@DeRSSS
basically no smartphone is safe from "death grip" problem since hands are not "radio transparent".
ALL other phones are safe from the "death grip" because the "death grip" never had anything whatsoever to do with radio transparency of hands. That is a completely different issue which can affect all phones. That was a red cape in the hands of an expert matador.
The "death grip" is, so far as I know, unique to the iPhone in the entire history of radio electronics. Because engineers have always known that the human body is conductive and can thus interfere if it touches bare metal antennas. So nobody but Apple ever made an antenna that was part of the handle. Anyone who grew up adjusting rabbit ears instinctively knew this by about age four.
And yes it depends on a lot of factors as to how much of an effect there will be, but the overall result is to, on average, lower the range of the phone. It was a deliberate choice for pretty over functional.
Since it is always the carriers that get blamed for reception issues Apple has had little incentive to put a lot of worry into this. I've had friends making calls from the same room I was in on the same carrier I was on while my $20 nokia was flawless. And they still blamed AT&T. After I pointed this fact out.
Everyone I know puts a case on the thing anyway, whether it was a freebie or not, so the low takeup on the case means little. Everyone had one in mind, like Otterbox already, even for the relatively few that follow tech enough to have heard of the antenna issue.
Apple also put out a "patch" which hid the effect in software so the only way to really test would have been in an area with weak signal strength. If you are in an area of strong signal strength anyway, the software would hide the effect and you could still talk fine anyway.
But keep goring that red cape.
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