our source says that the issues “can and will” be addressed by tweaking, balancing, and/or redistributing antennae reception and/or signal strength display via software. When asked if it could be a hardware issue, our source said, ‘Don’t be silly. It’s not the hardware. Apple’s too smart for that. In fact, most any handset maker is too smart for that.”‘
[UPDATE: 11:24pm EDT: Apple has issued a statement: Apple responds to iPhone 4 reception attenuation issue: ‘A fact of life for every wireless phone’]