There are reports that the iPhone 4 doesn’t want to connect very quickly — if at all — when held a certain way. And a “PC World” report (http://www.pcworld.com/article/199848/iphoneflaw.html?tk=rss_news) confirms this.
Though saying that, overall, the new smartphone is faster than its predecessors they had this to say: “At each of my five testing locations I did an extra set of speed tests while holding the iPhone 4 with my left hand, covering up the bottom left edge of the phone. At one testing location, this seemed to make no difference: I got equal connection speeds when I held the phone in my left hand and when I tested with it sitting on the tabletop. But in the remaining four locations, I saw dramatic speed decreases. In three of my testing locations, connection speeds dropped to zero or near zero when I held the phone against my left palm. The number of connection bars showing dropped from five out of five to just one or two out of five. I also noticed that the latency numbers—the time it takes the speed test to send data up to a network server and back—shot upwards into thousands of milliseconds. In the remaining location, download speed was cut to a third of that measured when the phone was lying on the table with the antenna untouched, and the upload speed was decreased by half.”
Apple’s answer — according to “engadget” (http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple-responds-over-iphone-4-reception-issues-youre-holding-th/) — is to move your hand position, or get a case which covers that part of the phone, thus breaking contact.
“Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas,” Apple said in an email. “This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.”
— Dennis Sellers