Sprint HTC ONE signal problems (Deathgrip)

For those haters...
Took a drive this morning from Vegas to Pahrump. For those that don't know where that is ,it's a small town about an hour north of Vegas with nothing in between but a mountain pass. Going up the pass we needed to call the peeps we were going to see. Guess who had full bars and who had none...
Sprint HTC One or Verizon iPhone 4???
YEAH!!! I had full bars on my Sprint phone!!! The Verizon phone could NOT place the call!!!

Sent from my HTCONE using Android Central Forums

This is true. Sprint has great coverage in places like the Bermuda triangle, death valley, Guantanamo bay, etc., while Verizon has great coverage where human beings are heavily populated. :thumbup::D

Sent from my HTC One using Android Central Forums
 
This is true. Sprint has great coverage in places like the Bermuda triangle, death valley, Guantanamo bay, etc., while Verizon has great coverage where human beings are heavily populated. :thumbup::D

Sent from my HTC One using Android Central Forums

Hmmm and guess what, everywhere Verizon has coverage us Sprint users can roam. I don't really have a point but I don't think you did either other than to bash Sprint.

Sent from my HTC One
 
Sprint as well. Cannot reproduce op's problem. Also, have never seen signal go from full to empty in my area. I get 1-2 bar variations but never a compete lack of signal no matter how I hold or don't hold the phone. Perhaps they are working on the towers in your area? Take a trip out of town to see if you can reproduce signal issues.
 
I haven't noticed it in my sprint one then again I'm rocking a case so that may help
 
This is true. Sprint has great coverage in places like the Bermuda triangle, death valley, Guantanamo bay, etc., while Verizon has great coverage where human beings are heavily populated. :thumbup::D

Sent from my HTC One using Android Central Forums

Hmmm and guess what, everywhere Verizon has coverage us Sprint users can roam. I don't really have a point but I don't think you did either other than to bash Sprint.

Sent from my HTC One

Thanks Verizon for your network... I can unlimitedly roam if needed! I don't have to very often but when I do.. Thx! :)

Sent from my Sprint S3 using AC forums.
 
Yeah called Sprint the other day in my area due to I noticed that the device was going from 3G to 4G so come to find out they are in the progress of making some up grades to some of the towers in my area. So I hope to see the 4G stay on for good so you might check and make sure they are not doing anything with the towers in your area I know Sprint gotten real aggressive on getting their LTE up and going.
 
I am in Virginia in the DC suburbs and on my EVO LTE I had never seen the LTE come on, not once. With the new ONE I am getting LTE 60% of the time in the towns around here regardless of holding the device.

Weird. I'm in the same area, and get 4G pretty consistently on my EVO 4G LTE.
 
No such issue here on Orange UK, WiFi drops a bar when near edge of WiFi range but no signal drop when covering left-hand side.

Sent from my awesome HTC One B-)
 
I'm going to be a nice guy and save you some research because this is a topic I've looked into quite a bit. The "deathgrip" was made famous by the iPhone 4 "antennagate" simply because well... it was found on an iPhone. The truth is that there have actually been quite a few other phones over the last two years that have something called antenuation as was pointed out to me by a user here. We've simply not heard much about it because of the lower volume of those phones sold. Here's the deal - many if not most smartphone manufacturers are placing the the antenna in the bottom of the phone - the furthest away from your brain. But that also happens to be exactly where most people nestle the phone in their palm, thereby causing signal degradation. Most smartphone makers won't openly display anything other than signal "bars" which are notoriously inaccurate because they usually get stoned if they admit the design limits connectivity. There are some OEM's who are still more than happy to increase your odds of brain cancer for a better signal. I believe most of Samsung's antennas are located near the top. (That wasn't a dig by the way Sammy fans, I don't own either brand so calm down).

Other factors also are known causes of signal degradation, the most obvious being simply a poor antenna but also what the phone is encased in. Glass is not good for signal strength (surprise surprise iPhone 4. Also the glass Nexus 4 has been well documented at code.google.com as well as XDA to lose signal fairly easily if you're holding it in your left palm AND in a weak signal area.) Conversely, plastic phones allow for better connectivity. Putting a plastic case on a phone that's prone to worse antennuation than others seems to help I've noticed although I have no idea why. I suppose it's placing another buffer between the phone and the interference caused by proximity to bare hands.
 
