According to the video above, holding your phone in the wrong manner can dramatically drop reception — a similar charge as to that aimed at Apple over the “antennagate” brouhaha. While the issue doesn’t seem to be identical — the iPhone lost its signal through attenuation from bridging a gap between two antennae, and this seems to be from covering an antenna too much — it does still appear as though it doesn’t take much to suffer a pretty hefty drop in signal.
If you have an HTC HD7, tell us if this is affecting you. How are you holding it when it loses reception? Are you squeezing it tightly or covering it completely? Or does it take only a light touch to kill your connection? Let us know in the comments.
If I hold the phone as shown on youtub my reception goes from full bar to 1 to 2 bars…. I have not noticed any dropped calls…..
I’ve been an HD7 user (no case or skin, on T-Mobile in the Washington, D.C. area) for a couple of weeks now, and have never had a reception problem. After seeing the video, I tried to replicate the change in signal bars it showed, but could not. I held my phone in the same way, but there was no change at all in signal bars displayed.
I wish people would stop looking at this issue only from the point of dropping calls. The big issue, for me, is when using the device interface for e-mail, texts, apps, etc. You don’t have many options for holding a phone like this and typing a text message, do you.
I noticed the issue the first day I had the phone. I previously had a Touch Pro 2. Sitting in my office I would get anywhere from 1-3 bars. With my HD7 if I get 3 bars if the phone is on my desk (vertical / horizontal doesn’t matter). Pick up the device and start typing a text and I get *no service*.
My feeling is the problem only shows up when you have a somewhat marginal signal to begin with. Granted, the signal I’m starting with isn’t total crap.
This is on an Edge only connection, no 3G in my town.