I just wanted to post a warning message for all users contemplating using Orange. I have switched from Vodafone to Orange. I have an unlocked SPV 3100. While I was using a Vodafone sim I has a 3G signal 85 – 90% of the time.
I have now switched over to orange (Business contract) and in the same device I have seen a 3G signal once (for about 30 seconds) in 3 weeks. I live and work in central London so this seems ridiculous!
There are two companies I am involved with who have bought business phones for all their staff who work all over London. All users have huge signal problems. It seems that Oranges infrastructure is far inferior to other networks. I can’t believe that in a major city I cannot get a 3G signal. Most of the time I have 2 bars on a GPRS signal.
So anyone currently contemplating which service provider to choose be warned. It is a shame because the SPV 3100 is a great looking phone, if only Orange had the coverage to allow you to use it properly!
It turns out that Orange provided me with a sim card which was not 3G Capable. I new sim should sort this issue out!
Thought it was strange i live in central London and my phone (Universal) nearly always has 3g availability with the full 4 bars of signal when i'm at home.
Before this phone I had the Blue Angel (M2000 - only 2.5g) and I would only get 1-2 bars of signal when i was at home.
Hope the new SIM sorts it.
Matt
LeoPheonix said:
I just wanted to post a warning message for all users contemplating using Orange.
...edit....
It seems that Oranges infrastructure is far inferior to other networks. I can’t believe that in a major city I cannot get a 3G signal. Most of the time I have 2 bars on a GPRS signal.
So anyone currently contemplating which service provider to choose be warned. It is a shame because the SPV 3100 is a great looking phone, if only Orange had the coverage to allow you to use it properly!
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Completely agree with this. I was an original user of Orange back in '94 until earlier this year - swapped to O2 cos signal 'seems' to be better than the others. Use Voda for work and O2 is consistenly better where I live/go for business (including London)
I used to drive from Manchester Airport around the M60 and then 6 miles north and used to lose calls 4 times on the journey in exactly the same place (despite having a properly fitted car kit). Orange really needs to sort it's network strength out.
Yep I switched from O2 to Orange a few months back. I can't believe how crappy 3g coverage is at my house and in the office (west London, W4/W5)... very disappointing.
Related
am I right in presuming O2, Orange, Tmobile and Vodaphone will be selling the Universal.
which has the widest G3 coverage.
Which will be the cheapest.
Will the different models be the same spec with different cosmetics.
cheers
SteveW
T-mobile hasn't technically launched their 3G network (except for a laptop data card). It is due to happen in October. So no coverage or tariffs yet - but the rates they offer for their data card are here: http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/Dispatcher?menuid=phones_im_cc3g_wic
Vodafone - god knows. They seem to believe that their 3G tariffs should be a secret. Coverage is here: http://www.vodafone.co.uk/coverage.htm?zl=5&x=-1&y=-1&st=UK Postcode&ct=gprs
Orange - offer 30 minutes free video calling per month and 1000MB data per month free of charge for three months. Then you choose one of their standard data plans (currently here - http://www2.orange.co.uk/servlet/Sa...=OUKService&t=Service&cid=1096023564495&tab=2). Coverage is here: http://coverage.orange.co.uk/uk/UKCoverageSearch.htm
O2 - data tariffs are here: http://www.o2.co.uk/business/tariffs/datatariffs/0,,203,00.html Coverage - no idea.
I would imagine the hardware will be the same for all - it has been with previous HTC models. The only prices for buying the actual Universal itself have come from O2 - from free to £179.99 to £229.99.
You are forgetting the BEST 3G network in the UK.
80% coverage and always increasing, best 3G phones, best expertise, been going the longest and approprately named!
3!!
I am planning on buying one from O2, unlock it asap and then bung in a 3 sim card and happily vid call from there.
I'll be honest.
Currently, the other networks which have 3G services, Orange, Vody, T-mob and o2 are rubbish at it.
Vody have the second best coverage (about 40%) but they have seemless connections between 2.5g and 3g unlike 3 who's 2.5g service is provided by O2.
And in case you didn't know... O2 have the worst 3G coverage in the UK, they started too late and know if they don't have 80% by 2008 (i think), I am not sure whether they will loose their 3G operating license. They current;y have around 12%.
