iPhone 3G reception just fine say curious Swedes with engineering degrees

There's been a lot of discussion lately about iPhone 3G reception issues. Whether they exist or not is largely irrelevant in a world dominated by sound-bite driven perceptions. Nevertheless, some industrious Swedes decided to apply a little scientific method to the argument and found something interesting: the iPhone 3G performed just as well (or just as poorly, depending upon your mood) as a Nokia N73 and Sony Ericsson P1 when compared head-to-head in a mobile communications test chamber. The test was conducted by real-life antenna engineers just like those camera-fumbling souls contracted by the FCC. Of course, who's going to let a few facts stand in the way of contrary opinion and litigation, eh?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 25th 2008 10:19AM]

All this says is that for ONE iPhone the antenna was fine. Statistically, they need to test more than one. And it doesn't rule out the Infineon chipset or firmware.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 25th 2008 11:13AM]

Uhhhh, that's now how it's done in the real world. These guys obviously don't work for a phone manufacturer. They'd be fired for passing phone with their tests. A test chamber is only a starting point for phone performance. They'd need multiple base station simulators to start with. The suspected problem is with the handoffs from base station to base station and from mode to mode, not the RF performance. And they need to simulate the multipath out there.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 25th 2008 5:21PM]

the only reason Il have a hard time taking this for fact, aside from the reasons already mentioned, is that apple said there was a problem and they're working to fix it. I don't think they'd do that if there was no problem