Don’t buy iPhone 4 says watchdog

A US consumer report had said that it won’t recommend buying an iPhone 4 due to the much-publicised issue of signal-loss.

“We reached this conclusion after testing all three of our iPhone 4s (purchased at three separate retailers in the New York area) in the controlled environment of CU's radio frequency (RF) isolation chamber,” said the watchdog.

The body said it also tested several other AT&T phones in the same way, including the iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre. “None of those phones had the signal-loss problems of the iPhone 4.”

Apple first claimed that users were holding the phone wrong but then said that the problem was to do with the formula used to calculate how many signal bars to display.

“Our findings call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4's signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software that ‘mistakenly displays two more bars than it should for a given signal strength’,” the report continued, adding that the tests indicated AT&T's network might not be at fault.

“The signal problem is the reason that we did not cite the iPhone 4 as a ‘recommended’ model. If you want an iPhone that works well without a masking-tape fix, we continue to recommend an older model, the 3G S,” the report concluded.

Update: Shares of Apple slid more than 4% on Tuesday based on the consumer report.