When Apple released the iPhone 4 in June 2010, many users reported about problems regarding reception quality. This ‘death grip’ problem was used to describe the phenomenon of getting dropped calls when a user held the lower left part of the phone, bridging two separate antennas. A similar issue may also affect the Sony Xperia P according to Cnet Asia.
During their review they noticed that the signal bars would drop when held in a certain way. Whilst this didn’t affect voice calls in any way, it did stop data from being sent or received. We should say that the problem only happened in low signal areas (they weren’t able to replicate it outdoors). This kind of issue affects every phone in varying degrees, we suspect the metal housing makes it much easier to occur in the Xperia P. See this being demonstrated in the video below.
Update: We have been told from a Sony Mobile employee that they have been unable to reproduce this problem, despite trying it with a number of handsets. Therefore Cnet Asia may have had a faulty handset and this could be an isolated incident. See another video below that shows no problems at all when holding it the same way.
