Just curious -- are you left handed? The CDMA radio is in the bottom left corner of the device (when you're looking at the screen), and the LTE radio is in the upper left corner. Wifi/Bluetooth is center right. All of this according to FCC docs. The Nexus is a pretty big phone. While you might be able to cover the CDMA radio during normal use, unless you're a freak, your hands won't come anywhere near that LTE radio.
Actually, it isn't the 4G radio I was getting signal degradation with. It was last night while holding the phone in my left hand (right handed) that I was able to go from 3 wifi bars to 1 wifi bar.
I did some 4G testing on the way to work this morning. I never leave the 4G radio on under normal conditions. I typically only turn on 4G when I want to stream video or browse the web. But today I left it on during my commute to work and during my first hour at work. The result was the following:
25 minute commute:
55% of time 3 bars.
25% of time 2 bars.
15% of time 4 bars.
5% of time 1 bar.
Those are all rough numbers from just checking down at the phone every 60 seconds or so. I also ran some speed tests (yes, I was breaking the law):
There is also one that I didn't include where I pulled down a whopping 29Mbps on 4 bars. I also want to stress that I never once lost connection. Then I came indoors and spent a couple hours periodically checking to see how it was connected, and it was on 4G all the time. So I took it to the bathroom near the very middle of the building to check coverage there:
So, for me, I haven't had much trouble at all today. I may do some testing at home, because that appears to be the only place where my phone has a very weak 4G signal, at least over the past couple of days.
Brandon