The iPhone 4 Antenna Unravelled

When it was reported that the new iPhone 4 was making use of the metal band around the phone for the “antenna” and if you held the iPhone wrong the signal disappeared or got weaker, there as a flurry of articles about this method of antenna placement.

Soon after, Apple announced that part of the problem was that their software formula for determining signal strength—i.e., showing how many “bars” of signal was available—was in error and that in reality the signal strength was really lower than that being shown.

What I have not seen discussed is the entire issue of the antenna, and its placement on wireless devices. There are a number of interwoven issues here, all of which can help explain the problems encountered. First, the weak link in any wireless or radio system is the antenna, its effectiveness and its location. If you watch TV with an outside antenna and you disconnect the antenna from the TV set you get no reception; if the antenna on your car breaks you get no AM or FM reception. This is because these systems are designed with the understanding that an external antenna is needed.In analog cellular days every phone had an external antenna, this gave the device better range when it was communicating with the cell sites. Then we switched to digital but analog was still operational and the antennas were still external. Today, our wireless network operators have built out many more cell sites—AT&T  and Verizon each have more than 40,000 sites to cover the United States.

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