Umm... no. I wasn't talking about putting the "bridge" somewhere, I was talking about putting the antenna somewhere -- note that I was replying to a post about typical mobiles with the antenna on the bottom end of the phone, not about the iPhone's distinctive (and apparently rather misunderstood) antenna system. Of course, the iPhone's antenna is practically the whole size of the phone, so there's really not much "put[ting] it somewhere else" you can do; basically just rotating the two antennas around the periphery of the phone.


Yes, but as long as you hold it at your head, your head is blocking the signal to a varying extent through most of a hemisphere. This holds true to any antenna design; ones lower on the phone will suffer less head-blockage (and more hand-blockage), but it's still an effect for all phones held at one's head, regardless of where you place the antennas or where any "bridges" may be.
I'm not sure you're as fully aware of the iPhone 4's antenna system as you might think; note that the metal band in the housing is two antennas of dissimilar lengths (shorter for 2.4GHz, longer for 2.1-0.85), and there's already a gap in the top (which it seems nobody shorts in practice, even though you cited this location as a liability in landscape) as well as the one on the side causing all the trouble.

The fact that you keep talking about the "bridge" is also wierd -- the iPhone doesn't use a slot antenna, if that's what you're thinking of; AUI it's just two monopoles, each relying on the rest of the phone (including the other antenna, since they're not on the same frequency) as a ground plane or counterpoise. So the "bridge" is only relevant in itself if it's actually being shorted (or bridged); it's not a meaningful feature in normal use. The entire side and bottom of the phone (or, more nearly, the entire phone, functioning as a poor dipole) radiates the signal.

Flipping the entire antenna design vertically would get the side gap where you want it, but the other one would now be on the bottom, where it's IMO more likely to be shorted by an errant finger. And of course, you'll also change the radiation pattern somewhat, although I'm not sure it would be enough to matter, or even whether it would be a beneficial or detrimental change.


Don't get me wrong, I do think the iPhone 4 antenna is better than most other antennas in phones that size, when used in free space (or, possibly, next to the head, with no hands nearby, since they probably optimized it for that); the ability to effectively short it with a misplaced finger is the only issue, but it happens that's a pretty big one, and hard to get rid of without growing the phone or shrinking the antenna to get a little more spacing