Signal Reception in Hong Kong - MDA, XDA, 1010 General

Dear all,
I am very interested in the O2 xda but I've heard that the xda has reception problems:
1) it seems to require a strong signal;
2) once entered a low-singal area, it requires a long time to reacquire the signal (this topic appeared in this forum before but nobody really answered)
I live in Hong Kong and my job requires me to be reachable most of the time. I used Treo 180 before but it really really let me down. Not only it required a strong signal, the other party over the phone often heard loud echo. I only used it for 2 months and I had to give it up.
You know, O2 xda is not a cheap stuff and I don't wanna waste money again. Really really grateful if anyone can tell me how it is doing in HONG KONG?

I used my 32M o2xda over 6 months without any porblem. I was using 1010 now switched to orange with very good reception particularly GPRS for emails & internet pda news.
I used in China Shenzhen, Ningbo, Shanghai, Xiamen with China Mobile (CMNET) and is also working perfert.
What I like is the battery. The standby time takes three days plus I used it as alarm clock when I was in the hotel. I recharged only once for my four days trip in Ningbo.

Dear Henry,
Thanks so much for your quick reply.
Did you mean both telephone and GPRS singal reception are good? or only one of them?
Best Regards

I bought my XDA in Hong Kong, (Mongkok) and it worked perfect.

Both telephone & GPRS signal are okay.
At night time I turn off the telephone by press and hold the red hook up button for around two seconds, it will beep and turn off. The morning I do that again and the telephone is turned on.
The other good thing is the speaker phone, when I drive on the road, I just make a phone call then press and hold the green recevied button for two seconds and the phone will be turned to speaker phone feature. Just speak and drive on the road.
Another thing is the buttons can be locked by setting phone - option - hardware button lock - tap the lock all button except power button.

There are two things that determine the radio reception performance of a GSM phone. Receiver sensitivity and Network signal strength.
The xda has about the minimum sensitivity required by a tier 1 operator. That means that where the network has planed to have coverage the device should work. In practise the actual network coverage does not 100% match the predictions the operator uses to plan and design their network. Phones with high receive sensitivity will work better in marginal areas, but if the network has no signal (or specifically if the signal is less than the minimum value accepted by the network rxlev_access_min) then no phone will work, regardless of sensitivity.
In general phone sensitivity has been getting worse (phones get more deaf) over the last 5 years. Operators have had to build "better" networks. This is usually done by increasing power and increasing the minimal acceptable signal strength. So it is more likely that if you get coverage you will be able to make a call.
GSM in Hong Kong is pretty advanced by world standards, so the xda should work fine.

Related

XDA GSM Signal Reaquisition.

