I just got my cell this week and was dismayed to find out that the phone would get absolutely no service in my house. I was able to make one phone call, once.
Is there any product I can get to boost my reception from zilch to at least one or two bars?
I'd hate to part with this amazing phone...
unfortunately i have this problem also. I dont know whether its t-mobile or the fone but thats why i got a house fone.
hehe
Look for external antenna thread in this forum.
that would be tmobile uk
previously known as one2one or none2none as it was popularly called. i live in central london and their reception is still flakey compared to my vodafone connection
Related
Lets compile a list of areas with poor reception.
Having looked into options to improve reception, If the xda wasnt such a damned good device I'd hate it as a phone as I just cant use it as a mobile when I'm at home reliably, and lets face it networks lie about temporary faults with coverage.
Saying that, my Motorola V60 is also poor in my area - So I thought if we could all post bad areas anyone interested in buying an O2 xda in the same area would certainly think long and hard before committing to a contract for a year.
GSM/GPRS
Next to no coverage in the lower hill areas in Rusthall near Tunbridge Wells for O2
GPRS doesnt connect sometimes
single dot on antenna symbol, one bar next to it very occasionally.
SMS
SMS sending sporadic
VOICECALLS
Voicecalls are distorted
Other Network coverage
T-Mobile - coverage awful.
No service whatsover (cant even send sms)
Orange
We also get a poor reception here using Orange (although miles better than O2)
Anyone live nearby with Vodafone?
I'm hoping to switch networks for my xda after the years contract with o2 is up
http://www.webmap.btcellnet.net
Put in your postcode and it can tell you exactly how many O2 cells you have in your area and how close they are.
How damn useful!!!
Is there a weblink for other service providers that anyone knows about??
Rog
its lying about the lower part of Rusthall!
Anon, I notice you're not man enough to use a real name. And that you have to resort to being abusive.
The whole point of this thread is to make people aware that salesmen who say that coverage is ok in your home area are sometimes unitentionally misleading the public.
If you enjoy misleading people then please leave this forum alone - its for sharing information - please read the posting guidelines.
And as for it being a simulation, dont you think its misleading, and why do you think I started this posting, to get REAL data - so we can compile our own results - and help other people who want to buy an xda. After all if a map showing coverage is false - whats the point of it. Would you sail to america in a yacht with a simulated map?
Moderator, how come people can post replies as guests anyway?
The whole system is set up so that guests can post messages. We've felt that the advantages have outweighed the disadvantages so far.
I've deleted the offending post and contacted the user behind this IP-number to see if we can achieve a change in behaviour.
derekcfoley said:
its lying about the lower part of Rusthall!
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mmm. The colour coding seems to be misleading but its handy to know how close the cells are. Even if you are very close to the cells I would guess there are things that can block the radio signals (eg. hills, trees, building etc.).
You say T-mobile and Orange are worse than O2, so I would definately try Vodafone.
Also interesting is that O2's cell indicator has a form you can fill in if you have a piece of land they could put a new cell on. Might be an option?
Spent last week in the UK with my Qtek on Vodafone. WHAT A NIGHTMARE!!! You guys have the worst mobile coverage ever! And people seem to think it's ok!
I lost connection all the time while going on major roads between major cities! On the site of the company I visited you had to go outside in certain spots to get any coverage at all, and they used Vodafone as their main supplier. And last but not least, getting a GPRS connection worked like one time out of twenty.
Here in Sweden, I find it irritating that I have bad coverage at my summer house. Which is like 20 minutes drive from the nearest major road or small town. No wonder they use Sweden as a test bench for new mobile services!
Could that also have something to do with the fact that the two largest mobile manufacturers are Scandinavian? You'd sort of expect it to work in your own back yard. When they try and turn up the juice in the UK, everyone complains about their kid's brains getting fried
rgds,
Alex.
well I can safely say that O2 in NW sheffield and south of Leeds is rubbish.
according to the map it should be GOOD
uh uh.
the whole area is a sinkhole for decent reception. about the only phones that give good signal in this place is orange.
Kent seems to work pretty much everywhere for O2. I live in Dartford and work in Bexleyheath and have no troubles.
Rgds,
Rob.
O2 in central Cheltenham is total crap and has been for as long as I can remember and I have used lots of different phones.
Anonymous said:
.
You say T-mobile and Orange are worse than O2, so I would definately try Vodafone.
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Never had a problem with Vodaphone here............
Works phone is on Vodaphone...............
The only time I loose the signal is when I am hiding down in the Subway at work....!!! (Birmingham New Street Station!)
addendum to my post about Sheffield and Wakefield.
reception is crap if you are running windows 2003 PPC 4.00.05 and 4.00.11
I put 3.17.03 on my XDA yesterday and I am stunned at the difference.
In my works building on 4.0.05 and 11 I never got a signal. now I thought fair enough because I am in the basement below ground level with iron bars on the window. not even one bar
since I've put my XDA back to 3.17.03 I've never had less than 3 bars, even in places where I've never got a signal.
