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Apple Says Poor iPhone 4 Reception Is a Software Problem, Fix Coming Soon

by Amar Toor on July 2, 2010 at 10:10 AM

iphone 4After being widely lampooned for blaming its iPhone 4's reception problems on how users hold it, Apple has finally come out with a more legitimate-sounding, but equally head-scratching response to the issue. In a press release, the company said, "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." As it turns out, the algorithm Apple uses tends to overestimate the real signal strength, and, as a result, sometimes displays four bars when there should only be two. The company will be releasing a new software that displays larger and more accurate bars within the next few weeks. And, since this has apparently been a problem for quite some time, the company will also issue new software for the 3G and 3GS models.

But, as Engadget points out, this explanation doesn't really do much to explain why so many calls are dropped, nor does it admit to any poor antenna design. If anything, it sounds like Apple's just saying that its own expectations for the iPhone 4's performance were way too high -- and maybe ours were, too. [From: Engadget]

Tags: antenna, Apple, ATT, DroppedCalls, iphone, Iphone3g, Iphone3gS, Iphone4, iphone4launch, iphone4lawsuit, reception

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