I posted this message at www.pdaphonehome.com but I thought I might give it a shot here and see if I can get diffrent results.
I'm in Sydney Australia and have recently puchased (brand new.. not off of ebay or anything) the O2 XDA (32/64mb). Rom version is 3.14.17 ENG with a Radio version of 4.16 and have encountered the dreaded SIGNAL LOSS / REAQUISITION problem.
I switched from a Treo 270 (which had the dreaded back light problem) and absolutely LOOOOOOVE the XDA (plus the fact that I can code VB apps for it too is kinda nice without paying for the dev env) aaannnyway....
(is it me or does it seem like most PDA-Phones have at least one Dreaded Problem).
I'm currently with a carrier which has almost no signal at my workplace (vodafone) and am at least 12 months away from my contract ending so swapping carriers to the better Optus or Telstra is a no-no.
I've managed to trawl around and managed to find some information on the Signal loss / reaquisition.
1) The phone takes an awfully long time to reaquire a signal after coming back from an area with almost no signal. I've managed to time it and on average it seems to take about 10-15 minutes to reaquire. It also needs a STRONG signal to reaquire it and will take longer to reaquire if it's a weak signal.
2) Occasionally the phone gets "stuck" and while it reports a full strength signal, no-one can seem to call or send SMSs
I've tried to use "Phone Today" and it does seem to make little or no diffrence in my situation.
From what other sites (as well as this one) have reported, it has something to do with people only in fluctuating areas of signal combined with a long refresh interval on the phone rather than a defective phone. Am I right?
What I'd like to know (throught your wealth of contacts) is the following.
1) Is O2 Aware of this problem? I've seem forum postings where O2 have admitted to it. Can anyone confirm this? I managed to contact O2 Australia and they've denied (surprise surprise) any knowledge of the problem. Mind you I'm not sure how prevalent the XDA is in Aus so the guy on the phone may have been genuinely ignorant of the problem)
2) Can anyone confirm whether O2 is working on a patch or update for this. I know an ETA is too much to expect but some acknowledgement would be nice.
3) I understand that the AT&T SX56 is practically the same machine and it has it's refresh rate set to 90 seconds as opposed to o2 which I'm assuming is every christmas (but only if you feed it cookies). Would fixing the problem be as simple as using the radio rom from an AT&T on a XDA?
4) Is there anyway to hack the radio to up it's refresh rate? (might breach some copyright laws ... apologies if I've stepped on anyone's toes)
5) Is it true that when it tried to reaquire a signal, it goes into a high frequency seach mode (or something like that.. I don't know.. *sigh* ) which chews up more power? Does this mean that if a more frequent refresh rate were to be implemented, the battery life would decrease significantly?
**new addition**
Since I do have a little knowledge about emVB may be a temporary solution might be possible if I could code one.
Is there an API / for the GSM component of the phone. I noticed the "register on network" button seems to force the phone to reaquire the network if there isn't any signal. I would be nice to write an app to detect a "no bars" status on the phone and get it to hit the refresh button (or at least call the function) every minute or so until it finds a signal.
Any hints?
I may be hoping for a little too much here but it never hurts to try right? Thanks in advance.
XDA fails tto turn on phone
This looks a lot like "XDA fails tto turn on phone." in http://www.sourceo2.com/Communities...tm?frameset=found&NewsGroupID=8&iPageNumber=1.
Thanks for that I'll have a look-see. Didn't know about the SourceO2 site's communities.
I checked the site and it seems that it's pretty much the same gripe everyone's whingeing about. O2 doesn't seem to say anything about it and some poor guy called "xdaguy" seems to be taking all the heat. I don't envy him.
I'll live with it a while longer if not, it's back to the store and since there doesn't seem to be any other PPC phones apart from the XDA here, it's back to the treo.. Booo Hooo.. No MP3's for me anymore
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction anyway.
Paper clip to boost signal
Yes, a paper clip...
I too have experienced just the other day A weak signal to a no signal at all...anyhow here's how to dot it ( at your own risk of course)
1. Bend to straight the paper clip
2. Strip the plastic cover off the metal paper clip using a blade or a small box cutter.
3. bend 1/4 of an inch at a right angle
4. Remove rubber cover beside camera lens
5. Insert the 1/4 inch bended paper clip into the female socket
6. wait for signal
Note: this is only TEMPORARY of course as am looking into the after market antenae booster
hi - looking for a solution to this. is there any?
if my phone loses the signal it won't regain it.
I'm sure i read somewhere that this is actually a design fault and the xda (version 1) is only designed to try to regain signal for 30 mins then give up. That right? Can it be fixed?
Dan
I used to get this but a soft reset usually got it back online.

