iPhone 4 Signal Declines While Being Held? A Longstanding Phenomenon?
Gizmodo has compiled a series of videos demonstrating that the iPhone 4s single bars seem to drop down significantly when being held in hand. The report actually began in our own forums with a video demonstrating the reproducibility of the problem:
The finding has generated many responses from people who have noticed similar behavior. While there has been some talk of this being a display error rather than an actual signal issue, several have reported that calls do drop when the bars decline. At least one user has posted a video demonstrating it not happening on his iPhone 4:
While this reader dismisses the claims as "trolling", there are plenty of videos from a variety of users demonstrating the reproducibility on many other people's iPhone 4s.
The question, though, remains -- is this a new issue or are people more acutely aware of it due to the attention drawn to the iPhone 4s exterior antennas. One expert had even predicted this might be a problem.
We're not so sure it's an iPhone 4 specific issue. We remember seeing videos demonstrating this same issue for prior iPhone devices. For whatever reason, those videos never drew that much attention. Here's a video showing the same phenomenon on an iPhone 3G. This video was posted in 2008:
Popular Stories
Apple has yet to reveal when the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Ultra will be announced and released, but the dates usually follow a familiar pattern.
Labor Day is September 7 this year. The last time the holiday fell on that day was in 2020, but the iPhone event that year was delayed until October due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So, the last time Labor Day was on September 7 in a normal year was in ...
The touchscreen and the OLED panel have dominated discussion about Apple's next high-end laptop, but the redesign wrapped around them may prove to be an equally consequential change, largely because it is not expected to stay unique to the machine for long.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman last week laid out Apple's plan to refresh every Mac it sells over the next two years. In the report, he...
Apple is developing an all-new operating system that is essentially a mix of tvOS, watchOS, and iOS, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
In a report this week, he said the operating system will feature a grid of icons, widgets, and apps, along with customizable clock faces.
The new software platform is intended for Apple's long-rumored smart home hub. With built-in facial recognition,...
