Database Users

Please help - RECEPTION ISSUES with T-Mobile MDA

All,
I got a new MDA and for some reason, it just does NOT work in my house all the time. I move my SIM into Razor, works fine. MDA would only work 50% of the time. It can not find T-Mobile network AT ALL! I would go down the street and it will pick up the signal. They I go back home... it works fine... then it will either lose signal and that would be it until i leave the house or, it will be OK for a while... Makes NO sense...
Are their upgrades or anthing i can do? This is specific to cell reception only...
Thank you very much!

wouldnt that mean that its the struture of your house which may be affecting your signal...like them big Iron beams...(not the wooden ones)
thats the only thing i can think of

but he says that his other phone works....
i have the same problem. i had a sidekick2 and a nokia before my mda. at my work (which is in a concrete/brick building) i get zero 0 reseption. my other 2 phones work fine. the other two phones do not have external antenas either. i called tmo cuase i was very pissed after spending XXX.XXX on the phone and having it not work. where as my other phones with the same carrer did. they said that the MDA does have a known problem with ant. weakness.
its so bad im on the fence about returning the phone. but i love the phone so its a tough call. i just switch the sim out at work so i have a phone. such a pain in the ass. i have week left on the 2week buyer remorse buy back. its the other thing i hate about the phone;.

Reception
I'm having the same problem with my mda. this is the second mda I've had and it sucks. I also can take my sim out and place in another phone and have a signal. I just got off the phone with Tmobile and was told there was a tower down in my area. I attempted to explain to the individual that my other phones are working and it has to be a mda problem. I'm on the verge of switching to a Blackberry. any suggestions would be appreciated.

Re: Reception
bennyhill said:
I'm having the same problem with my mda. this is the second mda I've had and it sucks. I also can take my sim out and place in another phone and have a signal. I just got off the phone with Tmobile and was told there was a tower down in my area. I attempted to explain to the individual that my other phones are working and it has to be a mda problem. I'm on the verge of switching to a Blackberry. any suggestions would be appreciated.
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There is a posting over on howardforums MDA boards about this very issue - Guy there gives a tutuorial on how to mod the antenna in the MDA and several people claim much better reception.

The antenna mod works, tried it yesterday. btw, it's here (had to search a bit)
http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=895090&highlight=mda+antenna+mod+tutorial

I didn't want to open this cute little thing up - felt like I would be doing an operation on one of my kiddies [No daddy that hurts ]...Couldn't do it...
what I did do was tape on the backside of the battery cover, two 1 1/2 half inch bass bands [maybe a 1/4 inch each] Didn't think it would do anything but by gosh, I'm sitting at my desk where I'd get 2 bars and the reception meter is full.
I'll have to update to see if it does anything for reception at home [has anyone noticed most of the reception problems happen at home?]. Will let youse know...

did you connect the bass bands to anything? Or just tape them there? What *are* bass bands anyway? Make pictures

Glad I saw these posts. I am having the exact same issues as everyone else. My Treo 650 had perfect reception everywhere and now this MDA is not getting the same level at all. As per the previous post, can you describe what bass bands are and how you attached them?

This may or may not be any help to any body, but just to report on my experience....
I have an MDA Vario which I tried with a TMobile SIM to make sure it worked before I unlocked and put my Orange sim in....
The Tmobile signal was max at home, when I put my Orange sim in I could only get between 1 and 2 strength bars.
Since upgrading my firmware from 1.6.x to 2.17.x I now get max signal all the time on Orange.
Hope this helps someone (moral of story - update firmware)
Regards
Mark

I'm quite clueless with anything you guys are talking about, the wizard is my second mda, first one was the compact, and I've never had reception problems, I have vodafone as carrier and it says 100% all the time, and analyzing the radio a bit with p3kit says the signal is usually stronger than the phone can perceive, although I must admit I had a bit of problems when I was abroad in rural areas, but switching to tmobile for a tiny while fixed that, I guess a weak signal can still be received fine outside and poorly inside

Bad Phone Quality

I am getting poor phone quality at my house. My house is in a very bad area for cell usage, however I was able to take calls with my Blackberry. With my 8525 I am getting 2 bars on the G meter, but people can not hear me.
I have the standard Cingular ROM and Radio running.
Any suggestions or fixes?
I have been reading and reading and think I may benefit from an upgrade, however, all the links to download DO NOT WORK, and I can not get access to the ftp site.
Help please!

