Fact: Almost everything suffers from the Death Grip


Eric Zeman at Informationweek notes that the Galaxy S line of Samsung smartphones, including the Vibrant and the Captivate suffer from the Death Grip – essentially a massive loss of signal strength when the phone is held “wrong.” The same thing happens on the Kin and any number of phones out there. The only difference is the way you hold it.

In short, Eric confirms the obvious: phones are imperfect and their transmission characteristics change based on a number of unrelated yet important factors including, but not limited to, the way you hold the phone. Is Eric lauded for pointing this out? Nope. In the comments he gets stuff like:

Boy, for the most part I have to agree with everyone. Eric, your reporting is shoddy and your credibility is shot for future articles no matter how improved they may be.
Let’s get some perspective on why Apple has caused their own problems and provoke the attacks on them.
1) Apple released the iPhone 4 too early to avoid losing market share to the Evo & Droid X. They sacrificed further QA testing and development in the process.
2) Apple is like the teen queen snooty high schooler how feels and acts like she is better than everyone else. Consequently when she trips in the lunch room or walks out of the bathroom with toilet paper trailing people get a good laugh at her expense. Why, she provoked the animosity.

While I agree that the Death Grip problem is a problem, it’s not a huge problem. It’s only become a huge problem because millions of people are obsessively fondling their iPhones this month and noticing every little thing while perhaps 100,000 people in the US are fondling their Galaxy S phones, if that. The problem, then, is in perception. This schadenfreude is, while misplaced, highly apt and Apple is apparently trying to remedy it as we speak. Will they succeed? We shall see.