How users of some smart phones grip their gadgets can indeed lead to dropped calls — and, at least in a lab setting, placing an Apple-style plastic bumper between the antenna and thumb failed to fix the problem, according to new research on the so-called “grip of death” and potential fixes.
The antenna problem was widely reported among users of Apple’s iPhone 4 last June, which prompted Mark Beach and colleagues at the University of Bristol’s Center for Communications Research to revisit and update data collected in 2005 using a personal digital assistant with a new round of tests on a smart phone prototype.