Verizon iPhone Also Haunted By the Death Grip

adeelarshad82 writes "Turns out that the Verizon iPhone 4 is also plagued with the same problem as the AT&T version, the 'Death Grip.' This isn't completely surprising since Apple has made no significant changes in the antenna design to warrant a permanent fix. As a result, the 'Death grip' causes a drop in 3G data performance as well as the Wi-Fi performance. What's strange is that the Death Grip gives inconsistent results which is why analysts don't view this as a big problem for Apple, chalking up the news as 'bloggers looking for something to write about.' Analysts also argue that Apple sold millions of AT&T iPhone 4's last year and despite the media-furor, consumers did not line up at Apple Stores demanding refunds."

Comments

This is certainly not news

[AndyAndyAndyAndy]

"This isn't completely surprising since Apple has made no significant changes in the antenna design to warrant a permanent fix."
You know, there's a saying about doing the same thing over and expecting a different result...

Re:This is certainly not news

[jdpars]

The CDMA iPhone actually does have an antenna change, which most of these "OMG VERIZON DEATH GRIP IPHONE" hacks are ignoring. There are two antennas (as is standard in CDMA), one on each side of the phone. To block most of these (and actually drop a call) you have to squeeze pretty hard (and possibly put the phone in a lead box). Getting the bars to decrease and getting a call to end are two entirely different things.

Re:This is certainly not news

[icebike]

Two antennas aren't going to solve the death grip, and CDMA antennas are not much different than 3G/GSM antennas. (And the iPhone always had two antenna halves, one on either side). Antenna length is almost always dictated by frequency in use, and the CDMA bands are pretty close to the 3G bands such that the same antennas can be used for both.

Death grip was caused by human fingers bridging a gap between the 3G antenna and the WIFI antenna, and it could happen with a single finger touching the gap. No actual "Grip" required. The problem was solved with free bumpers, and users learning to avoid touching the gap. See this wired article: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/iphone-its-the-antenna-stupid/

Apple pushed the myth of the death grip, to try to divert attention from their design flaw. It was never about the grip. It was only about bridging that gap. The free bumpers eliminated the problem.

If the Verizon phones lack that gap, then any signal decrease caused by holding it is the same as you see on any other cell phone but don't confuse that the antennagate on the original iphone 4.

Re:This is certainly not news

[XxtraLarGe]

For most people it didn't matter as they were covered or had decent coverage by AT&T.

My workplace bought iPhone 4's for everyone who needed to be on call. When I first got mine, I tried to duplicate the issue and wasn't able to. Neither were my co-workers. Completely covering the phone antenna with my hands may have resulted in a one bar drop. We have O.K. AT&T coverage, but not great. This was much ado about nothing.

Funny

[Dan East]

That's funny, because I was reading the exact opposite today:

"This isn't just a case where Apple took a CDMA chip and slapped it into the iPhone and called it Verizon. They actually redesigned the entire logic board, including the electromagnetic shields," iFixit's M.J. explains in a video for the repair site. "Apple's RF engineering team did a great job at restructuring the antenna, so hopefully we don't have the same death-grip problem that saddled its AT&T brother."

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Verizon-iPhone-4-May-Offer-Hints-at-iPhone-5-iFixit-815631/

Re:Apple users...

[RogerWilco]

It's not just branding, Apple in general makes stuff of very high quality and with a lot of effort in usability design. I've used many computers, laptops, mp3 players and mobile phones over the years. I bought and iPod in 2005, a Macbook Pro in 2007 and an iPhone in 2009. Before that my exposure to Apple had been limited to a couple of times at an aunt who owned one for DTP work. I have used nearly all flavours of Windows and Linux, over 50 different mobile phones (job related), over a dozen PDAs (Palm, WinCE PocketPC, WinMob). Only some stuff from IBM (now Lenovo) comes close in build quality.

I'm not saying it never breaks or doesn't have design flaws sometimes, but in general it's a joy to use Apple products. The interfaces are very intuitive, consistent and a real effort has been made to minimize the effort you have to do to get to your goal. Sometimes at the expense of choice and features. The best example is still that when the iMac came out, it had just USB and Firewire, no Serial or Parallel ports, PS/2 or floppy drive. At the time they were laughed at, peripherals would never use USB and the floppy was essential. I think time proved that they were right.

Since I started buying Apple, my "gadget hunger" has greatly diminished. The only thing I am considering is an iPad and I since bought a NAS for backup purposes. None of the other things I used to look at hold any interest to me any more, it just doesn't compete. The Apple stuff might be a bit on the expensive side, but because it has high end specs when new, they last very long, especially because Apple keeps providing software updates. My 4 year old Macbook is still fine, it's only got updated to OSX 10.6 from 10.4 for 29 euros. All the updates to my iPhone 3GS have been free. Between those two devices there isn't a single thing that I can't do, but want to do.

I know that I'm sounding a bit like a fanboy, and maybe I am, but that's especially because I have used so many other devices from other manufacturers and none have given me as few reasons to want to throw it out the window as the Apple products I have.