Verizon iPhone 4 Death Grip Saga Continues, Despite Antenna Update
Email
Print
Whether the Verizon iPhone 4 suffers from "death grip" depends on whom you ask. Consumer Reports and iLounge say yes, while AnandTech says the issue has been addressed.
The Apple iPhone 4's antenna continues to attract news. Whether the Verizon version of the smartphone, like its AT&T predecessor, drops calls when held in a certain way-aka the "death grip"-seems to depend on whom you ask.
Bearing some cup-half-empty news Feb. 8, tech site iLounge
reported that the Verizon iPhone-which is based on CDMA technology, not
GSM, like the AT&T version, and so features a different antenna design
- did indeed suffer from death grip.
"What we've noticed is a dramatic, dramatic slowdown of the
speed at which the phone is loading up pages over Verizon's network," an
iLounge reporter said in a video on the site, showing the device's bars fall as
it was tightly held. "We've also experienced the same thing when doing it over
WiFi-at least depending on how the phone is gripped."
Although, as with the AT&T iPhone 4, the site added that
"Use of a protective case appears to fix the antenna issue and
attenuation"-or more simply, signal loss-"may not be noticeable in
areas with
stronger signal strength." Consumer
Reports, in a Feb. 25 blog post, reported that it also found the Verizon
iPhone to suffer from attenuation. In a special controlled environment the
consumer watchdog ran a series of tests, mounting the Verizon iPhone 4 on a phone
stand and then placing a finger in a variety of locations around the device. It
did the same thing to five other Verizon smartphones - the Samsung
Fascinate, the Motorola Droid 2 Global, the HTC Droid Incredible, the LG Ally
and the Motorola Droid X.
"The only phones in which the finger contact caused any
meaningful decline in performance was the iPhone 4, the sides of which
comprise
a metal band broken by several thin gaps," states the blog. "As with
our tests
of the AT&T iPhone 4, putting a finger across one particular
[antenna] gap-the one on the lower left side-caused performance to
decline."
Adding that Verizon iPhone 4, like the AT&T iPhone 4,
offers "great multimedia functionality, a sharp screen and the best MP3 player
we've seen on a phone," Consumer Reports said it was nonetheless unable to add
the phone to its list of recommended smartphones.
However, AnandTech,
the analysis group that reportedly first discovered the initial death grip problem
- launching "Antennagate," as Apple CEO Steve Jobs cheekily called it -
says the problem has been addressed, CNN Money
first reported.
AnandTech ran signal attenuation tests on a number of
popular phones. When clutched in the death grip, the AT&T iPhone 4 scored a
rating of 24.6dB to the Verizon iPhone 4's 16.5 (the lower the rating the
better). The BlackBerry Torch, by comparison, scored a 15.9, while the Droid 2
came in at 11.5.
When held naturally, the Nexus S scored a 6.1, the Dell
Streak an 8.7, the Verizon iPhone 4 a 15.5 and the AT&T iPhone 4 a 19.8.
Still, "toss a case on
there, and obviously attenuation is way lower at around 9dB," wrote Anantech's
Brian Klug in a Feb. 13 blog post. "Death grip is essentially mitigated, and
the attenuation when held is now comparable to other smartphones. What we're
measuring, of course, is just the numerical signal strength being reported."
In short, Klug added, "I feel completely confident using the
[Verizon] iPhone 4 without a case, and did so for the duration of all this
testing without once dropping off the network. Getting a case still makes
sense, but using the phone without one is no longer something that will
dramatically affect phone usability."
Death grip or not, Apple sold a record 16.24 million iPhones
- an 86 percent year-over-year growth - during its fiscal quarter that ended
Dec. 25, 2010. Suggesting, perhaps, that it's an issue some people don't mind.
