I’m overly bored with antennagate to start with but these response videos are annoying me. Yes, I could not watch them but the tech dude deep inside, well…maybe not that deep, is interested in the technology aspect of it. What annoys me is when someone shows the now infamous “death grip” but they are showing the “grip” in a not so normal way. On Twitter I mentioned it looked like they were getting ready to “throw a rock” and after watching a few more…I still feel this way.

I think what bothers me most is folks like @gruber are eating this up and using it as a bullet point to say “see…Apple was right, others suck too” but they are only half-right. Apple was correct about other devices, the industry knows this, but the iPhone is by far worse at exposing the fault.

Just watch some of these videos:

• Droid Incredible Antennagate
  (who holds their phone at the bottom that tightly?)
• Palm Pre Death Grip Attenuation OMG
  (admittedly held it wrong to force the issue but didn’t mention it in the video…just in the comments; pfft!)
• iPhone Death Grip Tested on 7 New Handsets
  (ridiculous grip on some of these phones; he at least seemed objective though; Evo  4G, which is what I have, passed with flying colors, lol)

Notice how they have to hold the device to make it happen. People…this is not the same thing as the iPhone 4 where you can use 1 finger to destroy your call quality.

The point is…Apple blew it. No matter how many crappy videos show other devices with “death grip” problems…the iPhone 4, as Jobs stated, put a big X on it to which they can’t take away a free bumper will take away. I’m pleased with Apple’s response (free bumpers; not just us…everyone) as a business person. I thought they did a great job of deflecting but the issue still stands.

Either way Apple will continue to make boat loads of dough but I am willing to bet Apple makes significant changes in the antenna design next year. To save face, I bet the overall structure is exactly the same but they do something to prevent attenuation when held the “right way” this time (different external material around it?).