Over the past month or two I've been camping several times with my family. I have a G2, and my wife has a Vibrant.
Over that time period, I've noticed that the Vibrant has been MUCH better at obtaining and keeping a cellular signal in borderline areas.
On our most recent camping trip, my G2 reported time spent searching for signal at 68%, the Vibrant reported 0%, averaged across the trip. The Vibrant also had approximately 2x the battery life of the G2, presumably because the G2 spent so much time looking for a signal.
In fact, the Vibrant was the phone we relied on for consistent data and voice access on the trip, the G2 occasionally would update my mail but was basically useless for the trip...
Vibrant is stock. G2 was running cyanogenmod 6.1.1
Good to know I've seen some threads on the G2 forum people were complaining about crappy reception and phone crashes in not so optimal signal areas - I thought it was addressed with one of the OTA's though.
Related
I just got my VZW Ozone three days ago. This phone replaced my beat up but trusty Motorola Q (original version).
I really love the Ozone, but it get's just absolutely terrible reception. My Q get's 2-3 bars in my apartment where as the Ozone gets 0-1 bars at most. I keep missing calls and when I do connect, I drop the call 4-5 times per phone call.
Is there anything I can do to increase reception? If not, it's going to have to go back. The reception is just unacceptable.
thats just insane..
everyone ive come across with an Ozone has had great reception
take it back to VZW tell em the device is faulty!
Really? Most people on howardforums say that the reception is weaker than their previous phone.
I don't think it's defective; outside I have had 5 bars and I can get data at 1.2mbps when I have good signal. I think that the hardware just doesn't receive well in fringe areas.
I was just wondering if there was any kind of radio hack available to help, even at the expense of battery life.
I just picked my new Fascinate yesterday and have been noticing something strange. I routinely have a very low signal with 3G and WiFi in places I've always had a great signal (or so I thought). Just to get it out of the way, I am not using any kind of case and I have already done a *228 update.
For example, tonight I put my Fascinate, a friend's Continuum, and a friend's original Droid in front of me on a table to compare their 3G signals. The Droid reported 4 bars, the Continuum 2 bars, and my flickered between 0 and 1.
At home, my "old" Omnia 2 routinely got 3-4 bars (still does even though it's deactivated) and my gf's LG Ally gets the same. However my Fascinate gets 1-2, sometimes dipping to 0.
Oddly, I have the same issue with my WiFi signal. At home my PC and laptop have a full strength signal while the phone is lucky to have a that first dot and maybe a bar. At work, I can walk within 4 feet of my Wireless-N router and still not have a full signal
Now everything *seems* to work so I'm hoping it's just an algorithmic display issue, but I have gotten a "Network Error" message a few times. For good measure, I'll probably pop into Verizon to compare my signal to the various displays there.
My question is: Is this a general Fascinate issue? Do I have a lemon? Should I just hope 2.2 is magic?
Thanks
same problem here.
I'm really hoping this gets fixed with 2.2.
I've had two fascinates now, and they've both had really poor signal strength compared to any other phone I've used or seen. Was at lunch the other day with a friend with a Droid 1, and I was getting 1 bar, he was getting 4. At home, it's consistently 1 to 2 bars at best, and I live less than a mile and a half from the nearest tower.
While I don't drop calls, I think it's pretty clear that the phone has a particularly week antennae design.
Since you say you just got the phone, I assume you haven't rooted and played with other roms yet. But in case you have, I noticed a significant drop in signal strength, both cellular and wifi, using JT's DJ05 rom. And it was more than just a display issue, since the wifi connection would repeatedly drop - even in the same room as my router. Switched to the stock DJ05 and I was back to normal (if you consider 1 to 2 bars normal).
Just wanted to follow-up on this. After a week of comparing signals to every smartphone I ran into, I came to the conclusion I either had a lemon or the Fascinate had serious engineering issues.
I went back to my local Verizon store and compared my phone's signal strength to all the Android phones in there, including the other Fascinates. Every phone was between -73 and -86. My phone never got any better than -101. So they swapped phones for me (new one out of the box) and this one performed like all their other phones in the store. I am now enjoying my old, normal, strong signal strength and my battery is still at healthy 80% after several hours of use, even a little wifi usage.
Moral of the Story: Check your signal strength (on any phone) against the phones in the store before you leave and don't be afraid to demand a new phone if you have that sort of concrete data to back it up!
Sent from my SCH-i500 Fascinated using the XDA App
DI01 has a signal reporting bug that is fixed in DJ05/DL09. With DI01, the best I got was -86dBm, and the jumps did not really seem to make sense. After going to DJ05, the reported signal goes up to -50dBm or so and moves in a logical direction (go inside, signal goes down) where before it would just move randomly. It is possible that there was also bad hardware, but I'd guess that it had more to do with the crappy software Samsung provided.
Interesting. I've not had any ambition to root/flash my Fascinate (I swear I did it weekly with my old Omnia 2) so for whatever it's worth, my experience was always with the stock DI01.
Hopefully you won't have similar problems after we get the maintenance update, whenever that may be.
Hey all,
I'm getting latency over 800ms up to several thousand after an overnight charge. I came into work and decided to install an app and now my latency is over 800ms. I jumped onto a co-workers wifi via sprint cellular and I'm still seeing 800+, any suggestions? I tried a hard-reboot and pulled the battery for a minute, but no fix. I'd hate to roll-back after making all these changes.. lol
Scratch that, I called TMobile and they confirmed doing work on the cell towers here today, expanding capacity due to load I imagine
What area? My latency has been pretty crappy for ages, and I'm in an HSPA+ area.
