HTC does an Apple, denies Sensation death grip issues exist
HTC has obviously taken a leaf of the Apple book of PR and denied today that their Sensation flagship has the so-called "death grip" issues. There was no press-conference this time, but a company spokesman did go on record and denied there was anything wrong with their powerhouse of a smartphone.
Here's the exact quote as sent to Slashgear:
Every phone experiences a slight variation in signal strength when the antenna is covered in its entirety by a palm and/or fingers. However, under normal circumstances this does not affect the performance of the phone.
Now the first part is absolutely true - you can drop a few bars on just about any handset out there if you hold it in a specific way. Yet our dedicated test revealed that the Sensation can lose all of its Wi-Fi signal quite easily in what we wouldn't call abnormal usage - it's just how youd hold it if you are web browsing in landscape mode, for example.
Mobile network signal also suffered if you put your hand in the wrong spot, thought it didn't seem to be as damaging there. Now, we are not saying this is a deal-breaker - the Sensation is still a pretty hot device with all that oomph under the hood, but it's still a quirk you should keep in mind if you are about to get it.
And we really don't think dismissing the problem as non-existent will do any good to HTC. There are plenty of early adopters out there who will confirm that they were unpleasantly surprised.
Update: HTC just responded to a question about our video posted by one of their customers on Facebook, claiming that "The HTC Sensation issue seems exaggerated in this video, which is why it is misleading.". We find this statement largely inaccurate, since as we mentioned this is the exact way you would hold the handset if you were web browsing in landscape mode, for instance.
Still we will be shooting another video of the problem later today,just to demonstrate the issue in the more natural landscape handhold. Expect it to appear in a few hours in our blog.
Update: As promised, here's the second video.