Well, I think I'm going to give it a try for a couple of days. I removed it and the little bars fluctuate a little, but I still get signal.

My previous phone was a SCH-6100. Great little phone (esp. with the slim battery, until the slim battery blew up.... but that's another story) but I could never get reception in my basement. The phone would ring, but once I picked it up I had to go running upstairs in order for anyone to be able to hear me or me them. My I300 gets nearly perfect reception in my basement, so I'm hoping that the much improved transmitter/receiver unit will more than make up for the removed antenna. I have it removed now and I still have signal in my basement, so I guess I'll see with time. I like the plug idea... I was worried about the hole, too.

On another similar note, on Samsung's site I saw something in one of their polls (it was a "what do you want to see in a phone" poll) about a feature called an "intenna". Assuming that it's not a typo (which would be really dumb... "Do you want an antenna on your phone?") that sounds like it might be an antenna that would not be visible on the phone. Thoughts?