Haven't yet seen a poll on this and I am curious to see if this is really affecting as many as it seems, here on XDA.
Edit: It would appear that it is indeed an issue for 9/10 NS4G owners.
I have poor WiFi reception. I had a Hero and Evo, and my GF has a Shift, and all those devices have gotten good Wifi in the bedroom. A desktop and laptop have good reception there too. The NS is hopeless unless I stand near the door and hold it gingerly with two fingers. I ended up adding another AP in another part of the house just to cover the NS.
3G signal acquisition is a little below the average set by the above devices, but not too bad. I have to be in a pretty marginal area not to get 3G, and the Evo and Shift last only a little bit past the NS' range.
I have only just recently acknowledged this as a problem. Since day one my WiFi cuts out and my time without a signal is always high. Not sure if 3G is just poor because of Sprint, but it has also been a huge battery drain.
What's funny is the OTA announcement does not seem to state that they are working on 3g issues. It is a little unclear, but that 5th bullet point seems to say they are addressing 4g radio issues only!
re:
Hopefully they increase its stability as a result of fixing other areas of the radio? Longshot, I know.
Wifi is the suck. I have had less than full strength 1ft away from the router.
Not sure if it is this phone or Sprints cup and string network but I constantly get random periods of no internet/data throughput. Mainly on 4g. Going through one right now. 4g connects but there is just zero data tranfered. All webpages time out etc. Now on Sprints totally awesome dialup on vitamins 3g network.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk
For me, all the above. Call me pessimistic but I'm kinda doubting that software will fix a poor radio. Has anyone ever actually experienced an update solving a bad radio? I was actually considering getting a new evo 4g with the extended battery and call it a day. As more days pass by, it seems my network performance gets worse. The times where I'm not getting any data throughput are getting longer. It was annoying for awhile but now this really pissing me off! Cycling airplane mode and rebooting the phone is getting to the point where it doesn't fix anything. Its a waste of time. Like many other people are saying, I love the phone but using it for its main purpose, a phone, it is utterly horrible! Most of the time I have very little signal on the tower, if any at all. I keep saying I'm not going to buy Samsung phones anymore but I still do and continue to get burned by them.
Weird. Now that you mention it I thought the same thing. It just gets worse.
When I first got this phone I could sit on 4g all day long and the internet was just there. 3g too. 100% reliable network activity. Then about a month ago the random periods of no data throughput started happening. First it was both 3g and 4g, now it is just 4g. The 3g speeds are a joke. You can't stream **** with this phone on 3g without skipping and buffering. 4g streams fine but you still have to worry about the data throughput hitting a 2hr or longer brick wall of uselessness.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk
Luckily i keep my galaxy tab with me because my nexus will show no bars and no data when my tab will be close to full. I just end up using my tab for most of my data use.
Sent from my SPH-P100 using XDA App
If the next update comes and it doesn't fix anything, then we should be allowed to have the device replaced.
My guess is that it is a combination of our crappy radios and sprint is still having wide spread data issues. My gf has my epic and even though she gets more signal and less data loss than I do, she's still experiencing network issues. About an hour ago, I just got a bunch of responses from her that were morning and afternoon and they came in all at once. I sent an email and a text in both stock SMS and Google voice a little while ago and haven't heard anything back yet. Sprint must know they're having network issues. It seems like it has been going on for three weeks now and today is really bad. There are times that I think dial up is faster than the speeds I'm getting when it does work.
Woohoo. Just got 4g data throughput back. Only down for 4 and 1/2 hours today. All good till tomorrows outage. *eyeroll*
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk
I noticed I just got 3g back.
3G and 4G are great! only WiFi needs to be touched up. I use 3G at the home (averaging 2,000 kbps DL) so WiFi isn't needed unless I'm downloading huge ROMs or other files.
Still, I prefer having a working WiFi for friend's houses and other locations.
Well.. last month I planned a trip to visit my sister. I’ve heard a lot about EVO camera and I just had one borrowed from my friend, though i already have another model of HTC…anyway I thought this might be a perfect time to do a small review of the Evo.
Below is my experience with her Evo 4G.Before that, I want to stress that my focus was to have fun and not make this as an in-depth review of the phone, and i also not compare it to my HTC.
First the Sprint's maps told that on our area but it has almost complete 4G coverage. The tests from different part of the vicinity only shows mostly 3G connectivity. And if it does show 4G, I don't notice any obvious change in speed.
I prefer Google Navigation which I think is excellent then Sprint's because of the satellite viewing while navigating... even better than the capability of full-fledged navigation devices…There were a few times that google navigation would give a longer/slower route, but so does all other GPS devices. Over all, I'm pretty impressed with Google Navigation.
I have to admit that this camera is a lot impressive to me. It won't replace a regular point and shoot camera. But this camera is excellent for internet viewing. Reduce the size to 25% of it's original size and almost all it's image quality issues will be greatly reduced.
About Battery life... The battery didn't last long for me, and surely I did put brightness to auto-brightness, turned off 4G, GPS and wifi When I wasn't using them. It barely lasted only about 3.5 hours, good thing I got my 5200 mAh extended power bank and an replacement battery. I didn't notice any major difference between the OEM battery and the replacement battery.
Again notice that my focus is to have fun and try my new phone camera. My battery after second charge held out till we got back home, with me posting on FB. Overall, I have not too much to complain about, I just found some solutions to my issues. The only solution I haven't found yet, is the 4G coverage. From Sprint's map, it says we're fully covered, but as I go from place to place, the 4G coverage was spotty at best.