The placement of the cellular and WiFi antennas between the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 couldn’t be more different, but that’s not stopping a small but vocal minority of iPad 2 owners to cry about an Antennagate of their own.
A number of iPad 2 owners are reporting that their WiFi signal is dropping when they put their hand over their iPhone’s speaker grill. Some users say their device loses radio signal completely, while others merely report a drop of a couple of bars.
An AppAdvice reader explains the problem:
Seems the iPad 2 has antenna gate also, I have noticed this for awhile. If I hold the iPad 2 on the sides my Wi-Fi drops to 2 bars but when I move my hand away from the left side it speeds up again.
What’s weird about these reports is that the iPad 2, by all accounts, shouldn’t have the same kind of antenna attenuation issues as the iPhone 4.
iPhone 4 signal drop was caused by accidentally bridging two sections of the antenna with your hands. It’s largely an issue with Apple making the iPhone’s antenna external. With the iPad, 2, though, the antennas are located behind the Apple logo on the back of the device. You literally can’t bridge it in the same way.
So what’s going on? Best guess is that a small number of users have faulty iPad 2 units, and you should be able to swap it out for a replacement at your local Apple Store if you can show it to a Genius. Failing that, though, the solution seems to be the same as with the iPhone 4 Antennagate: get yourself a case.