Conversely, plastic phones allow for better connectivity. Putting a plastic case on a phone that's prone to worse antennuation than others seems to help I've noticed although I have no idea why. I suppose it's placing another buffer between the phone and the interference caused by proximity to bare hands.
I would assume the metal(as well as other things that might cause radio interference) in your body would cause the interference thus putting another layer between your body and and the phone would allow enough gap for the radio waves to slip by. Just a guess from what I remember about EM energy and such. Something akin to how huge metal roofed buildings seem to destroy signal until you get near an entrance?
 
I posted about this the day I got the phone with screenshots of my signal drop using opensignal. I also posted a link to the antenna locations in these phones. The LTE antenna is located in the top along with the WiFi antenna. The 3g antenna in along the entire bottom of the phone. 20db drop on average when I hold the bottom portion. If I hold from the top I get no loss.

Sent from my HTCONE using Tapatalk 2
 
I got the same 4g issue. The Note 2 I previously had picked up great 4g in my 4g area, as does my wife's GS4. On my HTC One, I get intermittent 4g signal, with 4g constantly dropping out. Really is a bummer cuz I do love the One, but with Sprint's awfully slow 3g, the phone becomes basically useless except for making calls/text.
 
My First One seemed to exhibit this problem. After trading it in for another (3 dead pixels) I don't seem to have any issues of dropping signal with a bare phone. Regardless, I usually have my phone in a nillikin case or Poetic athmosphere.
 
@omniusovermind I appreciate your insight on the topic. I am trying to figure out what is going on with my HTC One. I can only hold the phone by the top without degrading my signal to the extremes. By the top I mean the pinch the speaker. One thing I noticed about your post was that you were talking about "Attenuation" not "Antenuation". Attenuation in short is the gradual loss of (in this case) signal degradation as it passes through an object. I'm not sure that attenuation is happening on HTC phones or any phone at that caused from a person's hand. There isn't anything gradual about it. Hand (bad signal) no hand (good signal) Our hands are not that thick. CDMA signal and LTE are just sound wave frequencies and are able to pass through buildings. As the waves go through building yes there can be extensive attenuation. I think that there is something else going on. Something in our body is interacting with the metal case of the HTC ONE phones causing the signal to become to scrambled for the phone to make any sense of thus causing dropped datagrams/packets. I'm not sure if its the static electricity in our hands causing the issue or what. I have thought about how our fingers can make the touchscreen work, but a piece of plastic cannot. Besides our skin typically only a stylus made for smart phones will interact with the screen. I'm wondering if a charge in our body is interacting with the metal of the phone and causing bad signal degradation. It would make sense that a plastic case would fix the issue. I am also wondering if a clear coat of some other material sprayed on the aluminum would resolve some of the issue. More than anything I think the antenna could be shielded with better material's from the phone's case. The internals of the phone directly impacting the antenna definitely should not be grounded to the case. Not metal cases. Just my opinion.
 
There are several factors that affect signal strength that is picked up by the HTC One (or any other phone for that matter).
One major contributing factor is antenna placement and layout, phone material construction, and software. Also, some phones have better RF characteristics than others, as it can be always seen in FCC test reports for ERP values, etc. By looking at these reports, you can have a feeling on how good of an RF performer the phone will be as you can compare to other phones in the market with similar numbers. Then, you have a very uncontrollable factor, which is the 'environment' you are in. (Trees, buildings, plains, mountains, weather, etc). This is where carrier frequency comes into play...
The HTC One only works in the 1900Mhz spectrum, thus this frequency is not very "building friendly" as higher frequencies have a harder time penetrating objects and propagating (from the tower). (and yes, even your hand will 'attenuate' the signal). Also, the higher the frequency, the more prone to signal fluctuation you will have as you move the phone (even in short distances).
Now Sprint is deploying two other frequencies for LTE. 800Mhz and 2600Mhz. The higher frequency is for higher bandwidth capacity, but it will be used for densely populated areas were they can have towers closer to each other as this frequency won't propagate as far as 800Mhz signal. On the other hand, the 800Mhz signal will have a lot better propagation, building penetration, etc, so this will highly help in reception depending on the geographical region you are on.
 

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