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It seems like only yesterday when The Wall Street Journal’s own Walt Mossberg was praising the iPhone 4 just prior to its release, calling it “the best device in its class.” A lot has happened since then but one thing remains the same: Mossberg still “hearts” his iPhone 4 -- most of the time.
AppleInsider is reporting that The Wall Street Journal tech guru Walt Mossberg has done a followup to his original review of the iPhone 4, weighing in on the six weeks he’s spent with the device during the “Antennagate” PR nightmare and Apple’s response that free cases will solve the issue.
Actually, make that two iPhone 4s -- Mossberg compares the signal on the original device that Apple gave him to review, as well as his own personal model which has since been updated to iOS 4.0.1 to fix the signal bars error that Apple claims is at the heart of most of the “death grip” problems. The tech scribe mostly comes away with the same conclusion: In areas with “average or strong AT&T coverage,” the iPhone 4 generally performs better than the iPhone 3GS.
The downside is that, in areas with weak coverage, Mossberg feels that his iPhone 3GS performs better than either of his new iPhone 4 handsets -- the 3GS dropped less calls and showed a “No Service” status less frequently. Mossberg also notes, however, that Apple claims their customer reports are quite the opposite.
What it comes down to is that Mossberg doesn’t recommend the iPhone 4 for people in poor AT&T reception areas, claiming that AT&T “operates a network that has trouble connecting and maintaining calls in many cities.”
Finally, on the subject of the fabled “death grip,” Mossberg seems to feel it’s much ado about nothing. While Mossberg was indeed able to get the signal bars to “fluctuate” by gripping it a certain way, the actual call quality remained the same and failed to drop. In some cases, the signal bars actually rose when his fingers covered the left-hand seam that Apple has identified as the iPhone 4’s Achilles heel.
So there you have it: Walt Mossberg says there’s no problem, nothing to see here… so everybody move along now.
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