RIM, Nokia, and HTC Defend Against Apple's Antenna Claims

From PC World: Apple CEO Steve Jobs' claim that most smartphones have antenna weak spots has come under fire from BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM), Nokia, and HTC. Apple highlighted at a press event on Friday phones from the three manufacturers as having antenna problems as well, in a bid to address the debate around the iPhone 4 antenna issues, also known as the ‘death grip'.

Following the widely-reported press event on Friday, Apple posted on its website videos showing five modern smartphones suffering from various death grips, or, as Apple calls it, ‘attenuation'. The phones in question, an iPhone 4, a BlackBerry Bold 9700, an HTC Droid Eris, a Samsung Omnia II, and an iPhone 3GS, are all shown losing signal when held in a certain way.

Nokia, whose phones weren't showcased in Apple's attenuation demonstrations, also took offense. "Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying how people hold their phones and allows for this in designs, for example by having antennas both at the top and bottom of the phone and by careful selection of materials and their use in the mechanical design," said the Finnish phone maker, who is the world's largest cell phone manufacturer.

HTC also countered Apple's claims that the HTC Droid Eris suffers from the death grip. The Taiwanese manufacturer said that only 0.016 percent of calls to Droid Eris technical support were related to reception issue, compared to Apple's 0.55 percent for the iPhone 4. Verizon of HTC did not disclose how many Driod Eris devices were sold, but the numbers are said to be nowhere near the 3 million mark Apple reached with the iPhone 4 so far.

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