The Verizon iPhone is not very different from the AT&T iPhone, but it has been modified to work on Verizon's CDMA network, which raises questions about whether it, too, will suffer from the infamous grip of death issue. Judging by the first reports that are pouring in, it seems it won't - at least not to the same degree as the original iPhone 4.
While the iPhone's death grip issue - a significant loss of signal when you hold the phone in a certain way - is now all but forgotten, it once filled the headlines and many thought it would put a big dent in Apple's shiny armor of invincibility. It turned out not to be a deal-breaker for users, but still, it's a real issue, and many iPhone 4 owners would prefer it didn't exist.
Now, the reviewers who have held the iPhone 4 in their hands are reporting that they cannot replicate the issue on the Verizon iPhone 4, or that the problems have at least been somewhat alleviated.
Ars Technica's Chris Foresman said that holding the Verizon iPhone in the death grip "did not result in any kind of CDMA signal attenuation." SlashGear, on the other hand, reports that no matter how its reporter held the Verizon iPhone 4, it experienced at most a one signal bar drop (from four bars to three).