Consumer Reports Pans the Verizon iPhone, Too, Citing Yet More Antenna Issues

Verizon may have claimed that the antenna placement has been improved in its iPhone, but Consumer Reports, which elevated the AT&T iPhone 4’s “Antennagate” from blogger rabble-rousing to mainstream issue, won’t have it: Its latest round of tests found that the Verizon iPhone “has a problem that could cause the phone to drop calls, or be unable to place calls.”

Consumer Reports:

The problem is similar to the one we confirmed in July with the AT&T version of Apple’s newest smart phone. It can occur when you hold either version of the phone in a specific but quite natural way in which a gap in the phone’s external casing is covered. The phone performs superbly in most other respects, and using the iPhone 4 with a case can alleviate the problem.

…

Unfortunately, it also shares with its sibling the possibility of compromised performance in low-signal conditions when used without a bumper or case.

As noted earlier, there have not been widespread reports of reception difficulties with the Verizon iPhone 4, and Verizon’s network, unlike AT&T’s, has received above-average scores from our readers for the reliability of its voice service in the past. (Those scores reflect data gathered before the launch of the Verizon iPhone 4.) But given our findings, we believe the possibility exists for individual users to experience the problem since low signal conditions are unavoidable when using any cell-phone network.

M.G. Siegler is scathing: “With 30+ million iPhones sold since the last report, all these reports really seem to show is that no one cares about Consumer Reports anymore.”

(Consumer Reports)

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Robert Quigley