Even With Polycarbonate Unibody Design, HTC One X Users Not Escaping WiFi Death Grip

In the past, on select HTC handsets where loss of radio signal depending on how you hold the device–often referred to as the ‘death grip’–was blamed on metal materials obstructing radio waves, such as those on the HTC Sensation. However, the latest HTC flagship smartphone, the HTC One X, bears a radical design shift from preceding HTC phones and makes use of a high end unibody polycarbonate design, rather than a unibody metal-plastic design of yore. Yet, with the change in design, HTC is still not escaping the woes of the past and death grip issues still persist on the HTC One X smartphone.

HTC users have turn to forums such as XDA-Developers to report that on select units, there is a loss of WiFi connectivity as a result of a death grip with the flagship line. Not all One X owners are affected, however, and HTC is looking into the matter.

According to a report on Phandroid, One X models most affected by the WiFi death grip, bear the model numbers HT23 and HT24. To check to see what model number your One X is, you can go into the Android settings menu, tap on ‘About phone,’ and then tap ‘Phone identity.’

XDA forum member poorcollegeguy is posting that there is a simple test you can perform to see if your One X suffers the WiFi death grip:

Gently squeeze the side back of your phone, between the camera lens and the volume buttons, if your WIFI signal strength improves only to drop back down when you stop squeezing then you have this seemingly common fault.

It is suspected that the death grip is due to a hardware defect of some kind. According to the forums, if you do have the issue, you can declare the phone dead on arrival.

If you do have the fault, I recommend you declare your phone DOA (Dead On Arrival) and exchange your phone for another. In the UK, you can do this within 28 days of the date of the purchase (so I believe).

No immediate fix is currently available and HTC is still investigating the matter.