News In Brief

The real Consumer Reports iPhone discovery: Another use for Duct tape

Matt Berger Jul 13, 2010

Product review juggernaut Consumer Reports this week came out with a bold stance on Apple’s iPhone 4, warning readers that it would not recommend the fourth generation smartphone because of the much-hyped antenna issue that leads to dropped calls.

This is big news, and according to our report this evening on Marketplace, Apple is in a serious public relations bind with how it’s handling the situation, but what we can’t understand is why the media has buried the real lead here: Consumer Reports has discovered yet another use for Duct tape.

Watch the video and read more after the jump.

Consumer Reports snubs iPhone 4
Consumer Reports’ iPhone 4 snub was yesterday’s top tech news, and the Web was flush with headlines about it, mostly summing up what the publication’s testers and editors wrote on their blog.

But what we found most interesting was the section at the end of the video where the reviewer suggests a fix for the reception problem. He covers a specific area of the phone with a piece of Duct tape, essentially fixing the reception problem. Watch it here:


We here in the Marketplace office imagined Apple could run with the Duct tape solution. For example, how about the iGlove? Made of Duct tape, iPhone 4 users can wear this one-handed glove while holding their phone to improve reception.

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