Danish professor Gert Frolund Pedersen made his name with the iPhone 4’s Antennagate scandal, but he hasn’t been resting on his laurels since then. In fact, the antenna expert recently released his ranking of antenna performance for 37 popular smartphones – and once again it’s bad news for the latest iPhone!
The test measured the performance of each phone’s antennas while connecting to the GSM 900 band, a typical band for placing calls in the Denmark and elsewhere in the world. For the iPhone 6S, it was very bad news – the phone came 30th out of the 37 phones tested with an ‘F’ grade. The Galaxy S6 did rather better, coming 4th place and receiving a ‘D’ grade (the scale is A-G, but the highest result was a C). Cell reception was about three times better on the Galaxy S6 than the iPhone 6S.
The worst phone on the list was the Nokia Lumia 925, which received a G grade. The highest iPhone on the list? None other than the iPhone 4, which was ranked 14th with an E grade. If you’re looking to get good cell reception for calls then, you’d be best off with a Doro Phone Easy 605 (a traditional dumbphone), a Samsung Galaxy S5 or a Sony Xperia Z.
So why are newer smartphones generally getting worse reception? According to the Danish professor, it’s that screen size is trumping antenna length; manufacturers are putting in only the bare minimum to get by. Still, with the rise of internet-based calls, I can’t see this changing any time soon.
If you’ve got an iPhone 6S, one thing you can try is a special case, like the Pong Rugged Signal Boosting Case.
You can have a look at the full list of test results here – what place is your current phone? Let us know in the comments below, or write to us on Twitter @mobilefun.
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