Antenna issues haunt iPhone 4’s Asia release

Apple’s upcoming iPhone has received considerable negative press about antenna and signal issues.  CNET Asia put it to the test and finds that the so-called ‘grip of death’, which lowers mobile signal strength, occurs in the device running a Starhub (Singapore) SIM card.

Results in the video below.

 

 

From the CNET post:

The external antenna on this mobile phone has been getting a lot of attention because you can apparently cause the signal strength to drop drastically just by holding it a certain way. We tried this when standing outdoors and weren’t able to reproduce the drop in signal bars. However, we redid the test indoors and, sure enough, we noticed the bars dropping once we put the iPhone in the “death grip”. 

Apple is preparing a software “fix” that will change the way this smartphone reports signal strength, but this won’t do anything for the antenna as that’s obviously a hardware issue. Still, we don’t know if Apple will tweak the hardware in future batches of the iPhone 4 (perhaps coat the antenna with plastic?) so that users cannot come into direct contact with the metal part to cause interference. 

It seems likely this issue will continue to run and run though most consumers in Asia seem as keen on the device as ever despite this issue.