The iPhone 4's dropped calls: AT&T's fault after all?

Out of the four U.S. wireless companies tracked in a recent study of dropped-call rates, AT&amp;T came in last place, with 4.8 percent. — (Image credit: Corbis)

Last summer, when Apple and AT&T rolled out the iPhone 4 with a new antenna system, customers complained of so many dropped calls that a new scandal was born: "Antennagate." Though Apple insisted the phone itself wasn't the problem, it eventually handed out special sleeves designed to help. Now, six weeks after Apple rolled out a Verizon version of the iPhone 4, its Verizon customers are reporting a dropped-call rate of only 1.8 percent, versus 4.8 for AT&T phones, according to ChangeWave Research. Does this vindicate Apple and pin the blame for Antennagate squarely on AT&T?

Yes, Apple's in the clear: This whole brouhaha certainly "seems like a fallacy" now, says Wilson Rothman in MSNBC. Verizon's much-better track record on dropped iPhone calls confirms the suspicion that AT&T's network, not Apple, was always "the culprit for call drops." On top of that, the call-killing "death grip" that critics, and Consumer Reports, used to bash the iPhone 4 "has been proven in lab testing to apply to all phones."

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The one who realy looks good is Verizon: The difference in dropped calls from Verizon and AT&T is "staggering," says Raven Lovecraft in TG Daily. But Verizon has bested AT&T in "call fidelity and signal strength" for years. True, Apple never "fully addressed" its original dropped-call problems in the Verizon iPhone remodeling, but this record of early success does prove that the tweaks that were implemented are working.

Neither Apple nor Verizon should get too cocky: Verizon's success with dropped calls may be due to "its lack of iPhone customers," says Molly McHugh in Digital Trends. Remember, AT&T didn't have "crippling" iPhone issues "until the onslaught of iPhone customers hit it like a ton of bricks." Still, regardless of whether Verizon's growing iPhone numbers will overtax its network, Apple will still win; at least 80 percent of respondents love their iPhone 4, whatever carrier they use.