Electromagnetic Engineer Claims Consumer Reports iPhone 4 Study Is Flawed

In response to Consumer Reports’ negative review of the iPhone 4, electromagnetic engineer Bob Egan dished out some very interesting observations on his blog, where he claims he is an experienced fellow “on exactly the kind of issues that now face Apple on the iPhone 4.”

“Consumer reports ‘RF’ engineers should know better than to think they can run an engineering grade test for an issue like this in a shielded room. And certainly not one with people in it,” Egan writes. “To even reasonably run a scientific test, the iPhone should have been sitting on a non-metallic pedestal inside an anechoic chamber,” he explains. “The base station simulator should have been also sitting outside the chamber and had a calibrated antenna plumbed to it from inside the chamber.”

Egan continues by saying “I have not seen (update: i have seen the full video since yesterday afternoon) CR’s claim directly that the finger effect reduces the iPhones sensitivity by 20db as reported elsewhere, but unless CR connected to a functional point inside the iPhone that number is fantasy. Even the way they seem to have tested the change – by varying the base station simulator levels – seems to assume the iPhone receiver and/or transmitter operate in a linear fashion (the same way) across all signal strengths – bad assumption.”

The electromagnetic engineer firmly upholds that “Consumer Reports replicated the same uncontrolled, unscientific experiments that many of the blogging sites have done,” going by published reports on the matter. Softpedia itself took a similar stab at the magazine’s review noting that it wasn’t any more conclusive than other bloggers’ tests which have failed to fully confirm an actual reception issue with Apple’s smartphone.

“We also don’t know if placing a finger on the antenna bridge is detuning the antenna or detuning the receiver itself,” Egan points out. “And neither does Consumer Reports,” he concludes.