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I-Mate 9502 owners old and new - survey please

My 9502 was sent off to the seller requesting a refund just over 2 weeks ago. Thay have finally decided that they can't replicate the problem and are sending it to I-Mate (again) to repair.
I can see me getting fobbed off here so I thought I'd try this survey. I know a lot of people on these forums reported returning their 9502 because of the bug where it won't search for signal when on standby or had general signal problems.
Please answer the poll question and maybe post where you live and which network operator you use.
Cheers.

No problems here !
No problems using my 9502 through TIM Brasil ! Where I live I have EDGE (and GPRS, of course) only for now (3G will reach my city soon), but I travel daily to a 3G/HSDPA covered area.
Cheers!
Carlos

No Problems here too
I am in Melbourne, Australia. Have had my 9502 for about 3 months and it has not missed a beat. I have noticed that when it can't find a GSM connection, it will switch to 3G. Which is ok by me. I have not loaded it up with too many apps, just some for my basic needs. Even when travelling I have no connection issues.
1. SPB Plus
2. SPB Shell
3. TomTom
4. Resco Keyboard
5. Fizz Traveller.

Cheers for this guys. Keep em coming!

In Sydney Australia (Telstra) and havn't had any signal problems (have had the 9502 for a few months). I was also in the US recently and global roamed onto AT&T and had no apparent issues there either.

It is kinda looking like this is a problem with the 9502 on UK frequencies. Or maybe its a problem which the Telstra ROM doesn't suffer from.
I flashed tot he 6.1 ROM and it still suffered with it. It really did render it useless as I travel a lot.
Either way, I wish they'd hurry up and fix it or replace my bloody device. It's been gone 3 weeks now (+ 2 weeks the first time).

Come on UK users! Surely some people on these forums must have a 9502.

I have a 9502 and it never suffered such problems - it was always perfectly reliable (well, as reliable as can be when you are on Tmobile UK!). I did not flash the 6.1 upgrade and am just about to sell it as I have moved to a Diamond (and am likely also to get my mits on a Touch Pro)!

apd said:
I have a 9502 and it never suffered such problems - it was always perfectly reliable (well, as reliable as can be when you are on Tmobile UK!). I did not flash the 6.1 upgrade and am just about to sell it as I have moved to a Diamond (and am likely also to get my mits on a Touch Pro)!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you use 3G? And do you get good receiption where you live?
I think it s a problem that only affects people in low signal areas. In my home and in cities it is fine, but if I go somewhere with no signal or if signal drops for a few seconds it will not search again until awoken. I travel a whole lot meaning it spends a lot of time sat in my pocket with no signal.
I am on Vodafone and have noticed that they have appauling coverage which I think makes the problem much more noticable. I live in a 3G area and get full signal HSDPA in my house. This is true for almost the whole area I live in for about 5 miles in each direction, however there are absolutely loads of 'dead spots' where there is no signal whatsoever, or where signal comes and goes.
And where my girlfriend lives, signal will drop every 5 minutes or so. Not a problem with normal devices as they just search again and have signal again after 4 or 5 seconds. The 9502 does not do this unless I wake it up meaning most of the time I am uncontactable - especially at night when I am not awake to turn the thing on and off.

mike freegan said:
Did you use 3G? And do you get good receiption where you live?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did use 3G and HSDPA (I use Direct Push so it is on permanently). I have terrible signal where i live (halfway down a steep hill in London) but it would only very rarely lose the connection. I would often have only one bar but that has been the same for all my phones. When it lost the connection, it would always regain it when I returned to a better position in the house.

As an additonal note to my previous post, in my work there are many buildings, and there are lots of spots with dead signal. When I pass through one of those areas, the 9502's green led stops flashing, but, as soon as I enter a signal covered area, it starts flashing again, of course meaning it has detected the radio signal.
If I wake it up right afterwards, as soon as I do it I see the signal bar and my operator's name, i.e. it has regained signal whilst in standby mode without problems.
Cheers!
Carlos

That's interesting. Now I'm wondering its something to do with Vodafone, or if it is specific to certain devices. I tried my 9502 set to auto and european but it still suffered, although I know this fixed the problem for people in other localities.
Here's something interesting that may or may not be related: I go to law school on Manchester Oxford Road, right near Oxford Road train station. My SE P990i has always been fine there and gets full 3G receiption on Vodafone. The 9502 also displayed full 3G signal, however it was completely unable to recieve calls and text messages or use the internet. If I walked 5 minutes towards Picadilly, or once I got to Deansgate (the next stop) on the train home it'd work again and text messages would start flooding in. I did this every week for the 3 months I had it and never once managed to use any radio functions on Oxford Road! Bizarre.

