Apple has finally officially commented on iPhone 4 reception issues but is saying that holding the next-gen handset the wrong way isn’t drastically affecting reception because it might not have been there to begin with.
Confused? So it appears is Apple. The letter from Apple says that yes, holding the handset in a certain way is affecting reception on the iPhone 4 but that this is the case for many smartphones.
“Gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by one or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones,” says the letter.
It goes on to defend itself against claims that this is a far bigger issue with the iPhone 4 attributed to faulty antennae design because holding the phone and covering this strip causes reception to drop by several bars.
Apple says the reception bars do drop but that this is because it was falsely registering high reception in an area where reception is in fact weaker than the iPhone displays and when the user covers the phone with his or her hand this only affects the reception mildly.
“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 four or five bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.”
Oh, and Apple still thinks you’re holding it wrong. You shouldn’t be holding it so “tightly.”
And in case you were in any doubt, Apple says it has gone back to the lab and tested reception and that the wireless performance is the “best ever shipped”.
A software update will be issued in the next few weeks that will fix the faulty reception bar display, says Apple.
