After hearing all about the “Grip of Death” associated with iPhone 4 and its ability to bring network signals and download speeds to their knees, and ultimately inspired by Marco Arment’s own testing, I decided I’d try it out myself. Rather than seeing slower download speeds, mine seem to get faster when covering the antenna gap.

A few points:

• Clear’s wifi is at times awesome and at times horrible. It was horrible tonight.
• In my particular environment, the “Grip of Death” appears to be quite invigorating for my download speeds despite a one-bar drop in signal. The average DL speed was virtually unchanged from when it was sitting there untouched.
• It looks like the worst thing I can do is a) use my home wifi, or b) hold my phone other than how I would normally hold it.
• I am an antenna.
• While writing this post, I noticed my bars alternate between two and five simply due to AT&T’s network peculiarities. I wonder to what extent this GoD problem is exaggerated simply because of signal strength variations that happen on their own.