Antennagate on iPhone 4
When the iPhone 4 was announced I (like pretty much everyone else) couldn’t wait to get my hands on one, until one day the news hit that there was an issue with the antenna. I’ll admit I was worried, what would i do now? Would this affect me? And then after reading about it for months and seeing Steve Jobs’ response I settled down and decide it probably wasn’t going to be an issue. I won’t go into all the details of AntennaGate but just in case you’ve been on holiday to the moon or mars for the past few months and haven’t heard about it then have a read here.
I thought I’d show you how the antenna issue may affect you if you are here in New Zealand (well, Christchurch anyway). Hit the ‘read more’ for the video of the ‘Death Grip’ in action.
The Death Grip!
As I have said before, and as I say in the video below, my belief is that it is a non-issue unless it affects you during day-to-day use of your iPhone. Apple have offered a fix (that works) at no cost to you, and have even offered your money back if you really can’t live with it. They’ve really put their money where their mouth is and you can’t fault them for that.
Yes, I can make it happen, and yes the signal does drop, but at no stage have I managed to get ‘No Service’ to show and at no stage during normal use has it affected me.
So: on to the video. The video was shot in a Christchurch suburb where I normally get 4 or 5 bars on XT, 4 bars on 2degrees and 3 bars on Vodafone. You will see the signal drop on all of the carriers but as I say at no stage could I get ‘No Service’ to show.
To sum up, if you are getting an iPhone 4 you need to be aware that this could happen to you. But you also need to know not to worry about it. If it has a real affect on you, get a bumper or case or, as ridiculous as Steve Jobs may have sounded, simply don’t hold the phone that way for extended periods. And if it really is an issue which you can’t bare, and don’t want to resolve with your free case then you will have 30 days to return it to Apple.
If you’ve already got your iPhone 4 why not share you experience with others in the comments below, after all you know it was the first thing you tried to replicate when you got it 
I’ve not been a fan of clip on cases so was concerned about upgrading from my 3GS to the 4 so I did alot of research and found an article that implied that the 3GS may also have had a similar issue. After suffering a case of buyers remorse, I took my 4G out of the box and set it up. Service where I live is at at the best of times, questionable so I shouldn’t have been disappointed to see the service drop on the 4G with the death grip. This issue of course didn’t put me in the best of mood so I reverted straight away back to my 3GS and noticed later that evening, whilst holding my 3GS using the very same death grip, that the I lost the same number of bars as I did on the 4G. I don’t know about anyone else but have you actually tried talking on the phone with hand held death grip position? It’s a rather unnatural position to be in so as Steve said, hold the phone a different way and you’ll have no problems!
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