I think I'll wait until an official O2 ROM release for 2003.
Here are my list of bad spots....
Almost any part of the top of the mendip hills apart from near to major towns. One notable exception being orange, who seem to have much more coverage there.
Crediton in devon, and the road from tiverton to crediton. Reception is patchy at best. This is true for all neworks.
Parts of avonmouth are bad for O2 coverage, with orange being the best in that area.
Parts of the A38 from Churchill to cross, patchy reception for all networks.
Winscombe to Banwell, O2 is ok, but other networks patchy.
Flixton in norfolk, very patchy (stand outside and point the phone in the right direction).
Wooky Hole (village not the cave!) almost no signal on any network, unless you walk to the top of the nearest hill.
Frome a bit patchy for O2, not sure about other networks.
cells said:
http://www.webmap.btcellnet.net
Put in your postcode and it can tell you exactly how many O2 cells you have in your area and how close they are.
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http://www.webmap.o2.co.uk/
This is the current URL for this site, which according to my Post Code says i'm 0.3km from my nearest Cell. I'm also 0.35km (as the crow flies) from my O2 shop - in my O2 shop my XDAII gets 5 bars reception, from my living room, 0 bars!!!
What can I do to get a better reception?
PS my area is Worthing (town centre), West Sussex.
I have been happily using my UK version of the Galaxy S2 on AT&T for over a month. But I have a weird problem that AT&T claims is because I have a UK phone.
I live in an area with very few cell towers. When something goes wrong with one of those towers and AT&T says it is in degraded status, my phone continues to connect to that tower just because it is the strongest signal. AT&T claims that they send updates to our phones which would prevent connecting to a degraded tower. They also tell m that because I didn't purchase my phone thru AT&T and it is a UK phone, they can't send me those updates and therefore, my problem continues.
Has anyone else seen this issue or have a workaround? Is AT&T full of bs?
i think they are full of bs because an att rep told me that there is no way to get my phone to connect to another tower that the phone will select the strongest signal by default, oh good luck getting att to fix your degraded tower the one by my house has been degraded foor 2 weeks now with no fix in sight or even an attempt to fix it. every time i call in i get the same run around bs gives me about there are alot of degraded towers in pa due to the flood and we are working hard to restore them.
voltmeter101 said:
i think they are full of bs because an att rep told me that there is no way to get my phone to connect to another tower that the phone will select the strongest signal by default, oh good luck getting att to fix your degraded tower the one by my house has been degraded foor 2 weeks now with no fix in sight or even an attempt to fix it. every time i call in i get the same run around bs gives me about there are alot of degraded towers in pa due to the flood and we are working hard to restore them.
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I know the feeling. I live in Oregon in a very rural area mostly farmland and forest. Most likely the only people that use the towers I use are people driving thru the area which aren't going to complain, me, and 10-20 houses with people that probably won't bother complaining. Many of them use landlines or are verizon customers. So it is very difficult to get AT&T to care enough to look into it.
I work for an At&t dealer and I would try calling back a couple times and see if you can get a different answer. I would ask them to "Refresh the service to your phone because..." I know they push updates out to the phones but I'm pretty sure all it does is disconnet and reconnect the phone which will then find the tower with the good signal. It sounds partially true what you were told but i can't say 100% cause i'm no cell tower tech.
Thinking about switching to T-mobile in the SW Suburbs of Chicago; I'm on wifi most of the time, so data speed isnt important to me, but, we MUST have good phone call quality in our house.
Is this an issue for anyone in chicago land, or, if we get a phone that is "wifi capable", and we have a fast,strong, wifi network in our house, does this become a non issue?
We had ATT, which was no problem in the house, and recently switched to Sprint, with the hopes of a stong "Spark Network" here; well, one of our phones in Spark compatible, and works fine, but the other 2 phones are HTC One's, not spark "compatible", and have poor phone call quality and reception in the house. We are waiting on an AirRave front Sprint, but, if that doesnt work, we're ready to go to T-Mobile..
Sorry for this weird question here, but, I trust my buds on XDA to give a real report on stuff like this, NOT the people from T-Mobile
Thanks! :good:
wase4711 said:
Thinking about switching to T-mobile in the SW Suburbs of Chicago; I'm on wifi most of the time, so data speed isnt important to me, but, we MUST have good phone call quality in our house.
Is this an issue for anyone in chicago land, or, if we get a phone that is "wifi capable", and we have a fast,strong, wifi network in our house, does this become a non issue?
We had ATT, which was no problem in the house, and recently switched to Sprint, with the hopes of a stong "Spark Network" here; well, one of our phones in Spark compatible, and works fine, but the other 2 phones are HTC One's, not spark "compatible", and have poor phone call quality and reception in the house. We are waiting on an AirRave front Sprint, but, if that doesnt work, we're ready to go to T-Mobile..