For more info on 3g go to www.3g.co.uk
would they not roam on eachothers networks ?
they do here at least with gsm
mainly because 3 have a very poor coverish and only have utms
so they have to change to gsm when ever they cant get strong enough signal
Biohead said:
You are forgetting the BEST 3G network in the UK.
80% coverage and always increasing, best 3G phones, best expertise, been going the longest and approprately named!
3!!
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Is this an ironic use of the word 'best'? 3 have the dubious distinction of being the officially most compleined about technology company of 2004. Their network stinks, their phone return rate is through the roof, their customer service (based in India) seems to believe that answering the phone is entirely optional.
As a company and a service they stink worse than 3 month old fish...!
I am planning on buying one from O2, unlock it asap and then bung in a 3 sim card and happily vid call from there.
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Tell me - how do you expect to use your Exec to surf the internet - being as 3 restrict you to a 'walled garden'...?
I'll be honest.
Currently, the other networks which have 3G services, Orange, Vody, T-mob and o2 are rubbish at it.
Vody have the second best coverage (about 40%) but they have seemless connections between 2.5g and 3g unlike 3 who's 2.5g service is provided by O2.
And in case you didn't know... O2 have the worst 3G coverage in the UK, they started too late and know if they don't have 80% by 2008 (i think), I am not sure whether they will loose their 3G operating license. They current;y have around 12%.
For more info on 3g go to www.3g.co.uk
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I don't know whether those figures are correct or not (source please?) but 3 has an incredibly patchy network full stop. Not only are you lucky to get reception at all in some areas but moving from a 3G area into a GPRS area gets you cut off virtually every time. The same applies to voice calls - move from an area with 3 coverage (so very easy to do) and the transfer to GSM cuts you off.
I'll take a smaller 3G coverage with seemless GPRS transfer every time.
Not to mention - in order to do what you suggest you need to take out a minimum contract with O2 on top of your 3 contract.
Bad, bad advice...!
I suppose I only use them now since I actually live in a reliable signal. If I want to surf the net I will use the wifi. I have access to 2 of my own network (long story) and tens more where I live.
3 do have a patchy network, but it is also the largest one.
Don't forget, that many people complained about the original hansets (the NECs) and they believe that that is how three will always be. The latest handsets don't have any problems
As for the O2 contract, I'm taking it out for the wife who will use it on her Moto V620.
O2 coverage is here: www.webmap.o2.co.uk
Last I heard was around 40% 3g coverage but that was some time ago. I use their 3g data card and its pretty darn good.
here 3 are becomming inc unpopular they are the only utms network currently but i bet very soon after the other phonecompany's here
just the utms bandwagon they will have a bigger network and 3 will roam more on their network then the other way around
I'm not saying anything for definate, but theres been a leaked memo from 3UK about 3 offering a data service as of 1st september.
But if it is the destruction of the walled garden, it's gotta be better than Vodafone £7.50 per mb for payg people.
i-mate JASJAR
Just to let you know I have ordered a i-mate JASJAR (Crap name) from expansys UK. 4 day delivery.
I went for the Vodaphone because we just moved premises this weekend and the O2 coverage is poor.
Cheers
SteveW
Haha, the hatred for 3 in this thread is funny.
Also unfounded. Network of the year two years running, guys..... if you didn't buy from e2save and other cashback dealers you'd get fine customer service from the likes of myself in your local 3point.
I love my VARIO II, but its gonna have to go back.
I bought my VARIO II from the Leeds Tmobile store last Friday. Brilliant 3G reception at home, centre of Leeds and York. Even good on the train between Leeds and Harrogate where I work. Only problem is reception at work is rubbish - inside and outside.
I checked the availability before buying and the site says good 2G and OK 3G. Trouble is I'm missing calls and getting voicemail alerts after.
It's not the phone, as I've popped my Tmob SIM into a QTEK 8500 and reception is still rubbish. This normally has an Orange SIM and I get a full signal with this.
Orange coverage at home is poor and Tmob great.
With the availability checker saying good reception, will I have any trouble with Tmobile cancelling the contract and returning the phone. Any tips for getting it sorted.
Other Tmob customers at work have similar problems. One chap has just changed to Orange to get round the issue.
Mike
I cancelled my web n walk pro datacard tarif after twenty days in the t-mobile shop as I decided I'd be better off using my phone as a modem instead.
it shouldn't be a problem at all, so long as you are nice to the assistant!
