Unless you were in a coma (and if you were, we hope you're feeling better now), you'll recall that last month the media and consumer ballyhoo surrounding the iPhone 4's antenna woes came to a head. At the heart of the issue was the fact that if users held the smartphone in a certain manner that's now come to be affectionately known as the Death Grip, the phone would lose a significant amount of signal reception due to a design flaw. In a now legendary email, Steve Jobs suggested that users simply not hold their phones "that way." Well, if dropped calls and lousy connections weren't reason enough to consider doing just that, an Israeli software company has another you can add to the list: Holding your device in a death grip increases the handset's radiation level.
According to Tawkon, when someone holds their handset in a death-grip-like fashion, the phone's firmware struggles to maintain the cellular connection by upping the amount of power it uses, and in turn, upping the amount of RF radiation it emits. This phenomenon isn't exclusive to the iPhone 4, however. All cellular phones are guilty of doing so.
Yikes.
What's all of this RF radiation doing to us? No one seems to be able to agree. With this being the case, it might well be best to handle that handset all gentle-like for the time being.