Problem corrected by more reading. I loaded a band switch. My service was working fine on 2G.

hi, what is bandswitch?

nisha1 said:
hi, what is bandswitch?
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Have a look here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=283797
Mike

SOLVED - HSDPA in London, UK not staying connected, hard to find... see later post

I had a quick search for HSDPA and connect to HSDPA but couldnt find a solution to this problem (if it is a problem...)
I get awesome reception with my phone. At home (in the sticks/country, quite far from another town or city) I get E reception usually 2 bars to full... this is connected to gprs or just on the phone with data connection turned off...
My problem is that when I head toward and am in London I get the H signal which holds for a few seconds at full strength then my phone seems to lose reception altogether and when recption returns its back to either E or G... I am hoping its something I am not doing in the settings or that H reception in London is generally not good... I have H enabled in the connection settings and data connections in advanced config... is there anything else I can do or should be doing...? Is H recption in London generally bad (any other experiences please let me know, perhaps a street in Central London where it might be great so I can go there and test my phones H reception, I go to Oxford circus at least 2 times a week or so)? Thanks in advance...

Thats O2 - I get alot of switching too, You dont seem to have move very far for the bars to go down when the H symbol is up, then you get an E and sometimes a G - I had this with my old phone too so I dont think it is the fault of the x1.
I dont think O2 3G/HSDPA network is very good.
I did hear that some carriers simply piggy backed their 3g stuff on top of their old 2g towers but 3g range is not so good so you get this switching problem until they add more towers.

Thanks Scote... that makes sense I guess but is a pain... I am going to try to get a replacement sim to see if that makes a difference as mine is about 4 years or more old now... much appreciated.

Ok this is just an update in case anyone else has a similar problem. I called O2 and asked them about it.. after a bit of transferring the lovely lady on the line tells me I have an older sim and need to get it replaced and to make my way to the nearest carphone warehouse shop (my account holder) and they will upgrade it for free... nice... so I am off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of 02...

Can't see how changing SIM would affect anything... sounds like she was telling you what you want to hear...
Have you tried flashing to the most recent radio per my sig?

akp99 said:
Can't see how changing SIM would affect anything... sounds like she was telling you what you want to hear...
Have you tried flashing to the most recent radio per my sig?
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Possibly, but its free so doesnt hurt to try... I have not flashed a new radio yet... will try it though if the sim doesnt work out... I gather the radios are in the ROM section of the x1 board?

try a new radio, i get it a lot and have the latest 02 sim.
also i think 3 (the network) is using o2 stuff so that might be why there 3g reception is not great.

Ganondolf said:
try a new radio, i get it a lot and have the latest 02 sim.
also i think 3 (the network) is using o2 stuff so that might be why there 3g reception is not great.
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I will try out the radio that Akp99 has and see how that works... what radio do you have Ganondolf?

Ok after transferring the new sim card into my phone I noticed that I could access edge in more places in my house where before I would get edge in the living room say and the study but not in the bedroom or kids play room for example and it was a stronger signal too... I went for a trip into one of the towns near my place (a 15 minute car journey) and the first thing I noticed when I went to make a call was that I had an H and all the bars were up. This was great as I didnt even realise that this town had HSDPA capability... woo hoo... so now the test will be on Monday when I go to London and see how it does.
FYI I did not flash a new radio just changed the SIM... apparantly (not sure how true this is) my old card was a 2g (I have had it for about 4 years or so) and this new one is a 3g which they tell me would make the difference... further updates to follow...

Ok I have a solution to this problem...
I phoned O2 and was put through to a customer services rep. I told them that my sim was a few years old (up to 4 or 5) and that it was not connecting to HSDPA services as it should, the lady said that my old card was a 2g and I needed a 3g card so she made a note on my account and told me to head down to the nearest CPW store and get a 3g replacement free of charge. I have NOT flashed a new radio yet... yet... perhaps later if their might be benefits to the new one... Almost immediately I noticed that the E service was stronger all over my house... I could get full bar service pretty much anywhere, where before I was getting 2 in most places. I even noticed H service in my living room which had never happened before...
Going into London today I noticed as soon as I got out of the car that I had full bar H service... and wow is it quick. I had it everywhere I went in Central London with the bars dropping to 2 when I was walking between some very tall buildings on Oxford st. So it looks like the sim card does have a direct impact on the ability to pick up a service... and I am just tickled as a pig in mud that its working full capacity...

