Verizon iPhone reportedly unaffected by "death grip" issue

After getting their hands on the Verizon iPhone at yesterday's press event, several people have noted that it seems unaffected by the "death grip" phenomena that troubled iPhone 4 users last year.

First up, Ars Technica's Chris Foresman noted that gripping the phone by its edges did not cause any CDMA signal reception attenuation, even during a call. Slashgear's Evan Sellek reported a loss of one bar while bridging the antenna gap (from four out of five to three out of five), noting that, "...we still couldn't reproduce the 'death grip' symptoms that plagued the initial launch of the iPhone 4 ... it looks like Verizon's confidence in the iPhone 4 on their network seems to be pretty sound." Finally, PCMag's Sascha Segan managed to bridge all four gaps -- an uncommon way to hold an iPhone for sure -- and only lost a single bar.

We noticed right away that the antenna had been redesigned for Verizon, with the notches shuffling about a bit. Sure, you'll need a new case, but that's a small concession to make for a phone that can actually place and receive phone calls.