Swedes point to defective iPhone hardware causing 3G dropouts

As I've already reported, a number of users are having significant problems with maintaining a 3G connection on their iPhone.

Now, Sweden's premier engineering publication "Ny Teknik" has got hold of a test report from "experts" which suggests that the iPhone could be among a handful of mobile handsets that fall short of the International Telecommunication Union's standards.

Unfortunately, if this is the case, the problem is almost certain to be hardware based, involving the antenna and amplifier, and there's not really much you can do via software updates to alleviate that.

AT&T is putting a brave face on the issues, possibly hoping that those complaining about their service are always a highly vocal minority. Spokesman Mark Siegel said that "overall, the new iPhone is performing just great on our 3G network," with an insignificant number of complaints having been received. Not insignificant to those suffering, of course.

Siegel's advice, which is unlikely to do much, is to regularly sync the iPhone to iTunes to take advantage of improvements that may come via updated software.

What's the problem? Is this a case of Apple cutting some corners? Materially, the iPhone 3G has already shown signs of being less robust, and of lower quality, than its predecessor. Is the 3G chipset just one of the casualties?

No word from Apple on the matter, but that's not surprising. They'll need to speak soon enough if this problem escalates. A solution that makes affected iPhones usable on 3G would be friendly, too.

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