I have radio version 1.10.25.18
I have not flashed the radio. Also have o2 3g sim
I noticed that although i have H a lot in 3g areas, but a lot of the time when i send texts / access the net it jump back down to E or G but will stay on H if left on standbye or if i receive texts / calls.
when i make calls it seems to stay on H but hard to tell as forget to look

Problem with Hero on T-mobile UK

Hi!
I have the handset for few weeks and for couple of days I have a problem at the times to connect to internet. Look like Hero try to send data but there is problem with downlink. Some times when you turn off and on the internet it seemsd to be working at the times ....
I have already updated the software to the newest from T-mobile but still the same problem.
Any ideas ???
Thx

Well i have the same problem with Telus in Canada I thought it was a network problem but now you have me wondering if it is a defect.

same here on T-mobile UK in London... I noticed a reboot solves the problem most of the times... But I am not too sure why it happens in the first place. I noticed it seems to happen in very crowded locations rather than when I am somewhere with not too many people. Every time I install a new radio I hope to see the problem disappear, but it never really does. Quite disappointing... :-( Hope for a fix in the near future though.

I've been getting the same problem.
The HSDPA icon will change to 3G, then the connection will stall completely. I'll have to put the phone into airplane mode and back again to restore it.
T-Mobile tried fobbing me off with my contract didn't allow high speed data, to the next person telling me to just try it in a different post code, they're not aware of any problems, with finally the most recent tech support person telling me T-mobile is aware of a HSDPA and 3G problem that should be fixed in 5 days, please bare with us.
W*nkers.
I definately feel like I've bought a red herring with this phone. Or should have at least got it straight from HTC. I'm reluctant to put a new ROM on there so soon after getting it.

In Canada it seems like it is a network problem. I went out of town about a hour and data worked, came back and it did not work. Phoned and was told it is a network issue and to bear with it they are fixing the problem in a couple days. It seems odd that the same thing is happening in two different across the ocean at the same time though. Who knows if it is the same problem though.

I have the same issue with Orange till this weekend when the phone won't work on 3G at home at all even though it gets a signal. The 3G netwrk is down in my home cell area for a week so I'm stuck on 2G. 2G speeds on some sites are even better than 3G as it doesn't stall on the downlink.

I had this issue but it seems to be OK now. Probably a network issue.

Hi !
It look like the blame is the simcard
Someone suggest something and it give me idea. I have put bit of paper betwen simcard and the thing that hold it and then just a bit on top of it and does seem to have problem. It look like Hero have very sensitive simcard holder
Good luck

All fine here!
I'm in south London, UK and never seem to have a problem with the internet. I'm extremly impressed as on my bus journeys I frequently stream like radio without much problem. I hope things improve.

I'm also in south east london
I get awesome speeds with HSDPA, but not so great with 3G.
I generally stream from last.fm and it pretty much stalls when on 3G. Web-browsing on 3G alone is also not that great for me.
This sounds like it's more a problem with the coverage than the phone though (althoguh it's interesting that a reboot/re-enabling mobile net fixes it).
Couple of things to try:
1 - Download a speed-test and see what speeds you're getting.
2 - Check coverage here: http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/services/coverage/street-check/

im having problems to , i spend half the time on Wifi and only use mobile network if im out and about, but im barely getting 3g and im in heart of england (birmingham)

vodafone uk antenna probs

Hi there,
any one any ideas about the signal probs uk voda users are having. As one my self i woundering if anyone has any ideas?.
My legends a great phone but drops signal alot even in areas that suppose to have a very good 3g signal. It just drops off, then its back again. 3G and H is almost useless at times. I have to have it on 2G most of the time. Vodafone dont seem to have any answers. Any one else(other networks) having the same probs?
Any help or advice would be much appreciated

have the same problem dude . bout 70% of the time i try n send a text n it says message nto sent n gotta wait like 2 mins before i could send ...does setting it to 2g stop this??

Legend antenna problems
Check out the Vodafone e-forum thread on this - lots of us haev reported the same issue and VF are finally raising it with HTC.

mortonjones said:
Check out the Vodafone e-forum thread on this - lots of us haev reported the same issue and VF are finally raising it with HTC.
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cheers buddy, i just commented on the thread