Wave goodbye to the smartphone death grip

Wave goodbye to the smartphone death grip

A lot can be said about the way you hold your phone, and the level of signal you receive is just one of those things. Remember Antennagate on the iPhone 4? Hold your phone the wrong way and you may see your signal suffer, but thankfully, help is at hand.

Qualcomm has created a technology it claims will "put an end to the smartphone death grip" - ensuring your signal doesn't suddenly disappear as soon as you pick the handset up to take a call.

It's built TruSignal Antenna Boost into its new Snapdragon 820 chip, allowing your smartphone to automatically adapt its antenna settings to ensure a solid connection.

Hold me

Poor signal makes your phone work harder as it tries to hold the connection, which eats into battery life, degrades call quality and can harm data performance.

With Antenna Boost, the phone doesn't actually work any harder. Instead, it just changes the way the antennas receive signal, allowing you to maintain a strong connection.

This in turn ensures audio quality on calls is top notch and data connections remain speedy, and Qualcomm reckons it can save users around an hour of battery life every day.

The first Snapdragon 820-toting smartphones are due to launch in the first quarter of 2016, so there's not too long to wait.

John McCann
Global Managing Editor

John joined TechRadar over a decade ago as Staff Writer for Phones, and over the years has built up a vast knowledge of the tech industry. He's interviewed CEOs from some of the world's biggest tech firms, visited their HQs and has appeared on live TV and radio, including Sky News, BBC News, BBC World News, Al Jazeera, LBC and BBC Radio 4. Originally specializing in phones, tablets and wearables, John is now TechRadar's resident automotive expert, reviewing the latest and greatest EVs and PHEVs on the market. John also looks after the day-to-day running of the site.