AnandTech Claims Verizon iPhone 4 Signal is Better than AT&T iPhone 4

Last week, the Consumer Reports Magazine said that they wouldn’t recommend Verizon iphone 4 to users because of the serious antenna problem. However, the Electronics Research Company AnandTech now has fully tested the Verizon iPhone 4, and they found the antenna problem is alleviated, so the Verizon iPhone 4’s death grip reports are just overblown.

AnandTech’s founder Anand Shimpi accused that Consumer Reports does not disclose the data to support their claim, and the spokesman of Consumer Reports Melissa Valentino claimed that the testing performance of Verizon iPhone 4 and AT&T iPhone 4 are almost the same. But AnandTech indicated that Verizon iPhone 4’s signal reception is as good as other smartphones, and far better than AT&T iPhone 4.

AnandTech said when users hold it improperly, Verizon iPhone 4’s signal attenuated 16.5 db, but AT&T iPhone 4’s signal attenuated 24 dB. Meanwhile, AnandTech has tested 7 other smartphones, their average signal attenuation are 14.4 db, which means Verizon iPhone 4’s signal attenuation is 15% higher than average level, and higher 71% than AT&T iPhone 4. When users hold it properly, other smartphones’ signal attenuated 7.4 db, the Verizon and AT&T iPhone 4s’ are 15.5db and 19.8 db.

The obvious signal reception differences between Verizon and AT&T is the two antenna design. The Market Research firm iSuppli found by dismantling that they used the same antenna design, but Verizon iPhone 4’s antenna has made some improvements to enhance the signal reception. Specially, the Verizon iPhone 4 uses dual-antenna design to improve signal reception capability through multiple antennas.

Compared with its competitor, Verizon Wireless requires all smartphones to configure multiple antennas, so that the cell phone can switch signal to a better antenna. At the same time, the signal reception can be improved by two antennas. Krueger said that he expected Apple’s unborn iPhone will use this design in the future.