Siemens PC Pocket Phone vs. Motorola V66

Hello out there in Phone Land,
I just finished comparing a Siemens PC Pocket Phone to a Motorola V66. I tested the PC Pocket Phone in the exact same locations as the Motorola V66.
Surprisingly the V66 always showed more signal strength. For example the V66 showed 3 bars, the PC Pocket Phone showed 1 bar.
Testing in several areas the results were always similar, the V66 showed more signal bars. In Atlanta, Georgia, August is a good month to really do testing. With high humidity and 90 f, the green leaf foliation absorption of RF is very high.
OK, so much for measured signal strength...what about calls? In areas where the PC Pocket phone showed 1 bar or less, calls could not be made. With two bars, calls were made, but the audio was in and out.
In these same areas, the V66 made solid calls with no audio dropout.
While there are many software and os tweeks, has anyone been able to control the output power, or improve the antenna? It is not clear whether the basic dynamic range of the PC Pocket Phone is equal to the V66 or whether the antenna configuration on the PC Pocet Phone is the weak link.
Since I live and work in an August weak signal area, any tweaks or ideas are appreciated. By the way, I tested 3 different PC Pocket Phones...they were all equal. One was an early model while the other two were of July of 2003 manufacture.
B C N U All,
G Tinker (an rf and digital kind of guy)
1 bar
I regularly have one bar at my home, UK.
I can make and receive perfectly fine. No fading, or static. For this reason I pay no attention to the signal bar. I feel that this roulette with the ppc is just the way it is. Perhaps I am like you one of the unlucky few?
I also use a nokia 6310i, this is getting on for two years old, but still outshines my XDA on signal. But calls seem no different in most cases..
I look forward to receiving my ericcson t610 next week. It has been out of stock in a lot of places, hopefully this is a good sign for what appears to be a popular phone. How will the t68 successor fair in the real world though...

Poor signal

My i9205 have generally poor signal compared to my note1. It doesn't seem to make any difference to turn of LTD. I have not experienced any call dropping, only referring to the displayed signal. My note shows full signal while i9205 shows minimum signal. And in battery usage the "Cell Standby" is quite high and normally with 10-20% "Time without signal" even if I have not noticed any time without signal.
Anyone have similar issue ?
I have the Mega GT-I9200 and experience spotty signal as I drive around. I am on T-mobile in New York. Within a 15 mile radius in New York City my signal will fluctuate between HSPA+, Edge, G (1st generstion GPRS), and sometimes complete loss of both data and cellphone signal. I think the issue is I might need a modem to be ported from a t-mobile device to give me a consistent signal. Not sure if anyone could do that or if there's even a t-mobile device whose modem would be compatible at this point.
Sent from my GT-I9200 using xda app-developers app
Yep! I'm definitely getting this too. The phone very rarely shows the full 4 bars of reception, and in low signal areas (1 bar or less) the phone starts flipping between GSM/WCDMA (UMTS) constantly, giving very poor reception. Also, signal strength in general isn't as good as my nexus 4 was. I sometimes am unable to reliably maintain a signal at all in areas that I know my N4 could reliably hold 1 bar of strength, with the phone disconnecting from the network completely and then reconnecting all the time.
As I'm in the UK and without LTE anyway, I've switched the phone to WCDMA mode only, which has helped though the phone now just flips between HSPA and HSPA+ when in poor signal. Its certainly much more usable this way at least.
On the upside, yesterday night with 3 bars reception I was consistently able to get over 15Mbps download, with my best result of nearly 19Mbps! So it doesn't look to be a hardware issue.
I'm speculating wildly here but to me this looks like a SW issue in one of two areas: signal strength isn't being reported correctly (too low), causing the phone to take action to try and obtain a better signal (by flipping to a lower bandwidth protocol or disconnecting and trying to detect a better macro, for instance) when it isn't really necessary OR maybe the phone is just too aggressive in switching from HSPA+ down to GSM to save battery.
Is there some way to take control of the mechanism, and try to force the phone to stay in hspa+, or to spoof a higher signal strength?
EDIT: This phone is packaged with very thin plastic wrapping over the metal band that runs around the circumference of the device. I accidentally left a lot of this wrapping on for the first few days. It may be complete crap, but I think my signal might have improved since I removed it all! I certainly seem to be able to maintain a connection in places that I wasn't able to last week, and maintain a constant (4-5Mbps) HSPA+ link in areas that I couldn't before...
Time will tell...
I have the same encounter, I have two sim cards belong to the same number one for phone and one for tablet. The one in Mega 6.3 give me three bar signal but the one in Galaxy tab plus 7" give me four bar signal :crying:
I am also having reception issues with my mega 6.3 I get worst reception than any of my other phones sitting in the exact same spot. I am on ATT in the US. I removed all the plastic around the phone. I am wondering if it is my APN settings. Hopefully someone can shed some light on this or there is something eles going on.
The Mega has an issue with the radio. I bought two of these an i9200 and i9250. Both Mega's would lose signal completely. I don't have the greatest signal here at my home, but it has never been an issue with any other phone such as Note 1 and Note 2 and many others. If you are in a weak signal area more than not, you may wamt to hold off until the radio issue is resolved with software or whatever. They were unusable for me and I re-sold them.
Sent from my GT-N5100 using xda premium
I have an i9205 and it's fine with the signal. I'm in the UK though
The big problem about this is that the phone uses much more battery when signal is low and using 3G. I can get 6-7 hours screen on time on one charge while wifi is on. But when using 3G with low signal I get 3-4 hours.
I hope this is a radio firmware thing, and not a hardware thing, so that it could be improved with updates.
so any updates?
Same problem here with my new Mega 6.3! My phone have only 1 or 2 bars signals while my brother's Samsung Grand has full antenna easily. It's very annoying. What should we do?!
Same ****ty reception going on with mine. I returned it.
I changed it too. New one is working fine.
hi. ah really? changnig phone u noticed a consistent improvement in reception?
but... i can say that i and my girlfriend, using a DIFFERENT SELLER...... we have the same problem of cell standby
I found that all phone models are inconsistent in radio reception, not sure why...
Sometimes the updates can do a little better, but I believe the hardware is the most limiting factor.
Maybe Mega isn't for you where you live, just return it then get another phone
i have poor signal Too
Any news or solution ?

