It’s been a few months since the whole ‘Antenna Gate’ outpouring of anger over the iPhone 4′s signal attenuation problems when held in a certain way. I get asked by friends whether it has a problem and I have to answer truthfully that I’ve had only one distinctive occasion on which the signal dropped and caused a noticeable drop in audio quality, and that was at my home in Scotland where the signal is poor on the best days.

But here’s the thing. In normal use this phone definitely has better voice quality and reception than any phone I’ve had before, including my Android running Motorola XT800. This has been confirmed here in the most in depth and objective reviews of the phone.

I can make calls in the garden at home when I never used to be able to, walk around inside our house in Beijing (we are in a null reception zone on the 20th floor of a tower block), and enjoy better audio quality and call quality than ever before. The second thing I say to curious friends is that the antenna issue was mostly a gross marketing error, not a technical one. By drawing attention to external aerials and the join between them, Jobs put his foot in arguably Apple’s most embarrassing PR mishap ever. But as one of the 99.9% of the iPhone 4 owners who has not asked for a refund, I am just happy this phone makes great calls!

Leave a Reply