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Samsung Captivate Death Grip Issue (similar to iPhone 4)

RJA said:
YouTube - Samsung Vibrant ANTENNA ISSUE same as Iphone 4 BUT...... attena does not go all the way down
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The interesting thing in this video is you can tell, and the person even says, that he is gripping the phone quite tightly. When he starts to reproduce the "issue", the whole phone starts to shake from him gripping it tightly, and he even says he is gripping it tightly to try and get the signal to go all the way down.

I don't know about you, but I don't tend to crush my phone when I'm gripping it to make calls, or do anything with it.
 
huskerkurt said:
The interesting thing in this video is you can tell, and the person even says, that he is gripping the phone quite tightly. When he starts to reproduce the "issue", the whole phone starts to shake from him gripping it tightly, and he even says he is gripping it tightly to try and get the signal to go all the way down.

I don't know about you, but I don't tend to crush my phone when I'm gripping it to make calls, or do anything with it.
Click to expand...

Dunno if anyone else noticed, but he also panned away from the speed test meter during the second, attenuated, test. However, you can see the results at the bottom of the video, and the speeds aren't drastically different, so while signal strength suffered, it wasn't nearly as drastic as the iPhone's dropping of calls/data.
 
I can drop one or 2 bars, but I have no signal anyway, so I'm on wi-fi all the time at my house. So...I'm gonna say if you have bad signal it won't take much. If you have good signal, you're good no matter what.
 
KMA said:
Regarding the "other phones" (i.e. Bold 9700 shown), I thought this audience question was interesting:

Q: I can't get my Bold to drop right now, maybe you can show me how to do it?
Steve: You may not see it in certain areas.

Nice...
Click to expand...
The iPhone issue can't be replicated in many areas either. You can only make it happen when the signal is already weak. Same with the Bold, Captivate, Nexus One and many other phones that I've had. With my old RAZR I could only make calls from my room on speakerphone or with a bluetooth headset because holding the phone normally would cause the call to drop.
 
The problem with a test like that, in an uncontrolled environment, it may not be how the phone is being held that's the issue. If I sit my Aria on the floor it drops bars. That doesn't mean the floor discovered a problem with the Aria. If you keep moving the phone around you're going to find dead zones.

Watching a phone drop a bar or two or even three, isn't conclusive evidence. The only thing that matters is a dropped call, which evidence shows has INCREASED with the latest iphone, compared to a later model, and that's confirmed by Jobs.
 
I'm gonna chime in here a bit. I've had the phone for three days now and have noticed that if I'm in a bad service area, like my house, if my hand is covering the bottom part of the phone, the bars (which are already maybe at only two or three) will drop to one or even zero, but there will be no real effect on the speed I'm getting on internet, or any change in actual service (i can still make and receive calls, texts, etc)
I tried this at work today where I get full bars, and there was no change in bars.
I also have yet to experience a dropped call on this phone, which coming from an iphone, having three days without a dropped call is amazing!
 
thanks guys. I got a little worried after that technobufalo vid. Trusted the guy too much.
can't wait till 11am tomorrow!!!
 
The difference remains that with the Androids one has to DEATHGRIP it, with the IPhone 4, you simply have to accidentally touch where the fully exposed, uncoated antenna's separate and voila.

The design might be cutting edge, but the implementation sucked.
 
I have to say, this whole thing is ridiculous. I remember people going crazy on the nexus one forums for google about the death grip issue with that phone when it came out.

The reality is, unless a test is showing the dbs change when holding the phone, it's a worthless test.

The reality is that I haven't had any problems with dropped calls at all on my iPhone 4...and I have absolutely zero worries about that issue when I get my captivate as well. Fanboys and anti fanboys blew it out of proportions on the Nexus one, on the iPhone, and are doing it again with the captivate. It never seems to be real life experience with these things. It's all bout website and youtube hits.

I'm not saying I can't replicate a bit of an issue on my iPhone...I can. It's just no different than issues with other phones I can replicate as well. The funny thing is that the Proximity sensor issue on the iPhone has been a much bigger hassle for me and that gets no play almost.

Don't worry about this issue at all with getting the captivate, it won't bother you I'm sure.:)
 
sorry, meant to also post about that. I've been discussing this in another thread and although I've fought them off the best I could, zombie beers are attacking me against my own will...

No! I have not have problems making calls regardless of displayed signal strength. I've literally only made one call since getting this phone but I purposefully made the phone be at zero bars and was able to make a call without a problem.
 
