Apple says you're doing it wrong!

[PoorManQ45]

Jesda, tell your brother to grab Overclock from the market. Set the phone to clock down alot when it is in sleep/standby. For some reason the factory software doesnt do that.

The reason is because HTC doesn't bother doing extensive testing. They pump it out and throw it over the wall -- the users then have to d!ck with it to get it right.

Root
Clock
Hack
Twist
Turn
Secret handshake
Do the hokey pokey


BAM! Now you've finally got a marginally functional telephone. F*cking gay. My phone isn't a hobby or a religion. Its a consumer good that I use to complete tasks.

Indeed. I agree completely.

In this case though there is nothing involved other then downloading the app. No rooting or anything required, but I understand what you're saying.

[PoorManQ45]

And so the lies begin!

This is Apples official response!

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don't know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T's recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone's bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.

[AppleBonker]

PMQ, not exactly shocking. Read the AnandTech review. That page does an excellent job explaining how the antenna issue occurs. It also gives a bit more of a quantitative demonstration of the signal attenuation. What is terribly unfortunate about this is that owners with dropped calls due to placing their hands in a certain spot on the phone will still experience this. However, they wont drop from five bars to no signal. They'll drop from 2-3 bars to no signal. It still doesn't address the key issue. There is a chart on that page that compares the signal attenuation of the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 3GS. It is a MASSIVE difference. The problem is clearly not software, as they were running the same thing, but hardware. Looks like it wont be getting fixed. Thanks Apple.

[AppleBonker]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h3Ogt2L44Q[/youtube]