HTC Sensation Suffers Through iPhone 4-Esque "Death Grip" Issues

So remember that one time when you had to hold your iPhone 4 just right or else you lost the signal and dropped your call? Apparently a similar problem has befallen the HTC Sensation: if you hold the phone a certain way, aka “death grip,” the phone loses its signal, its Bluetooth connection, and its Wi-Fi connection, all in one foul swoop.

The problem seems to be stemming from the phone’s back cover, according to Nordic Hardware’s tests. The purported unibody design is actually a glorified removable battery cover, made mostly of metal with a few plastic patches that act as antennae. If one of those patches is covered by your hand, the radio units within the device perform at a much lower level, particularly the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios. With the Bluetooth radio, you can see in the video below that laying the device on the palm of your hand stops audio playback. A death grip will also stop weaker hotspots from showing up on the Sensation’s list of available networks, since the connection can’t penetrate through your hands.

A first reaction is to solve the problem the same way iPhone owners did: by slapping a cover on that bad boy. Unfortunately, the iPhone case was meant to stop users from bridging the gap on the antennae and thus, shorting them. On the HTC Sensation, however, the signal is lost because the user is physically blocking the antenna. If that is in fact the case, a phone case can only make matters worse.

Bluetooth:

Wi-Fi:

[via Nordic Hardware]