exclamation(!) mark on antenna sign

hi.
i have got problem with my touch pro.
some times i see exclamation mark( ! ) on the anntena sign.
i have got anntena but suddenly it break(cut).i search network and find but when i want to register, see error that you cannot register... after that i turn off and turn on device and it work right.
what i must to do???
this is my touch pro information :
ROM version:1.90.46.3 WWE
ROM date:08/20/08
Radio version : 1.02.25.19
Protocol version: 52.33.25.17U
sorry for my bad english writing.

this means you have a very weak signal. Theres not much you can do about it other than not live in a bunker

That is because your phone locks on to the tower when it is powered up at first, but then it doesn't try as hard to maintain the signal (actively) as this is too much work for the battery. In patchy areas, you may find that you don't actually drop calls much as your "!" indicator would lead you to believe, but to actually connect in the first place can be a challenge.
As Antzor said, you have flaky signal where you reside.

thanks for your replay.
when i have signal its full,i have got very great signal but suddenly its cut and its not depends to my reside.
for example in my room i have got full signal with touch pro but some times suddenly its break and i see "!" indicator
it happened in everywhere

In that case you have either a localized source of interference or a faulty unit. If this happens everywhere I would suspect the latter. Time to get it looked at I think.

help meeeeeeeeeeeeee

[Q] found a serious flaw with radio hardware and shipped ROM downloading consistency!

Hi all, please welcome me whom had bought the Optimus 3d just 2 days ago. I love this phone. Please do let me welcome you all to talk about a flaw, which I've found out right away with the new phone since 2 days ago! I've been with some others Android phones, so, I should say I've had good experience with Androids.
I realized that Optimus 3D has some kinda hardware Radio receiver flaw (I really don't know what should I really call it) similar to the famous iPhone 4 dilemma in the beginning. I found out that the "Radio receiver" is located somewhere at the bottom of the phone, where our hands most often holding the phone with. The hand will block out the signals and the signal bar will be reduced by a lot as much as to zero (if the signal strength itself is not strong in the 1st place!) Try find this yourself, have some experience by holding the phone at the bottom and let go and holding the phone and again let go, keep trying this you should see the signal strength that will drop and rise and drop and rise again. Or is this only my phone? But I've never experience this phenomenal with other Android phones!
Also, I don't know this has the directly link to the downloading issue or whenever browsing nets, the network data will drop very very often. I hardly got successful downloads from the market without few retries. Thank god at least at the moment I can temporarily fix it by turning off and on again with the data enabling shortcut in the pull down menu.
Please help me here and advice! Very much appreciated!

Since the famous iPhone 4 drama for a lot of phones these stories pop up once in a while. I know lots of people furiously believed the Samsung Galaxy S had the exact same problem but after a week or so nobody ever talked about it anymore.
I myself have absolutely no problem whatsoever with the signal, not even when I completely cover the entire phone with my hands leaving just a small spot to read the signal it never drops, not by one bar. I've never had a single download dropped with either 3G or wifi and I've downloaded my share of stuff from the market and other places.
I've tested this with my T-Mobile simcard (which has pretty horrible coverage here) and with my Vodafone simcard (which has great reception) and with both simcards the signal strength stays exactly the same according to the bars. Even when I go to the settings the dBm and asu values stay exactly the same, no matter how long and how bad I cover the phone.
So far you're the first and only person I've read about having these issues so I think it just could be an isolated incident, although that would be bad for you as that would mean you could have a defective phone

This problem is not something new and is not related with O3D.
All the phones have the same issue.
It is normal that if put your hand on the antenna the reception will drop.
The radio waves just work like this.
However the atenuation from your hand is most accentuated on higher frequencies like 2100Mhz.
On every phone even on the oldest phone with external antenna you will meet this phenomenon.

