Apple Finds New Cause of iPhone 4 Glitch

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Apple said it discovered the cause of the iPhone 4’s tendency to drop calls when the phone is held a certain way, and it’s not citing the antenna.

First, Apple claims many phones can drop a bar or two of signal strength if held a certain way, but the iPhone 4 can lose 4 or 5 bars. The problem is that Apple has been miscalculating the bars it should be displaying, and so those suddenly dropped calls were in a low signal area.

“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… 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…

“To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately…”

A free software update will be issued in a few weeks. Since the problem dates back to the original iPhone, it will apply to the 3GS and 3G too.

Apple continues to claim that the iPhone 4’s wireless performance “is the best we have ever shipped.”

Source: Apple

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