During their press conference on Friday, Apple made the case that the so-called “death grip” isn’t unique to the iPhone 4. In fact, they showed the same symptoms on three other phones: the HTC Droid Eris, the Samsung Omnia 2, and the BlackBerry Bold 9700. Apple also created a website to show how the death grip affects each phone (and their own iPhone 3GS as well). Not surprisingly, none of those other companies liked that too much. Of them, RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, was the most vocal.
“Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable,” a statement released by the company reads. “RIM is a global leader in antenna design and has been successfully designing industry-leading wireless data products with efficient and effective radio performance for over 20 years. During that time, RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage,” the statement continued.
And yet some videos posted yesterday of the not-yet-released BlackBerry 9800 appear to show the same attenuation problem. Or at least, they did until they were removed following an electronista post pointing that out.
Officially, the videos were removed due to a “terms of use violation.” But what’s odd is that RIM didn’t seem to care too much about them when they were originally posted on this site simply giving an overview of the new device and OS. Also odd is that many other videos of the 9800 still are alive and well on YouTube. Again, it’s just the videos that show attenuation which were removed after a blog post pointed that out.
Videos of the Droid Incredible, the Nexus One, the Palm Pre, and various other smartphones all showing attenuation remain up on YouTube. Of course, all those products are also released already.
I just find it amusing that “attenuation” has now entered regular geek lexicon.