iPhone 'death grip' lawsuit is in the works

iPhone death grip bringing you down? There's a lawsuit for that. Earlier this week, Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff, a law firm based in Sacramento, began hunting for consumers so angry about the fuzzy reception on their shiny new iPhone 4 that they're willing to sue.

"If you recently purchased a new iPhone and have experienced poor reception quality, dropped calls and weak signals, we would like to hear from you," reads a note posted to the firm's website.

As we noted yesterday, Apple has been slammed with complaints about the dreaded iPhone 4 death grip, which apparently wreaks all sorts of havoc on the handset's reception levels. According to the tech blog Apple Insider, Apple is readying a death grip antidote – in the form of a software update to the iPhone 4's operating system, iOS 4 – but Apple reps have not confirmed the report.

The company has, however, tacitly admitted that the iPhone death grip exists, which could boost the lawsuit's chance of success.

"Gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone," Apple reps said in its statement last week. "If you ever experience this on your Phone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases."

iPhone death grip or no iPhone death grip, the furor over the reception issues has certainly not diminished the popularity of the iPhone 4. Apple said that it had unloaded 1.7 million iPhone 4s in three days, and hundreds of stores across the country – including Best Buy and Radio Shack – are reporting iPhone 4 shortages.