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What did we tell you about the iPhone 4? The hardware is flawed.
External antennas are not new or “revolutionary” as Apple and Steve Jobs would like you to believe; and on the iPhone 4, the installation is terribly flawed causing signal reception to drop from two to five bars.
We explained that anything with an external antenna must have an insulating sheath covering the antenna to avoid contact with other objects causing performance to drop significantly. Unsurprisingly, we found out that a Professor who is an expert in antennas and mobile technology mentioned the same thing.
Now, through an apparent leak of an internal document, it appears that Apple actually knew about the flaw and created a procedure to handle customers who call in to complain about any reception issues.
It is revealed in the document that Apple is still adamant that there is nothing wrong with iPhone 4 and will continue telling customers that many other mobile phone ssuffer from the same problem. Also, if you’re hoping that Apple will be shipping the iPhone 4 with a free Bumper to solve the problem, you can forget about it. The document explicitly mentioned that Apple will not give free Bumpers, period.
In a country where you can almost sue anyone for anything (we’re talking about the US here), it might not be long until Apple gets hit with a class-action lawsuit from customers demanding compensation.
This will definitely make for some interesting blogging.
In the meantime, if you’re wondering when the flawed iPhone 4 will hit Malaysia, we predicted it will be here in August and Maxis COO seems to agree.
Head on after the jump to have a look at the leaked document.

It turns out, external antennas are not that revolutionary after all and they could be more problematic than internal ones. At least, this is what one antenna expert from Denmark is saying.
Professor Gert Frølund Pedersen from Aalborg University’s Institute for Electronic Systems saw Steve’s presentation at WWDC10 and says that the design of the antenna as a part of the phone’s frame is really not anything new. In fact numerous phones in the past have used a similar design. The professor is currently leading an international research team to develop a more effective mobile antenna technology
What’s different with the iPhone 4 is that the installation of the external antenna is flawed and it is causing reception problems when the phone is held in a certain way.
There are now claims that Apple will be releasing a patch to solve the issue but we’re wondering if a software patch can really solve the problem?
We don’t think so.
This is because the root cause of the reception degradation is direct physical contact with the iPhone 4’s antenna. The professor explains: “the human tissue will in any event, have an inhibitory effect…Touch means that a larger portion of the antenna energy turns into heat and lost. This makes the antenna less efficient to send and receive radio signal.”
Researchers at Aalborg University is quick to point that found that if mobile phones are held tightly generally where the antenna is located can cause reduction in reception by more than 90%.

Who’s holding it wrong now Steve?

Click for larger image.
[source]

We thought that it’s really weird for the iPhone 4 WiFi to stop working during the FaceTime demo at WWDC10. At that time Jobs claimed that the over 500 wireless APs in the conference hall was causing problems for the iPhone 4, resulting in the botched up demo.
We thought that it was very unlikely that the WiFi routers were to blame for the failed demo. We noted that there could be something seriously wrong with the external antenna on the iPhone 4 when it comes to WiFi performance. It turns out WiFi performance is not the only thing the iPhone 4 is having problems with.
Many early iPhone 4 owners experiencing a dropped calls and a major drop is signal reception when handling the phone. All of these early iPhone 4 users have their fingers pointed directly at the “revolutionary” external stainless steel antenna.
We didn’t realize it at first but it has now become obvious to us. Is the antenna design on the iPhone 4 majorly flawed? We are inclined to believe that it definitely is. The logic behind this is simple, if you we’re to hold any antenna, be it TV, radio or even handphones, you are bound to experience signal degradation. To overcome this, product designers add some form of insulation around the antenna to minimize short circuiting the antennae with can cause interference and signal degradation. Could the exposed antenna design on the iPhone 4 be the root cause of all this?
Without a unit to test for ourselves, for now we can only speculate, but we have a very strong feeling that it is indeed the case.
