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Is the iPhone4 death grip only in the USA?

prvt.donut

prvt.donut

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 1, 2008
525
26
I live in Japan and I have an iPhone 4, as do 3 of my friends, and none of us can reproduce this problem. We have never had dropped calls and are mystified at what we read in the blogs each day!

So I am thinking that Apple is correct and that maybe it's the awful service your provider gives you that is at fault.
 
prvt.donut said:
I live in Japan and I have an iPhone 4, as do 3 of my friends, and none of us can reproduce this problem. We have never had dropped calls and are mystified at what we read in the blogs each day!

So I am thinking that Apple is correct and that maybe it's the awful service your provider gives you that is at fault.
Click to expand...

Nope worldwide.
 
prvt.donut said:
So why is everyone I know here in Japan with an iPhone4 not having a problem?
Click to expand...

Your service is probably strong enough that the death grip doesn't drop the signal below 4 or 5 bars anyway. When I'm in my office I can't replicate the issue either. When I get home I can. It all depends on the signal strength where you are.
 
prvt.donut said:
We have never had dropped calls
Click to expand...

The way you naturally hold your phone is irrelevant. I've never had a dropped call, but the death grip kills my signal - I'm in the UK. Experiencing the issue, and the existence of the issue are separate things.

I'm quite sure that every service provider across the globe isn't at fault (apparently besides your particular Japanese one). Why anyone would even seriously suggest that is beyond me.
 
I ask the question because there is so much anger at Apple, but we have no problems, even when trying to recreate it. And Softbank is not the best signal company in Japan.
 
prvt.donut said:
I ask the question because there is so much anger at Apple, but we have no problems, even when trying to recreate it. And Softbank is not the best signal company in Japan.
Click to expand...

Maybe it only affects English speaking countries.
 
I too live in the UK. I managed to replicate the 'death grip', but to do so had to hold the phone so tightly in my left hand, with the thickest part of my palm (at the very base of my thumb) completely cupping the 'black strip'. I reckon I was probably near to shattering the screen, I had to hold it so tight! ;)

In normal, every day use, I have yet to drop a call or notice any decrease in call quality (or the ability to complete a call) over my previous 3Gs. Ditto several folks at work that I have talked to about this so far who also have the iP4.

I'm not doubting the problem exists in the UK too, but here in a relatively low signal area, I've yet to meet a person who has anything bad to say about iP4 ....
 
CXsjr said:
I too live in the UK. I managed to replicate the 'death grip', but to do so had to hold the phone so tightly in my left hand, with the thickest part of my palm (at the very base of my thumb) completely cupping the 'black strip'. I reckon I was probably near to shattering the screen, I had to hold it so tight! ;)

In normal, every day use, I have yet to drop a call or notice any decrease in call quality (or the ability to complete a call) over my previous 3Gs. Ditto several folks at work that I have talked to about this so far who also have the iP4.

I'm not doubting the problem exists in the UK too, but here in a relatively low signal area, I've yet to meet a person who has anything bad to say about iP4 ....
Click to expand...

This is what happens when I lightly grip mine and bridge the antennae...

photo 1.PNG photo 2.PNG

It's a low signal area but the drop is quite dramatic.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A306 Safari/6531.22.7)

Maybe what qualifies as a not-great signal in Japan is still good enough to not show the problem. Your cell networks are better than those in the US by a good bit.
 
It's all about signal strength - Japan has one of the best (if not the best) 3G networks in the work. The US has an extremely poor infrastructure, and the UK sits between the two.

It also depends on the frequency at which the carrier's service resonates at - the same unlocked iPhone here (in the UK) drops like crazy with an O2 SIM in, but nowhere near as bad with a Vodafone SIM inside. It also depends on your location from a cell, how many other users are connected to that cell, any nearby extra interference, the type of cell (macro/micro/pico etc..) and how much power that cell has set to maintaining connections to its users.

Under optimal conditions (or a threshold of), you won't see a drop. This more than adequately covers the number of reports of no signal issues. The hardware is the same by default of the antenna.

Also, the bumper does not fix the issue, only helps it: the problem is not a physical connection between the two antenna bands, it's disrupting the antenna's apex point by a dense material. 3G signal is high frequency, so this is why it's affected more by your fleshy palm than 2G or Edge.

I don't claim to know the answers to everything, but I'm actually a network engineer for a carrier here in the UK, so it's sorta my job to know as much as I can about it (feel free to roll your eyes). I'm still interested in what Apple have to say today.
 
Its because generally speaking, America's data coverage network is in the stone ages, along with our power distribution grid.
 
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