I just got my Captivate yesterday and have dropped six calls already. I'm not totally sure what's causing it but I have had a treo 650 for years and never had this kind of problem. I like the phone so far but the dropped calls are a real pain. I'm no iSheep, I think the android is a better phone but I am dropping calls.
 
Aerimus said:
The reality is, unless a test is showing the dbs change when holding the phone, it's a worthless test.
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Clearly the db's are dropping when the bars are dropping, its an equal correlation. I was going to do a video of that yesterday but was caught up in work. I was holding the phone like I normally would and the bars would drop from 4 to 1 in a matter of seconds, going from 85db to 101db. When i held the phone on the sides with my fingertips, the bars would snap back up and db's would be at 87 again.

However, I did this same test with my N1 and noticed that with the same amount of bars, I had worse db levels. With 3 bars(N1 only has a max of 4 bars) I was showing 91db and when I picked it up the same way as the captivate, it went to 1 bar and 107db. Holding it on the side with my fingertips helped it go back to 3 bar and 91db.

So, apparently even though bars might be represented equally, signal strength might not be the same when it comes to actual reception quality.

I was dropping and failing calls a lot on my N1 and it prompted me to move to the Captivate because of this. So far I have yet to experience any dropped or failed calls with the Captivate. Although I havent really been in the same areas with my Captivate as I had been with my N1 when I dropped out(which was at my house actually). So my testing will continue.
 
ferrerjo said:
I just got my Captivate yesterday and have dropped six calls already. I'm not totally sure what's causing it but I have had a treo 650 for years and never had this kind of problem. I like the phone so far but the dropped calls are a real pain. I'm no iSheep, I think the android is a better phone but I am dropping calls.
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I'm holding my purchase because the signal drop could also mean signal degradation, GPS, Compass, and Wifi problems.

I'm wondering, do you have one of those AT&T rubber or Clear case?

Damn Samsung! This was supposed to be the perfect phone :(

EDIT: Or maybe test it with a rubber glove or any non-conductive material.

Thanks!
 
I can confirm that the deathgrip kills data on mine. I can do the same thing on the iPhone 4 by touching the seam as well. LOL at the GPS trying to lock the whole time during your wifi test.
 
Yeah I noticed the gps afterwards and was not about to reshoot all the video again. I don't think it affects the tests at all though (hopefully).

Does that animation stop once signal is acquired? I actually haven't tried using GPS much yet. I played with it for a second at my parents today and got a good linkup at first. It thought I was in the side yard instead of in the garage, so I thought that was pretty damn good considering no line of sight. After checking out sattelite and traffic overlays it put me back at my apartment a mile or so down the road. Didn't have time to see if it could resynch.
 
I have a coworker with a Droid. I told him about this so he wrapped his hands around it tightly and dropped bars as well.
 
The iPhone 4 is the only phone that if you press the lower seam with a single finger the data transmission will completely STOP. Yes you can death grip any phone and make it lose signal but for me the signal loss is temporary and the bars go back up (on my new Captivate).
 
Samsung phones are crap as far as making antennae for phones, the Galaxy S isn no different. I can lay mine on the table and watch it go from 5 bars to 1 to 3 to 0 to no service the whole time it is sitting there.
Really hoping it is a software problem. I know it's not a tower problem because there is only one tower anywhere near me.

Don't deny this problem or say it's Apple fanboy'sm. It's quite true.

I do NOT have the GPS problem though. It puts the dot right on my back porch all the time.
 
Baldilocks said:
Samsung phones are crap as far as making antennae for phones, the Galaxy S isn no different. I can lay mine on the table and watch it go from 5 bars to 1 to 3 to 0 to no service the whole time it is sitting there.
Really hoping it is a software problem. I know it's not a tower problem because there is only one tower anywhere near me.

Don't deny this problem or say it's Apple fanboy'sm. It's quite true.

I do NOT have the GPS problem though. It puts the dot right on my back porch all the time.
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As the phone sits there during the no-touch tests, you can see my signal bouncing between 3 and 4 bars just sitting there. I was actually surprised to see it get 4 bars at all.

I also just noticed that during the 3g no-touch test the signal dropped from 4 to 3 bars, yet the speedtest signal increased.

Odd!

And this isn't a pro-iphone thing. I'm going to keep my Captivate (unless the camera starts having problems)

Still, you can't deny that it's a similar problem. They're both guilty of poor engineering.
 
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