Consumer Reports : Antenna Issue Fixed with iPhone 4S
Consumer Reports on Tuesday announced it is recommending the iPhone 4S to customers, stating that Apple's latest handset "doesn't suffer the reception problem we found in its predecessor."
According to them, "In special reception tests of the iPhone 4S that duplicated those we did on the iPhone 4, the newer phone did not display the same reception flaw, which involves a loss of signal strength when you touch a spot on the phone’s lower left side while you’re in an area with a weak signal. (The iPhone 4, which is still available, continues to exhibit that problem, we confirmed in tests of new samples of the phone. Because of the flaw, we continue to omit the iPhone 4 from our list of recommended models, despite its otherwise fine performance.)"
In addition, Consumer Reports also said it has not experienced any battery problems with the iPhone 4S as some users have reported poor battery life with the device. Apple is already testing a new update to iOS 5 to address that issue.
It appears whatever Apple did to the antenna design fixed not only the single-point-of-failure signal dropping, but also made it more resilient against the industry-wide death grip issue. Apple did this by rebuilding the antenna to incorporate an intelligently switching dual antenna array to offer better voice quality and call handling.
With the iPhone 4, Consumer Reports did not make a recommendation because of antenna issues that came with the phone. The "fix" in that particular case is to simply wrap the phone with an external case, and Apple gave away free iPhone 4 cases for a limited time to alleviate those concerns of the glitch, which might drop signals about 1 in 100 calls. The controversy largely subsided as the iPhone 4 went on to become the company's best selling smartphone yet.
