Video: iPhone 4 Death Grip / Antenna Reception Issue Recorded in Apple Opera Store (Paris, France)

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Yesterday I showed you a “hands-on” presentation of the Apple Opera Store in Paris, but that’s not the only thing I recorded there using one of those new hot iPhone 4 units available on display. Today we have a video for you showing what happens when you hold it wrong in an actual Apple Store.

I was very interested to see how an official iPhone 4 unit in France will deal with the Death Grip, Apple’s most problematic issue right now. As you already know Apple was scheduled to make some sort of announcement today regarding the new iPhone’s antenna reception issue, and by know all iPhone 4 users know what is and what isn’t coming to them.

Using the brand new iPhone 4 on display in the store I quickly captured a fast video of a different iPhone 4 unit, also on display, as it was losing those signal bars. I’ll have to say here that the iPhone 4’s recording features are quite impressive, and after recording the 3-minute video you see above, I was able to either upload it to YouTube, directly, or email it to myself in order to edit it later. Needless to say that without these sort of features I wouldn’t have been able to replicate the error on video for you guys, which is kind of ironic if you think about it. Add to that some iMovie magic, and you end up with a video made thanks to Apple’s out-of-the-box ideas that actually shows how such an out-of-the-box design concept (external iPhone 4 antenna) isn’t working as one would expect.

You’ll notice how the iPhone 4 unit in the video loses bars the longer I hold it in my left hand. And if you check the time, even if blurry from lack of proper focus, you’ll notice that the whole thing goes down pretty fast. Even if the iPhone 4 camera takes it time focusing, and even if I have to slightly move around to avoid light reflection, you can clearly see the iPhone 4 losing bars in a matter of minutes. The iPhone 4 is available for free in France, as you already know, but these units are clearly working on Orange France. But the video goes to prove that no matter what carrier you’d be switching to, the iPhone 4 is still likely to lose reception when held in the wrong way. And no, it’s not only a U.S.-based problem as it has been suggested on various occasions, check out the screenshot below, courtesy of Ars Technica, in which you’ll read: “This antennagate thing is predominantly a US thing”:

After the signal dropped, I decided to place the unit on the demo table, and, surprise-surprise, the bars went up again at least until I placed just the index finger on both antennas. Guess what happened next? The signal went down again as fast as they went back up.

Sure, the new iOS 4 update will probably let the iPhone 4 show the appropriate number of bars, but that doesn’t mean the antenna reception issue goes away with a software update.

What’s more interesting is that I was able to replicate the problem in an Apple store. A few days ago we told you how some people said that Apple has quietly started to replace some units out there with brand new handsets coming out of the factory with a proper coating on top of the antennas. Well it doesn’t look like this brand new Apple Store in Paris, France, has received any of those units yet. It would be really annoying for an Apple employee there to explain to a customer all the magical things the new iPhone 4 can do, only to discover that holding it wrong, in the Apple Store, will render the device useless when it comes to making calls, sending text messages or browsing the web.

You’ll also notice in the picture above that not only was I able to replicate the antenna issue on the phone in the video, but I also did that with the iPhone 4 that recorded the whole thing, while I was emailing the different parts of the video. So yeah, this is an annoying matter, and we have already told you what Cupertino is going to do about it.

Have you replicated this problem in any other market? Tell us your story!