This may come as a shock to the public, so brace yourself. The iPhone has a reception issue that is very real, and has nothing at all to do with software.

According to Consumer Reports testing, “when your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone’s lower left side—an easy thing, especially for lefties—the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you’re in an area with a weak signal.” Because of this issue, the highly respected publication does not recommend the iPhone 4, no matter how awesome they thought the phones features were.

Consumer Reports also gives a quick fix to the iPhone problem that involves duct tape and a loss of all shame. All you have to do is simply “cover the antenna gap with a piece of duct tape or another thick, non-conductive material”. They follow by stating that a case may fix the problem, but there have been no tests to confirm the claim.

Ed. Note: Even though it does not get a recommended rating from Consumer Reports, according to All Things D the iPhone 4 still tops the Consumer Reports Smartphone list with a 74/100 score. Ahead of the iPhone 3GS and HTC EVO at 72.

While I don’t think that anyone will change their minds about purchasing an iPhone, it would be good for Apple to fix the problem rather than blame it on software.

[Source: Consumer Reports]