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Posted by Arron on 11 Jan 2011 @ 5:24 PM

While the design change may seem like a given, due to the iPhone 4 from Verizon reportedly supporting CDMA at launch (or in the future), it does not alter the fact that this is a very different antenna to the one you and me hold on our iPhone 4′s today (old – pictured above).

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As most of us now know, Apple hit issues back in the summer of last year, when tech site @Gizmodo coined the phrase ‘Antennagate’ to describe an ever-more prevalent issue with the iPhone 4′s newly designed antenna system, which saw the antenna run around the outside band of the iPhone instead of being enclosed inside the device.

Coined revolutionary, this new antenna system was reported as causing a number of so-called “issues”, one of which being the cause of a drop in signal when holding the device in a certain way. Basically, it came down to this. If you happen to hold your new iPhone 4 in your left hand with the bottom left quadrant of your palm covering the bottom left corner of the phone, you may start to see a change in signal strength when connected over 3G.

The complaints grew to such a level that Apple had to call an emergency public press conference to discuss the future of the device in front of the world’s media. This was the event at which the company launched it’s FREE iPhone 4 bumper promotion to try to alleviate the previously felt feelings of disgruntled customers.

The promise? – Apple was going to change the antenna, and it seems … they have.

So, What’s Changed?

Well from a technical point of view, the iPhone 4 from Verizon looks like it will carry 4 antennas instead of one. This is mainly due to the impending support of Verizon’s 4G LTE network.

On the cosmetic side however, this now means that instead of the iPhone 4′s antenna being split so that one section is defined by two breaks in the bottom forty, and the other in the top sixty, the antenna is now broken into 4 separate pieces (new – pictured below), theoretically meaning there is an antenna “facing” every side of the iPhone, barring the front and back (obviously).