Death Grip Tested On iPhone Competitors

adeelarshad82 writes "Given Steve Jobs' recent claims about 'Death Grip' being a common problem among smart phones, PCMag tested out six major iPhone competitors to see how they would react to the grip. The test included Motorola Droid X, T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide, Droid Incredible by HTC, BlackBerry Bold 9650, and the Samsung Captivate. The signal strength was measured in dBm, which typically ranges between -50 to -110 dBm (numbers closer to zero show better signal). Interestingly, the test results video showed mixed results. T-Mobile myTouch 3G and Samsung Captivate showed drastic changes, dropping down to -89 and -97 dBm respectively. On the other hand, while the signal strength dropped for HTC Droid Incredible, Motorola Droid X and Blackberry Bold, it wasn't as severe. Results of testing showed that not all phones reacted the same way to the typical death grip and required variations of it to bring about results."

Comments

Re:Fascinating Conclusions

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea. Even though the iPhone has a vibrate mode, it just doesn't have the right shape.

Re:What does this mean:

[ArsonSmith]

Obviously, they meant that the death gripping in one hand it was ok, but on the other hand it dropped, but not as severe as the first. Sort of a six in one hand and 2 dozen in the other. A phone in the hand has the DBm of two in the bush. iPhone there for iAm.

Re:Both hands??

[Monkeedude1212]

I don't like to look at my HTC with Win-Mobile on it - so I use both hands so I don't have to look at it, or if my gaze somehow crosses that plane, it is at least a little obscured by my hand.

Re:What the!?

[ArsonSmith]

It's not a question of where he grips it. It's a simple question of attenuation ratios.

Re:How many of them have bare metal antennas?

[BondGamer]

I could stick my hand in a blender and have my fingers it chopped off. There are no excuses for this defect.

Death Grip = Force choke?

[zill]

You may have joined the dark side and control an entire evil empire, Mr. Jobs, but you are not a Sith Lord ... yet.

Re:What does this mean:

[phoenixwade]

A phone in the hand has the DBm of two in the bush. iPhone there for iAm.

None of the phones cited were designed to be stuck in your bush.

Re:What does this mean:

[mangu]

None of the phones cited were designed to be stuck in your bush.

I have a friend who worked in the emergency department in a hospital and she told me there had been cases of women who came in with phones stuck in there.

Apparently the "vibra phone" feature has more uses than one imagines at first.
 

Re:If everyone jumped off a bridge...

[E IS mC(Square)]

TLDR - but looks like a fanboi-fart to me.

Re:How many of them have bare metal antennas?

[nine-times]

Well there are more problems than those two. There's:

• An apparent design flaw that makes the phone lose reception under certain circumstances
• The fact that all cell phones can lose reception due to hand placement, which varies by design and how you hold the phone
• The myriad of Apple haters who will jump on any possible angle to talk about how evil Apple is, how crappy Apple products are, how superior Apple's competitors are, how the only reason to buy Apple stuff is if you're a retarded hipster that drank the kool-aid.
• The massive number of whiney-bitch Apple customers who get upset that their Apple device is capable of being scratched, does not have a battery with infinite capacity, does not grant super-powers, and does not have [insert illogical feature here].
• The Apple faithful who would not say a single bad thing about their iPhone under any circumstances. If iPhones started exploding in people's hands, these people would say, "Well I'm actually glad it's doing that. It's saving me the trouble of having to cut my hand off later in preparation for the new Apple's new bionic iHand. I heard a rumor Apple would be releasing bionic prostheses next fall."

As someone sitting on the sidelines, I don't know how to sort it all out. How much of this problem is caused by the apparent design flaw? No point in answering that question-- I won't trust you.

Re:What the!?

[SETIGuy]

All the iPhones on the planet don't stop working when Apple releases a new one.

You'd never know from the users. I'm tiling my bathroom with 3g's.

Re:What does this mean:

[MyLongNickName]

Then what is vibrate mode for?

Re:Death Grip??

[mjwx]

I think the Death Grip is referring to the relationship between Steve and the Fan-boys..

Steve: "you have failed me for the last time"

Steve holds out hand

Fanboy: *hurk*

Re:How many of them have bare metal antennas?

[Anonymous Coward]

. Apple decided to make external, conductive antennas on the body of a portable device. This, by any measure, is fucking retarded.

I hope you have enjoyed your brief visit to the world of physics! If you would like to know more, you can go fuck yourself.

See, that's how to teach Physics!!

Re:Dropped calls

[kumanopuusan]

Saying the Iphone4 is better then it's predicessors is like saying the DDR (West Germany) was better then the Soviet Union. Technically it's true but that doesn't make the DDR a nice place to live.

If West Germany was that bad, I don't even want to know what East Germany was like.

Re:If everyone jumped off a bridge...

[Em Ellel]

Reading omprehension fail! Did I say no other phone drops bars AT ALL?

Only iphone loses signal so much as to drop calls.

Go on - try spinning it again.

This is absolute crap argument, death grip does not cause iPhone to drop calls, it is fully capable of dropping calls without it.