The list of things the iPhone is capable of doing in 2016 is genuinely mind-boggling.

You can shoot a documentary on it, compose music on it, fly a drone on it, hunt Pokemon on it, find love on it, check the score on it, read books on it and even talk to it about Game of Thrones. Yep, the iPhone is jam-packed with entertainment, productivity and procrastination - but it's a load of old shit as far as actually being a phone goes. That's according to a new study coming out of Scandinavia, where telecomms authorities tested signal quality on 26 different smartphones and saw the iPhone 6S, iPhone 6 and iPhone 5SE emerge as the losers. The phones used in the research were tested on how well they were able to transmit in the GSM 900 signal band, which is widely used for voice calls around the world. Weirdly, the phones performed better when held in the right hand, but the iPhone 6S and iPhone 5SE still placed in the bottom five for signal strength. The Samsung J1, Samsung S5 Mini and HTC Desire 626 were the best performing handsets, despite being much cheaper than Apple's flagship product.

"Apple has had problems and they continue to have them," Professor Gert Frølund Pedersen, from Denmark’s Aalborg University told Metro. "It also seems that the problems are greater in their newer phones, which is incredible."

Still, none of this is likely to deter Apple's loyal following, many of whom have probably been camping outside one of their stores since the end of August so that they can be the first to get their hands on the iPhone 7, which is due to be unveiled at an event on Wednesday. There have already been a few information leaks on the device, including these ones right here. Damning as Professor Pedersen's comments may be, when that launch takes place the last thing anyone is going to care about is how good the iPhones 7 is at phone calls.