Apple Says iPhone 4 Signal Problem Is A Software, Not Hardware Issue

Written by John Thompson on July 3, 2010 · Filed under Tech 

Well this is interesting! Apple has released a statement about the iPhone 4 signal issue that has been plaguing owners of the device since its release. They claim that contrary to popular belief, the issue is indeed a software issue, not hardware related as many suspect.

What’s even more interesting is the fact that they’ve gone in to detail about the issue, claiming that “upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.”

The statement continues to offer a more detailed explanation, saying “For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. 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 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.”

Now that we know the issue, what’s the fix? Apple has said that they will issue a fix ‘within a few weeks’, adopting AT&T’s formula for calculating signal strength on the device. Hopefully, it will fix the issue that we’ve been seeing, putting any doubts of an iPhone 4 design fault firmly to the back of our minds.

Are you one of the new iPhone 4 owners who have had a problem with your mobile network signal dropping out? Are you holding it “right” when it happens? Or do you think this is a big non-issue blown out of all proportion?

Via – Engadget