iPhone 4 Reception Issues: Use a Bumper

 One of the solutions to the iPhone 4 signal reception issue is to use a rubber bumper, which was designed to protect the phone from physical damage but also keeps skin from touching the antenna, which is the cause of the signal reception problem.

Apparently the left side of the iPhone 4 receives Wi-Fi signals while the right side picks up the 3G signal for calls. And human tissue blocks reception of radio waves. Holding the device, when the antenna is on the exterior of the device, also means the antenna's physical length is affected. That's important because antenna length is proportional to the wavelength of the signals a device is trying to capture.

What seems like long ago, when people used TV antennae on their roofs to pick up broadcast TV, the antenna array was fairly large: feet worth of antennae. That was because the broadcast TV signals had a fairly long wavelength, so one needed a fairly-long antenna to catch the signals.

Cell phone signals are higher frequency, with shorter wavelength, so antennae are correspondingly shorter, measured in inches. But touching the antenna can effectively shorten its length, thus affecting reception, aside from the absorption of some of the signal.

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