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There's a lot to like, if not love, about the iPhone 3G and, according to a number of users, a number of features to dislike - battery life is my least favorite. Another aspect of the iPhone that falls into the latter category is the smartphone's wireless reception capabilities. The 3G performance is supposed to be so poor that at one user's decided to launch a lawsuit against Apple for not meeting connectivity expectations.

What happens when you compare the iPhone to other smartphones in a controlled setting, however? The results are - to say the least - enlightening.

Some Swedes (a group of people known for their neutrality) with engineering degrees recently put the iPhone 3G through its paces in an antenna test chamber, comparing it against the performance of a pair of other popular smartphones: the Nokia N73 and Sony Ericsson P1.

The equipment (a chamber), which measures how cell phones and smartphone perform - sending and receiving signals - under various conditions, found something interesting. According to the Swedish engineer (M.Sc. in Engineering Physics) Magnus Franzén, the iPhone 3G's performance was completely normal. Huh.

In fact, iPhone's antenna performance fell right in line with the Sony Ericsson P1 and Nokia 73, with the former smartphone doing a tad better at receiving signals and the former a drop better at sending signals.

Thousands of iPhone 3G users can't be wrong. Can they?

Does this mean we're going to have start look at the wireless network again for the culprit? Could it be that AT&T 3G data network has a bone to pick with the iPhone 3G and not other smartphones that run on it? Or, perhaps, the reported connectivity problems are the result of the way the immature wireless chipset Apple used in the iPhone 3G interacts with AT&T's wireless network.

Hopefully, we'll find out for sure soon. And we'll get a fix that corrects the problems. That is, if - as it turns out - a patch is truly needed after all.

[Göteborgs-Posten via engadget]