Later in the day, while sitting at a restaurant in a 3G area, I noticed I only had 1 bar. I thought that was a little strange and then I noticed something. I was holding it with my left hand and my palm was covering the slit between the metal of the external antennas.

After moving my hand, within about 20 seconds, my signal started to increase to 5 bars. I even did it a few more times and it was definitely having a problem. I took a couple screenshots to show the difference.

I also did a speed test and got half the speed when my hand was touching that part of the antenna system.

What’s happening is the iPhone has two antennas. One for the 3G & EDGE and the other for WiFi, Bluetooth, & GPS. When you touch that gap in the metal you are kinda connecting the antennas and there is a signal problem. It doesn’t happen on the other side because it’s actually connected over there. The right has the gap just to match the other side but on the inside they are actually connected. See below.

Now what are we going to do? Well, first, Steve Jobs replied to an email about the problem with, “Just avoid holding it in that way.” Then, Engadget posts this image saying, “Hey Apple, you’re holding it wrong.” These are screen captures from demos from Apple themselves.

Then Steve responds to another email about the problem with, “There is no reception issue. Stay tuned.” Some have suggested there will be a firmware update of 4.0.1 on Monday while others think iPhone Bumper Cases will be free to all iPhone 4 owners.

AT&T blocked MMS on the iPhone when firmware 3.0 was available from Apple. Firmware 3.0 has always supported MMS, that’s why when we had the 3.0 Beta we have screenshots showing how MMS worked, but the messages would never go through because AT&T had it blocked by entering an “opt-out” code. Not to mention many other carriers through out the world started supporting MMS when 3.0 was released when AT&T did not.

AT&T has recently announced that they would finally be releasing MMS to the iPhone on Sept 25th, 2009. How will they do this? First, AT&T needs to remove all the opt-out codes they added to accounts to block MMS when 3.0 was released. This is rumored to be part of the reason of the delay in MMS, but it’s also because the iPhone is a heavy bandwidth device and AT&T needed time to upgrade it’s network to handle the addition of MMS. Next Apple will push a carrier update from AT&T to iTunes. This is not a normal firmware update. Once you update, you will see the little camera in your text messaging and will be able to send pictures along with video, contacts and map locations.

Now the question is, how are people getting this early? Simple, they are getting the code early, running iTunes is a mode designed more for Apple engineers than the average user, and uploading it to their iPhone. But, that’s not all that it takes. AT&T still has to remove the opt-out code on your account. That’s why some people can run the hack and still not have MMS. There is nothing you can do but wait for AT&T to get to your account and remove the code. If you want to know how to get the code early and update your iPhone’s carrier file, check out this article I recently wrote about it.

So, for all of you who’ve been writing about “AT&T Releasing iPhone MMS Early”, please get your facts straight. Why? Because you’re giving everyone false hope that some how their iPhone is going to automatically get MMS between now and September 25th without them doing anything. It’s just not true. It’s a hack. Even in a recent interview with AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel by USA Today, he said, “Sept. 25th is still the date…” “We can’t comment on what people might be doing” to get MMS in the meantime.

And, for those of you who are waiting for September 25th, you are going to have to connect to iTunes to update the carrier file on that day. It won’t just start working on it’s own. If you have any questions about this, please ask them in the comments and I will try to clear things up. And if I’m wrong about any of this, please let me know and we’ll make sure everyone gets the right info.

I mean seriously, if you had some real tech guy like, Kevin Rose, or someone “normal” sit down and say, “Look, we’re sorry that we’re so far behind. The iPhone really just uses way more bandwidth than other devices and it caught us off guard. We’re working really hard to get it right, and when we do, we’re gonna get you tethering too. And since we’re slacking, we’re gonna give you the first 6 months of tethering for free. And we’re sorry we said end of summer. We missed it by a few days, our bad…”, we’d all probably be kewl with AT&T. That all said, we’d actually be kewl with them if they actually had MMS back when the iPhone first launched. As you all already know, most free phones even come with MMS. I’m on my 3rd iPhone, the iPhone 3GS, for sure the more advanced phone EVER and I can’t text someone a picture.

And tethering! My crappy old black and white screened Palm used to tether to my laptop via serial cable 8 years ago! Since I’m on a very long rant, may I add that I have no 3G in my area but I still pay the upgraded $30 data fee. It used to be $20 with the 1st Gen iPhone. An AT&T rep told me the increased fee was because of GPS. FYI: GPS is ran by the US Military. It’s free. That’s why you can buy a TomTom and have no monthly fees. To those saying it’s because of AGPS (assisted by cell towers), baloney! Also the network is now so bad in my area that I guarantee it’s worse than dial-up and I pretty much can’t use it. Thankfully I have wireless most places.

Ok, I think I’m done… So now for the video that got me going on all of this:

Here’s some of the stuff going through my head as I watched this:

Think of the internet as a series of tubes…

Does this guy ever give his eyebrows a rest?

Look, the 1st Gen iPhone!!! Wait… it doesn’t even support MMS!

Why didn’t they take a picture of a real switching center?

The word sorry wasn’t used once…

#fail