Cupertino, Calif. – Apple today defended the iPhone 4 against
those who say the device has problems maintaining a cell signal.
The company said in a letter to customers that the signal
strength is not being reduced an inordinate amount when held in a certain
manner. Instead the signal strength is dropping the normal amount, however, the
formula being used to decipher the signals strength is incorrect.
Apple stated, “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. 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.”
To rectify the problem Apple will adopt AT&T’s signal formula
and install it into iPhones via a software patch in the next few weeks.
Apple is facing at least five class-action lawsuits from disgruntled customers over perceived problems with iPhone 4’s wrap-around antenna design.
