Top Apple Engineer Warned Jobs About iPhone 4 Antenna Problems

According to Bloomberg, one of Apple’s senior engineers raised concerns a year ago over the potential for the iPhone 4′s design to cause dropped calls.

Ruben Caballero, an antenna expert at Apple who worked on the device, spoke with management last year about his belief that the iPhone 4′s design could cause reception troubles, according to Bloomberg sources. A “carrier partner” also expressed worries over potential antenna issues. All of which backs up what qualified third parties have said since the iPhone 4 “death grip” was first discovered. Apple has declined to comment, but will hold an iPhone 4-related press conference tomorrow.

This is the first indication that people internally at Apple knew about the phone’s potential problems before its June release. Until this point, the only official acknowledgement from the company has been a recent software fix that thus far seems to have been ineffective.

The report backs up what we’d previously heard about the internal struggles between Apple’s design and engineering teams. If true, it also makes even more clear that the onus is on Apple to provide a solution, be it free bumpers, a recall or some other fix. We’ll find out tomorrow if, or what, that might be. [Bloomberg]