The difference between 4 bars and 1 bar is only around 10dBm which really isnt that massive a drop at all. Now that you've pointed this out i do see that the signal strength varies a little depending on how you hold the phone but its not enough to panic about i don't think. The iphone 4 problem was significantly greater in that the iss was that a user's hand would electeically short the mobile network antenna to the bluetooth and wifi antenna causing a total loss of signal. While 10dBm or so is a definite dip in signal strength, it's an acceptable level of attenuation and i dont see it causing any real world day to day network problems that you wouldn't experience with any other high end smartphone.
My workplace is in a giant tin hut of an industrial unit (read: faraday cage) and today while i had this phone there for the first time i saw no noticeable network coverage problems. The behaviour was as far as i can tell exactly tue same as my motorola milestone from which i upgraded.
Sent from my LG-P920 using XDA Premium App

As stated all phones can lose a bit of the reception when it's in your hand depending on how you hold it, the reason Iphone4 was such a big deal was that it was extremly sensitive when it came to left-handed people and they had a real problem with their antenna being totally blocked when holding the phone normally when speaking in it.
Later on media and uninformed people started fueling the flames as soon as they saw a bar drop when picking up the phone, radio waves are not magical rays or tachyons that can move though matter without interacting with it.

thanks for all the replies. Believe me or not, this is the 1st phone I realize this issue and it is so obvious, the bad news is, it is really bad for me that the antenna is located at the bottom, probably most others phones I've owned were at the top as a result i didn't got any problem before.
And another issue, I'm pretty stucked with the shipped rom now, really hope to see custom roms soon. I'm at the moment totally freak out with the inconsistent of data and the wifi, it keeps failing me, this really freak me off, what the hell is happening to me with this phone! I've never ever got any dropped data or wifi connections before. Arggghhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

I have no signal drop out no matter what hand positioning i use..

I'm in a very poor reception area. I do notice hand over phone a drop from 1 bar to none. Still not a red cross to indicate no signal but a drop of 1 bar all the same.

Just tested it.
Signal drops from 4 bars to 3 (1-2 in awkward positions) when hand-held. Not an real-life-usage impact though...

Thanks for all the test replies to support my findings. OK, now, I've realized that the hand holding issue has no direct impact to data drops. And the data drop is entirely due to the time issue which it does not lock down the data connection when swithcing data modes. And at the moment it can beasily over come to turn off with the data button in the pull down menu. I'm not sure though when in the situation when the signal strenght was so low, by holding with hands will give an direct effect of data drop or not. Will observe that

[Q] Signal Issues

hello all. my issue is this. i live in a area with poor signal. extremely poor actually. in my bedroom while im in bed, ill b lucky to get 2 bars. in class, i usually lose signal all together. which in turn sucks more battery as its always searching 4 a signal. do you think a different radio would make a difference? a friend in my class is on the same provider with his sa,sung galaxy s 2 and gets 3 bars in class..while i cannot even connect to the network. is it possible thi is a hardware issue?

LINKSLOVESANDROID said:
hello all. my issue is this. i live in a area with poor signal. extremely poor actually. in my bedroom while im in bed, ill b lucky to get 2 bars. in class, i usually lose signal all together. which in turn sucks more battery as its always searching 4 a signal. do you think a different radio would make a difference? a friend in my class is on the same provider with his sa,sung galaxy s 2 and gets 3 bars in class..while i cannot even connect to the network. is it possible thi is a hardware issue?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
I notice you are on 3.6.2 XE.
Was it the same signal problems on previous versions?
What radio are you on?
There is a ril thread HERE.
Maybe you should check it out.

Don't do much efforts as i have the same signal issues...
My problem is that my room is in basement of the home.. I get 2-3 bars and its most of the time searching for a signal...
my friends have to message me first to call me coz they always
I flashed 2-3 radio files but no gain... My desire signals were better than my Sensation...
but that's for sure when you have 3 bars strength signals then it works fine... on 2 bars it won't even dial a number giving no network error...
So just live with it our buy some other set with good signals...

Poor Reception Issue
Hi there, i live in the uk and have a similar issue living in a mobile reception blackspot, it doesnt matter what network or handset you have the reception is crap. I found a solution that works for me, maybe they will have something similar out there. see here - http://www.vodafone.co.uk/personal/price-plans/network-and-coverage/sure-signal/index.htm

[Q] Signal strenght

Hi,
I' ve just bought a 820 and I am up to now happy with it ...
However I have the impression that the signal reception is quite weak; do you have a similar problem?

is OK, compared to BB and Desire S at the same place-

Thanks...
In fact at some "difficult" places I get only one bar (or even no signal - but rarely) while with my old Samsung I had practically always enough signal.

I had issues with signal prior to the update that went out today for my phone from Tmobile , now I have a good signal everywhere in my house. Can sit on the couch and text,web surf, and whatever else at high speed.

Murali Krishna
I have Nokia 820 and I also face problem of the signal strength fading out - call getting dropped and after a few seconds the signal comes back. Is there a solution for this.