Could there be a rotten apple in the barrel?

Known for its impressive delivery of too-good-to-be-true gadgets (that we never knew we couldn't live without), it's looking like Apple might have finally over-delivered with the new 4G iPhone. First there was the Gizmodo debacle (after an Apple engineer lost his 4G prototype in a bar), but now it looks like the phone itself is apt to drop calls due to a design flaw. As reported in the NY Times yesterday:

Consumer Reports said the tests led it to conclude that it could not recommend the iPhone 4 to consumers until Apple fixes the hardware problem. It also questioned Apple’s honesty on the antenna issues Consumer Reports said in a blog post and accompanying video on Monday that widely reported with the iPhone 4, Apple latest mobile phone, were a result of a flaw in the phone’s antenna design and that it could not recommend purchasing the phone. That contradicts earlier claims by Apple that the problems are a software issue.

The magazine said its engineers performed a series of tests on three separate iPhone 4s inside a controlled lab environment known as a “radio frequency isolation chamber.” They found that when the bottom left corner of the iPhone was touched, it could sometimes lose enough signal strength to drop calls.