But on the new iPhone 4S, the (GSM) cellular antenna is divided up into two pieces. So if you apply to attenuate to one piece of the cellular antenna, the radio will, in theory, switch to the other piece that isn't being gripped. So you'll have to apply a Double Death Grip (see image) to squelch off cellular service to the new phone completely. That move is usually seen only on Star Trek and in pro wrestling rings.

But there's more: the new 4S is a "world phone," meaning that it contains both a GSM radio and antenna and a CDMA radio and antenna inside. Obviously the "antenna band" running around the phone is being cut into smaller and smaller sections. How this will impact reception/transmission of the various wireless signals is yet to be seen.

"Improving on the innovative stainless steel external, dual-antenna design of iPhone 4, iPhone 4S is the first phone to intelligently switch between two antennas to send and receive," the press release reads. Actually, the new antenna concept is nothing new at all--it's just new in consumer handsets. Such have been used in other types of wireless devices for years.

The network engineer and the antenna engineer I spoke to yesterday after the 4S announcement yesterday both said that the new antenna design is likely to produce only modest reception gains. One engineer got the distinct impression that the new antenna part of the 4S announcement yesterday was more about hype than anything else.

These are opinions of course; we won't pass official judgement on the new antenna system until we're able to test it in the wild. In , we found that non-iPhone AT&T handsets (BlackBerry, for one) could maintain voice calls in thin cellular conditions far better than the iPhone 4. We'll be interested to see if the iPhone 4S shows any improvement in call quality and drop rates in similar circumstances. On the data side, we'll compare throughput speeds on the iPhone 4 with those on the new 4S. So stay tuned for that.