I'm surprised you are struggling so much for a signal, since u don't sound like you live in the sticks!
just got back to London from Christmas in the country - first road test for my Trinity.
Very disappointed with reception when out of town. I'm on vodafone UK - in areas where my back up phones (RAZR V3i & Samsung D900) had 4 bars and a perfect signal, my Trinity had no reception at all.
In locations where I was getting a (weak) 2 bar 3G signal on Nokia N70 the Trinity had no coverage at all.
Interested to hear any other experience on signal strength & reception with the Trinity as it hasn't been out of it's box for my week away from town (it was a brick) which is not going to work for me.....
I cannot agree with your complain, maybe you have a defective mobile?
I have a nokia n70 and when i check the network coverage difference for the same network in both mobiles i see that normally the Trinity is the same or better.
I have a strange reception problem with the Trinity using Celcom 3G (Malaysia). When I'm at home at my apartment (23rd floor), the unit is consistently dropping calls after a duration of between 1 and 4 minutes. I can get through to the person I'm calling, or the caller can reach me; but after a while the call gets garbled and then the phone disconnects. 3G signal strength in my apartment is 80% to 90%, so I don't understand what the problem is.
If I switch to 2G band in my apartment or I go to ground level, I don't have this problem. Any ideas what might be causing this?
Mark One said:
just got back to London from Christmas in the country - first road test for my Trinity.
Very disappointed with reception when out of town. I'm on vodafone UK - in areas where my back up phones (RAZR V3i & Samsung D900) had 4 bars and a perfect signal, my Trinity had no reception at all.
In locations where I was getting a (weak) 2 bar 3G signal on Nokia N70 the Trinity had no coverage at all.
Interested to hear any other experience on signal strength & reception with the Trinity as it hasn't been out of it's box for my week away from town (it was a brick) which is not going to work for me.....
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I have owned a Prophet for a year now. I recently received my new Trinity. I was really disappointed to find that my Trinity was having trouble acquiring a signal after a soft reset while my Prophet grabbed one immediately. I discovered that the GSM chip I had put my Trinity was an old one. I went into Cingular and they replaced it with a brand new 3G chip and that solved all the problems. Now my Trinity is running circles around my Prophet in every respect, including GSM reception, wifi reception and phone sound quality. Yippeee!
Edit: I might also add that I am in a "fringe" area for reception at the moment, and out of all of the GSM phones from all of my relatives in our house that are here for the holidays, my Trinity is getting the best reception by a long shot.
Thanks Mattehorn,
Yup, I am still using my legacy SIM (if that's what you mean by GSM chip) - vodafone assured me that I would not need a new SIM but I will push them a bit on this point.
My area in upstate New York has superior coverage for ATT 3G on the coverage map yet my xperia x1A switches often to Edge with an E displaying. I also have consistently experienced only 2 bars when in the "H" or 3G network....Does something have to be changed in the settings or does the phone just not fit the bill....This is unacceptable for such an expensive phone...
Is it the phone or your carrier/operator/provider ??
I'm gettin' 4 bars all the time (HSDPA, 850MHz)
I don't think any operators coverage maps are very accurate..
According to vodaphone my closest tower is 3g, according to offcom it's not..
Ofcom can be quite out of date. A site went up near work curious to find out who it belonged to I checked on the Sitefinder website only to be told one wasn't there. Six months later still no info.
Many users have complaint about poor (weak) signal reception...
But others (as me) are getting full bars and excelent coverage
Please vote and tell the world your Xperience
Mine seems to be okay. My completely subjective opinion is that it's not quite as good as my old Motorola Q9h Global, but it is about as good as my Nokia E71-2.
Considering that I live in zone 1 of one of the worlds major capitals the signal is crap ! ... in terms of reception DEFINITELY the worse phone I ever had (this is Vodafone / London)
Amanox said:
Considering that I live in zone 1 of one of the worlds major capitals the signal is crap ! ... in terms of reception DEFINITELY the worse phone I ever had (this is Vodafone / London)
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Tested another carrier ??
Testd another phone ??
Xperia is crap ??
or Vodafone is crap ??
This is exactly what we expect to find with this poll
I have no problem whatsoever with signal reception anywhere in the city, almost alway full bar.
in buildings (basement, any floor upwards) i got either 2 bars or 3 bars AND HSDPA.
i live in Jakarta, Indonesia btw...