Very bad signal

Hey everyone, I live in the US and bought a Z2 on eBay from never-msrp on eBay, his service was great and the phone has no outside physical defects.
However, I have very very bad signal. I live in a place that only gets 1 or 2 signal bars on occasion (just 2G, sometimes 3G) and if I don't get signal in the house I can put the phone next to a window and get a pretty solid signal. This is not the case with the Z2. I get no signal at the house and when I put the phone up to the window I will only get 1 bar of 2G every so often, perhaps like 5 minutes of signal out of 40 minutes sitting near the window. Does this phone just have naturally weak signal? I noticed that when I go up the road to try and obtain better signal, it is very slow to pick up signal and once in a supposedly stable zone where I can get 3G, it will not be very stable. For the most part, I get 3G but I noticed that the signal went out completely a couple of times.
Does this sound like a defective device? I've already contacted the seller and he accepts returns though I have to pay a ridiculous restocking fee probably.

UK H850 poor phone signal, but same SIM fine in old Nokia feature phone

My H850 always struggles to get any sort of signal in my house (1 bar if I'm lucky), but I've just tried putting the SIM into a 15-year old Nokia feature phone and the signal is great - 4 bars. My provider is Plusnet Mobile (who use the EE network). Is it likely that the radio on the G5 is alot less capable than the one on the Nokia, or could something else be causing this?
itm said:
My H850 always struggles to get any sort of signal in my house (1 bar if I'm lucky), but I've just tried putting the SIM into a 15-year old Nokia feature phone and the signal is great - 4 bars. My provider is Plusnet Mobile (who use the EE network). Is it likely that the radio on the G5 is alot less capable than the one on the Nokia, or could something else be causing this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had a sprint G5 that was very similar just naturally had bad signal Same sim in Sprint G4 and the G5 signal sucked now I did notice if I pinch on the module and dangle the phone off of the weight of itself my signal would jump and as soon as I let the pressure off the module it would drop down again
Which led me to believe the connections on the module house at least ls992s lte antenna Its like all the other stories here I disassembled Cleaned contacts was good for a few weeks and went back to crap
My verizon G5 on AT&T works great Good gps good signal A lot of screen retention but I have learned to deal with it... over other issues users have.....
I noticed it too on my device. It has poor signal reception.
Strangely enough I managed to improve my signal strength with a Cam Plus module. I'm not sure about the other benefits of the module, but it contains an antenna and I now get 3-5 bars of signal from the same spot in my study that used to struggle for any signal at all. Unfortunately my connection continues to drop and re-connect every few minutes - e.g. dropping from 5 bars to no signal for a few minutes, then reconnecting with 5 bars. But at least I can now make and receive calls while I have a signal..

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