Apple’s reported redesign of the iPhone 4′s antenna for Verizon Wireless has not fixed its “death grip” problem, according to Consumer Reports.

Consumer Reports said Verizon’s iPhone 4 can drop calls when users cover a gap on the lower left side of the phone’s external steel band with their hand or finger, according to lab tests conducted by its engineers.

The design flaw is similar to the “death grip” problem with AT&T’s version of the device, which caused the phone’s signal quality to degrade when held in a certain way.

“As with our tests of the AT&T iPhone 4, putting a finger across one particular gap — the one on the lower left side — caused performance to decline,” said Paul Reynolds, Consumer Reports electronics reporter, in a blog post. “Bridging this gap is easy to do inadvertently, especially when the phone is in your palm, which might readily and continuously cover the gap during a call.”

Consumer Reports said it tested five other Verizon smartphones for a similar degradation in signal quality: the Samsung Fascinate, Motorola Droid 2 Global, HTC Droid Incredible, LG Ally and Motorola Droid X.

“The only phones in which the finger contact caused any meaningful decline in performance was the iPhone 4,” Reynolds said.

Consumer Reports is not including the Verizon iPhone 4 in its list of recommended smartphones because of the problem with its antenna, though the publication conceded that the design flaw only caused dropped calls in areas with already weak signal strength and was easily remedied with the use of a case or bumper.

A spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless dismissed the reports, saying the company’s iPhone customers “are experiencing stellar network performance” with less than one half of 1 percent of calls dropped in major cities like New York and San Francisco.

Tear-down analysis from IHS iSuppli and other research firms indicated that Apple had attempted to fix the problem with the iPhone 4′s antenna when it modified the device for Verizon’s CDMA network. Analysts at iSuppli reported that Verizon’s CDMA iPhone 4 used a new two-antenna design that could improve reception.

A handful of equipment vendors and US CDMA operator Verizon Wireless have banded together to take IP Multi-media Subsystem (IMS) technology to the next level.

Verizon, together with Cisco, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Nortel and Qualcomm, is working to develop enhancements to the emerging IMS architecture.

The next generation architecture has been termed A-IMS (Advances to IMS) and aims to provide solutions to implement next generation services in current networks, as well as creating a foundation for the efficient roll out of both SIP and non SIP-based services in future networks.

The current outputs of the task force are a concept document and an architecture document that are being provided to industry players. The task force companies plan to make necessary standards contributions in the immediate future.

Paul Mankiewich, chief technology officer, Lucent Technologies Network Systems Group said: “We recognise the benefits of this collaboration, particularly in terms of multi-vendor interoperability, as we move into an all-IP mobility world. This effort continues to enable the delivery of blended voice, video, data and multi-media applications, what we call Blended Lifestyle services, to mobile end users.”

Verizon’s European division has launched a battery of new business-oriented products based on VoIP. The company is offering a managed IP-PBX, an IP trunking service to link distributed workplaces, and an IP-Centrex service.

Verizon, not being present in Europe as a voice network, is trying to build up a services business there in order to compete with the major European telcos and data centre firms.

Enterprise VoIP is highly popular with carriers and big companies’ IT managers alike – it saves dramatic sums of money by permitting calls to be served over the company’s LAN along with the data. It also radically simplifies applications like the PBX, corporate directory and helps to link widely dispersed workplaces’ phone systems.

Carriers, on the other hand, see an opportunity to lock in the customer and make money from consulting and providing the software and IP phones, or alternatively a fully hosted and managed service.