iPhone 4 "death grip" bug is much ado about nothing

A small number of customers of Apple's new iPhone 4 have found a bug in the devices. These customers' phones lose signal strength when the customers hold the phone in their left hands. This is not a big deal. But if you listen to some Apple critics complain, you'd think Steve Jobs ate a baby on live TV.

Soon after the iPhone 4 became available, customers began reporting a peculiar problem: If they hold the phone in such a way that their left hand touches the lower-left corner of the device, the phone loses signal strength.

The problem is the phone antennas are a band around the perimeter of the device. There's a break in the antennas in the lower left corner; bridging that gap with your hand changes the properties of the antennas and disrupts reception, especially if your hand is sweaty.

The blog Gizmodo gave the "death grip" story wide distribution when it covered the issue Thursday, the day the iPhones went on sale. That story is bylined by Jason Chen, whose home was raided by police in April when he got his hands on a leaked iPhone prototype. The cops knocked down Chen's door. So Chen and Gizmodo can hardly be said to be an unbiased Apple observer.

My colleague Jonny Evans says the iPhone 4 calling bug is a huge deal, Apple faces a "gigantic black mark" if it doesn't fix the problem right away.

Easy fix

But in reality, this really isn't a big deal at all. As one, anonymous Computerworld reader put it: "It doesn't look like much of a problem to me -- kind of like having a volume control on the phone that you might accidentally turn down."

There's an easy fix: Apple recommends affected users simply shouldn't hold the phone the wrong way, or they should buy a case -- Apple sells an iPhone case that will put a "bumper" around the edge of your phone, for $29.

Every phone I've ever owned, iPhone and otherwise, has had its little weird quirks. When I'm using my current iPhone 3G in speaker mode, I find my grip naturally tends to cover the microphone, which means the person I'm calling can't hear me. A couple of hangups from other people cured me of that habit.

And this problem doesn't seem to affect many people. We won't know for sure until the first customer satisfaction surveys come in from third-parties, and until we see long-term sales figures from Apple. But based on early reviews, it appears the iPhone 4's call quality doesn't seem to be worse than previous models -- it actually seems to be better.

For example, Computerworld reviewer Michael deAgonia says his iPhone is unaffected by the issue. Network speeds are the same as earlier models, and he's seeing improved service, with areas that were formerly dead spots now delivering working phone service. My friend Eric Zeman at InformationWeek says "In the 30 or so hours that I've been testing the iPhone 4, I haven't dropped a single call."

"Better bandwidth"

Similarly, TechRepublic's Jason Hiner writes: "I have not been able to replicate the antenna problems that have been reported. In fact, in my first two days of using the iPhone 4 I’ve had a shocking discovery: It is giving me far better bandwidth on the AT&T 3G network."

That seems to be the consensus of reviewers: Some of them are able to reproduce the Death Grip problem, others aren't, but all of them agree that iPhone 4 is a better phone than its predecessors. That's even true of Gizmodo editor Brian Lam, who told the New York Times that for years he was unable to use older iPhones to make calls from his home. "That changed on Thursday, after he bought an iPhone 4. 'I have made three hours of calls today,' he said."

Apple quite simply doesn't have a major technology problem with the Death Grip bug. What it has is a public relations and marketing problem. This bug is being perceived as major when it really isn't.

Why? Part of the reason is because Apple is a PR and marketing one-trick pony. They rely on advertising, rumors and cryptic notes from Steve Jobs e-mailed directly to customers to get the message out. This works extremely well for them when they're riding a wave of success, as they have been for the past decade. But when bloggers and journalists turn on them, they have no way to counter the problem, because they don't talk to bloggers and journalists, except for a chosen few.

I am not one of the chose few journalists whom Apple regularly communicates with, so I'm enjoying Apple's suffering all the fake rumors about a major flaw with the iPhone 4.

Except, of course, they're not really suffering. Apple sold 1.7 million in the first three days of availability, making it the most successful launch in Apple's history. The iPhone 4 is sold out. Like Liberace said: Apple is crying all the way to the bank.

Mitch Wagner is a freelance technology journalist and social media strategist.