PhoneArena HTC Sensation Review: link

HTC Sensation suffers from death grip, iPhone 4 caught snickering


Looks like there might be trouble in paradise for HTC fans. Nordic Hardware’s tests have proven that the new HTC Sensation also suffers from the same dreaded death grip as the iPhone 4 but this time it also affects the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity of the phone.



The problematic area is the back cover. As we discovered a few days back, the Sensation does not have a true unibody design as HTC claims it does but instead uses a large removable battery cover which is mostly made out of metal and has plastic areas that work as antennas. Unfortunately, when these pieces are covered by your hand, there is a substantial drop in the performance of the radio units within the device, particularly of the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios.

As you can see in the first video below, keeping the device flat on your palm makes the Bluetooth audio stream stutter. In case of Wi-Fi, it makes the weaker hotspots disappear from the list of available hotspots as their signal strength is no longer strong enough to penetrate through your hands.





Admittedly, the problem may not be as severe when holding the device normally in portrait mode, however, in landscape mode you will have a hard time avoiding the antennas on the back.

Now a certain amount of attenuation is expected when you cover the antennas and manufacturers always put a warning in their user guides on the (im)proper way to hold the phone. But in this case the attenuation is way too high and is greatly impacting the performance, and thus the credibility, of the device.

We would like to know if any users of this phone are having similar problems with this phone. If so, do let us know. Otherwise it could just be a case of a faulty review sample received by Nordic Hardware.

We do hope this is not a new trend that is starting among new generation handsets. After losing most of our battery life, we don't want to lose our signal strength as well.

Update: We saw some users suggesting that putting on a cover on the Sensation might solve the death grip issue as it does on the iPhone 4. The thing is, the reason a cover works on the iPhone 4 is because it prevents the user from bridging the gap on the antennas on the side and shorting them. On the Sensation, it happens because you are physically blocking the antenna, thus reducing it's effectiveness. So in case of the Sensation, a cover might just make things worse.

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Death grip strikes again, HTC Sensation falls victim when you hold it wrong [WE TEST]


Death grip is a sensitive topic, but I’m afraid we’ll have to stir it again. The HTC Sensation barely entered our office and we’re already trying to strangle the (wireless) life out of it. The problem is two-fold – the Wi-Fi antenna and the cell antenna – they both get attenuated when you hold the phone in what you may call a natural way.



The two antennas are positioned on both ends of the phone – the cell antenna is at the bottom and the Wi-Fi antenna is at the top. Cover them with your cupped hands while holding the phone naturally in landscape position and you will see the signal degrade. But don’t just take our word for it, we have it shot on video.

Here’s what we found after several tests. The Wi-Fi antenna is very sensitive and it doesn’t take much to kill the signal. The cell antenna has a death grip issue but it only matters in specific situations.

These problems are caused by the decision to put the antennas on the outside – HTC should have learned from Apple’s mistake and not use the external panels of the phone where the user hands naturally rest as an antenna. In this case, the antenna is the built in the back panel. There are two sets of contacts that connect both antennas to their back cover ends, you can see them in the photo below. By the way, that also means that if you take the back cover off, you lose all wireless signal.



When you hold the phone up to your head, the problem is almost non-existent – no matter how much you cover the antenna, both sides can hear each other fine with only a sound artifact here or there. Even in areas of poor reception, things were really okay – you can’t kill a call that way.

But if the phone is held horizontally (say, to use the speakerphone), it becomes almost too easy to degrade the signal – touching the bottom area of the phone is enough for the call to start breaking up. If the reception gets any weaker, the call is dropped.

Oddly, while the person using the Sensation can hear the other party just fine all the way through, it’s the other caller that starts hearing artifacts and badly broken up speech. So, it’s a problem with transmitting the signal, not receiving it. Still, in most situations, the HTC Sensation should do fine.

As for the Wi-Fi reception, things are pretty bad, we guess. Put your hand on the top of the phone and Wi-Fi signal drops to zero. Very often the modem would crash and would switch the Wi-Fi on and off and only then you regain connectivity even if you were no longer touching to antenna.

Granted, holding the top of the phone is somewhat unnatural – but using it in landscape orientation to browse the net or watching a streaming video might give you some headache.

We recorded a video showing how both signals degrade as you touch the corresponding antenna. We couldn’t get the cell signal very low on video, but that’s because our office has good coverage.

For the Wi-Fi, we tried downloading a file from the Internet and measure the download speeds. Keep an eye on the blue line – it shows the download speed in Kbps. It drops to the bottom when you touch the top antenna. If you are lucky and the modem doesn’t crash, you might even get to finish your download.




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Valjda tje ispraviti to sa sledetjim updateom softvera. 

Prvo razocarenje sa displayom od galaxy s2 sad i sa sensation. Problem sa displayom od  galaxya mi je skino dvoumicu i mislio sam kupiti sensation kad i on sa manom
Sta sad kupiti  

Ardzuna, danas sam imo priliku to da i isprobam. To bas nije tako kako su oni predstavili stim sto se to desava i kod ostalih telefona. Isprobo sam ta "kriticna mjesta" na Iphone4, 3GS, Desire, SGS1 ... Kod svih tih telefona se isto to pojavljuje stim sto je na Iphone4 naj izrazenije. Po mom nekom misljenju, treba malo pricekati pa da se vide zapazanja i samih vlasnika. Kod SGS 2 su vec isplivali jos neki problemcici a za HTC Sensation nema jos toliko informacija iz prve ruke jer je tek i izaso u prodaju.
Ja trebam produziti ugovor tj uzeti drugi tel. ali ipak cu pricekati jos nekih 10 do 15 dana pa tek onda odluciti. U svakom slucaju i dalje sam za ovaj model ili SGS2

da li moze nekako da se u aplikaciju News ubace rss feedowi od nekih drugih sajtowa pa da mi na home screenu pokazuje westi koje ja hoce a ne da to bude cnn i times news? ne mogu nikako da nadjem,a daje mi da izaberem izmedju bbc i cnn..

-blago tebi.... pa ti imaš cnn i times news ! Ja mogu samo "yu  reality show feed" ...

    ...pa ti vidi na šta sam osudjen. Čitaj taj news i uživaj bWe.....

Vi kupiste Sensation-e, a utiske i recenzije ne pishete. Sram da vas bude! 

utisci su na bilo kom sajtu o mobilnim telefonima