Apple Engineer Gave iPhone 4 Antenna Warning In 2009

Apple management were apparently warned more than six months ago that the iPhone 4's external antenna design could lead to reception issues, Bloomberg has heard from an internal source at the Cupertino company.  Senior antenna expert Ruben Caballero supposedly told Apple execs that the fourth-gen smartphone could experience signal problems sometime back in 2009, concerns that a second source claims were reiterated by on of the company's carrier partners prior to the iPhone 4's release in June.

Those concerns may have been based on carrier testing just prior to the iPhone 4's launch, according to another source, which "indicated the antenna might cause reception problems."  Another claims Jonathan Ive's industrial design team submitted several iPhone 4 designs before the board settled on the bezel antenna.

Apple has arranged a last-minute press conference tomorrow, Friday July 16th, to discuss the iPhone 4, though the exact nature of the event's content is so far unknown.  Apple spokesperson Steve Dowling declined to elaborate on the conference to Bloomberg, and nor would be make Caballero available for comment.  SlashGear will be liveblogging the whole event tomorrow morning, so join us at 10am PT at http://live.slashgear.com/ to see what Steve Jobs & Co have to say for themselves.