AnandTech research shows Verizon iPhone 4 'death grip' reports are overblown

And common sense, and basic research and understanding of statistics, has long show that ALL iPhone 'death grip' reports are overblown.

Unless, of course, you accept that the millions (literally, millions) of iPhone4 purchasers who live in marginal signal areas willingly retained a phone that would (if the reports were to be believed) hardly ever operate, and never once complain to Apple or AT&T about it.

And if you believe that, I have a catalogue of historical buildings I'd like to sell to you.

@mike
It's the fact that your body picks up the electrical energy (if you make a devent enough conductor) or is in the way transmission.
Radio waves are partially absorbed by objects they travel through.

I really don't think the "death grip" is an issue.
I've had far more calls dropped while the thing is sitting in the passenger seat on Bluetooth than while holding it. 5 or 4 bars of strength, but still fail. It's probably network congestion or a buggy tower passing algorithm.

I think all of this data is extremely misleading.
First of all, the iPhone 4's external antenna has much BETTER reception than the 3GS and other internal antenna phones. Measuring the signal loss by putting stuff (your hand) between the antenna and the receiver means nothing if you don't take into account the original reception quality.
We all know the iPhone 4 has much better reception than the 3G/3GS; ask anyone who has owned both devises.
Of course the signal loss of putting your hand in front of something is going to be less if it had poor signal strength to begin with.
Difference between hand in the way & transmitting through free space > difference between hand + plastic in the way & just plastic in the way. Duh.
The 3GS's "good" signal loss scores are proof that this analysis is flawed because the 3GS (and likely other phones with "good" scores) had poor signal quality to begin with. Hence Apple's whole push for the external antenna in the first place!

Death grips wouldn't be a problem if we just let Verizon and AT&T merge into one company and blanket this great land with 3 - 5 bar service everywhere. I miss the days of natural monopolies. =)

I don't know what causes the signal drop, but a lot of reports speculated that bridging the black line would somehow short over the two pieces of the antenna. I used an ohm meter on mine and found it already to be almost a short so whatever it is, it isn't shorting across conductors.

Actually, according to the data, no it doesn't. Chris has his facts here correct.

Consumer Reports is wrong in this instance, and it does not reflect well on their magazine that they're persisting in this.

AnandTech has published their data - where is CR's?

FFS stop talking about the "GSM version". GSM is only the fallback. The correct term when describing the AT&T version of the iPhone is UMTS. Seen this ever too often in the last weeks.

I got an iPhone 4 three months ago and had death grip problems until I got a case for it. If I use my phone sans case, it constantly drops me from the network unless I hold it with my fingertips only. And it stinks because I really like the look and feel of the phone without the case. But the death grip is absolutely a problem with the iPhone 4. Otherwise it is awesome.