New BlackBerry Smartphones to Come with External Antenna?

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This definitely goes for the rumor of the week since it’s a very interesting idea for upcoming BlackBerry smartphones. Not to mention the irony of it all! It looks like, for some reason, RIM is interested in placing an external antenna on future BlackBerry handsets.

That’s a very daring thing to do especially considering what external antennas mean for us, at least right now: Death Grips. Apple introduced the concept, partially forced by AT&T’s poor network performance in metropolitan areas, to improve signal reception for the iPhone 4. What was seen as a brilliant design came down crashing Apple’s hopes and dreams. The placement of the antenna caused the now-famous Death Grips that severely affected the iPhone 4 from day one.

Apple failed to admit that this design problem was to blame for the whole Antennagate scandal, and that’s a stain on Apple’s image if you ask me. But that doesn’t mean that Apple will quit making iPhones with external antennas and it doesn’t mean the overall design can’t be improved.

The question is, why does RIM want such an antenna? Can it come up with a better design than Apple? The image above isn’t that revealing since the hole in that black band there is showing actually an internal antenna, doesn’t it? Make sure you grab a couple of pinches of salt with this rumor as there’s no way we can confirm any of it so far. What’s interesting though is that customers haven’t exactly complained about signal issues with any BlackBerry devices so far. In fact RIM has defended its devices from Apple attacks just a while ago, as Steve Jobs pointed out that other devices also suffer from signal attenuation problems.

So let’s hear it from BlackBerry owners! How is your smartphone treating you when it comes to signal reception? Did you notice any problems that could be fixed by a simple design change, say, an external antenna?