iPhone 3G reception woes unfixable? Maybe, maybe not

Support forum threads on Apple's site and a number of ramblings across these great interwebs are starting to complain at great length about the iPhone 3G's headlining new feature -- 3G reception, that is -- and pretty much every aspect of it: signal strength, call dropping, connecting to EDGE when 3G is present, the list goes on. Some smartypants analyst from financial firm Nomura thinks he has it all figured out, saying that the issues are "typical of an immature chipset and radio protocol stack" and suggesting that a firmware update pushed out to existing handsets is unlikely to ease the pain. We've been hearing that Cupertino could actually be working on just such an update at this very second, though, so this cat better get ready for the possibility that he could be eating his own words down the road. For what it's worth, intermittent issues have been reported the world over, so this doesn't seem to be anything to do with AT&T's (or anyone else's) infrastructure -- and needless to say, not everyone is having issues to start. And for anyone whose iPhone 3G we just jinxed by writing this post... well, our bad.