Well.. I'm from Telcel Mexico, and I've been testing several radios (stock, xperia's 1.10.25. I dont remember) and the latest from the blackstone.. I've something to say... My Motorola MPx220 has better reception... even my girlfriends LG's Shine has reception in some places I dont
I'm hopping that Sony Ericcson can solve this.. (believe me.. it's really a shame that my girlfriend makes fun of my SUPER POWERFUL phone's crap reception..)
The signal on my X1i is fine, although i can see that the bars fluctuate a lot depending on the location i have never had any dropped calls. I assume that the measurement system on the X1i is far more accurate than i.e. a Nokia where it shows always a full signal until you dial a call and then it drops down a few bars to its actual reading.
I would say the signal is as strong as with the Nokia N95 and the SE w900i before. I cannot complain.
Don't mind your X1.. blame your operator for the signal!
2008 I had 4 phones all using Vodafone UK.... W960i, W880i, W890i and the X1, going round the same places the signal strength is on par with the w960i for me and better than the w880i and w890i... So that is comparing against 3 other Sony phones....
In the Central US with T-Mobile reception is just fine. = to my w850i
For me the X1 works much better than Tytn and Kaiser. I know than Tele2 (Swedish operator) have done som uppgrading. 2G / 3G switching works great now. Before the upgrade it was bad.
Had my x1 a week, currently it's getting the same if not slightly better signal than other HTC/SE phones in our house. Our town has poor reception in most areas but my x1 has been no different from other phones so far.
Well i know there were concerns about using T-mobile UK with the X1 but i've not really had any problems. I used to have the w580i and i'd say that was worse than the xperia. My house isn't particulary great for signal and i have two/three bars. So yeah...no issue here!
No problems at all here -London on Vodafone
I think we should separate X1i and X1a pole. Look at my reception on X1a with AT&T 3G. I paid $30 for internet
damskie said:
Don't mind your X1.. blame your operator for the signal!
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Location: My home address
Operator: O2
Phone: HTC Hermes = connects to HSDPA in every room - never loose signal
Phone: HTC Polaris = connects to HSDPA in every room - never loose signal
Phone: Xperia = Connects to GPRS in most rooms, very occassionaly HSDPA - looses signal regularly
I have tried 3 Xperias all with the same result.
You want me to blame my operator?
When the Xperia is close to a base-station/transmitter there are no signal problems. As soon as the environment gets slightly tricky, it can't cope, unlike my older HTC phones as demonstrated above.
At work, I don't have a problem with any of my phones including the Xperia; I have a base-station on the roof of my office building
randy_c said:
I think we should separate X1i and X1a pole. Look at my reception on X1a with AT&T 3G. I paid $30 for internet
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I have both X1a & X1i
My reception on X1a with TIGO 3.5G 850MHz is always HSDPA FULL BARS (urban)
I pay half that for 3,600 kbps internet
Still wanna blame the Xperia ??
That's not fair (for the phone)
I ve been with vodafone for the past years at the same address and all other phones get better signal ... however, the main problem is that the Xperia keeps dropping the signal for no reason. to give an exampe ..
Phone lies on my desk with 2 bars reception... when I reach for the phone to write a message or make a phone call, chances are that just by picking it up, e.g. moving it for a couple of inches, the phone will drop the signal .. then I ll have to wait for a minute till it picks it up again - as soon as it does it is back up to 2 bars and I can start making the phone call.
this is however only in areas where the signal is generally weaker e.g. where u would normally not get more than 2 bars anyway (like where I live - although I get full reception on my nokias with the same sim card).
If you are somewhere with good reception then there is no problem
hope that helps
Amanox said:
I ve been with vodafone for the past years at the same address and all other phones get better signal ... however, the main problem is that the Xperia keeps dropping the signal for no reason. to give an exampe ..
Phone lies on my desk with 2 bars reception... when I reach for the phone to write a message or make a phone call, chances are that just by picking it up, e.g. moving it for a couple of inches, the phone will drop the signal .. then I ll have to wait for a minute till it picks it up again - as soon as it does it is back up to 2 bars and I can start making the phone call.
this is however only in areas where the signal is generally weaker e.g. where u would normally not get more than 2 bars anyway (like where I live - although I get full reception on my nokias with the same sim card).
If you are somewhere with good reception then there is no problem
hope that helps
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Yep, I get that as well.