Sorry for this weird question here, but, I trust my buds on XDA to give a real report on stuff like this, NOT the people from T-Mobile
Thanks! :good:
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you will get the both of both worlds, i work for tmobile and also a tmobile customer. now I had sprint for7 years and switched to tmobile afterwards. it depends on which area your interested in. If you want me to give you the full details pm me a message and ill explain everything. where do you live by?
OK so I've had my m8 for a year or so now. Never been impressed one way or another as to bad reception or good reception. However, now twice in one week I saw side by side comparison to other AT&T phone s (iPhone 6 and galaxy s5) and the reception was worse.
Today while traveling in the car with my wife south of Cincinnati I noticed that my m8 had no service. So I checked my wife's iPhone6s. Two bars. This went on and off where I had no service for 90% of 15 miles or so. The iPhone maintained service the entire time!
I posted similar is in the M8 Android Development radio thread after making a trip last week with two iPhone and an s5 user s. My service, side by side, was much worse. It was suggested that I flash the latest developers firmware and radio which I did. 4.16.1540.8. Based on my drive today with my wife it didn't help.
Does the M8 radio just suck compared to the iPhone or does someone have done other suggestions for improving cell reception? And yes I know its different for different areas but I've tried several radios now and the result seems to be the same.
The bars don't mean jack. There is literally no standardization to what the bars symbolize. I've had 2 bars on AT&T plenty of times, and you can't get a call out, much less data. And my wife reports similar on her iPhone.
Whether your phone or hers can make or receive calls and texts, or get data; or what the dBm reading in Settings; those are the only real indicators of signal quality.
jcrompton said:
OK so I've had my m8 for a year or so now. Never been impressed one way or another as to bad reception or good reception. However, now twice in one week I saw side by side comparison to other AT&T phone s (iPhone 6 and galaxy s5) and the reception was worse.
Today while traveling in the car with my wife south of Cincinnati I noticed that my m8 had no service. So I checked my wife's iPhone6s. Two bars. This went on and off where I had no service for 90% of 15 miles or so. The iPhone maintained service the entire time!
I posted similar is in the M8 Android Development radio thread after making a trip last week with two iPhone and an s5 user s. My service, side by side, was much worse. It was suggested that I flash the latest developers firmware and radio which I did. 4.16.1540.8. Based on my drive today with my wife it didn't help.
Does the M8 radio just suck compared to the iPhone or does someone have done other suggestions for improving cell reception? And yes I know its different for different areas but I've tried several radios now and the result seems to be the same.
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Click to collapse
I used to have signal problems (when I used my Evita and with my M8) for quite awhile where I work. It wasn't until I flashed the Dev radio I recommended that I became the ONLY person to be able to use my phone in an area we all call cell phone hell. Even the Iphone and flip phones couldn't get a signal. I initially flashed the 4.4.4 Dev radio and that did the trick. Now that I have moved on to the current Dev radio, I still see better performance.
Here's the important part though, cell reception areas differ greatly. Any number of issues may cause this. I knew a guy who lived right between two cell towers and the jumping back and forth between the two was killing his battery even though he showed he always had signal. (we confirmed this by moving closer to each tower.) He constantly had dropped calls. So it's possible your baseband may not be the issue.
Anyway, if you have funds, they make cell repeaters you can buy and boost your signal in areas you frequently are for long periods of time. But other than flashing a few radios to experiment (S-Off!) That's the best I can tell you.
I got mine today and i'm loving it.
As an electrical electronic engineering student i think i'll be finding a lot of projects i can use this for.
Must be noted, I had mine imported from New York in USA (PB2-690Y), so my data reception is spotty at times, but 3g on both 3-Hutchinson and EE work fine the majority of the time, texts and calls are fine and ALWAYS work and im okay living with the 3g data speeds of around 15-20 mbps.
Just some things to note if anyone else in the UK imported.
I payed (in total for HMRC, shipping and handling fees) a total of £550. A little more than going straight from lenovo GB (whenever its back in stock)
Some Networks wont work on the device due to lack of antenna in the device
Quick Charge still works fine with UK chargers
GPS is rock solid with wi-fi (for my Uni Campus), yet dependant on data connection when out and about (as with all phones i believe)
All of my reports on the reception are relating to my area, which is chester. a place where i have only ever rarely received a 4g connection, even in my old lg g3, and my friends struggle on iPhones to get 4g. When i move back over christmas and new years to near birmingham, where my home is, it's somewhere i know i can get a solid 4g signal, and have had so on all networks on all phones i've ever had, then i'll check in again and update. Although, by that time, people who want one in the UK will already have got theirs directly with the EMEA hardware.
Can't recommend enough getting the correct version from lenovo, but being a student wanting the hardware for its project ability more than its daily driver potential, i'm satisfied to live with lackluster data speeds.
According to the UK shop, there's not many left. And the French shop sold out.
They're back in stock in the UK, same rip-off pricing.
Now I found out you can easily unlock the bootloader, this is now my preferred phablet.