Apple just can’t get a break. Consumer Reports is, well, reporting that in their testing scenarios the Verizon iPhone 4 has the same “death grip” attenuation issues as the AT&T/GSM model.
Just as with the previous model, the Verizon iPhone 4 suffers from the same conductive gap issues and the problems manifest when you touch the small spot between the two pieces of metal cladding.
This means you’ll probably have to put your iPhone in a case and clearly the issue isn’t stopping the iPhone 4 from still selling like crazy.
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1
With the iPhone 4, we placed a finger in contact with the lower-left-side gap. Reception typically dropped notably within 15 seconds or so of the gap being bridged. The iPhone eventually dropped calls when touched at very low signal strength—that is, at levels of around one bar in the phone’s signal-strength meter.