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are cases necessary ?

I was messing around with my captivate and i was noticing it wasnt getting same amount of service that my old iphone 3g did. When i was in an area where service was quite sketchy , i would put it down and get two or three bars. When I picked it up in my hands it would drop for one bar or no service.
So the question is do we have to buy cases for these phones since service drops so much by having direct contact with the phone ?

no, cases are not necessary for reception.
If you are completely losing signal when its in your hands, you need to go to att and get a new sim card. If that doesnt work, have them replace your phone.
Note: if you are holding the phone by the bottom and losing bars but your signal is not dropping, this is perfectly normal. All phones do this to an extent since the antenna is located at the bottom. If you completely lose signal or drop calls because of it, you have a serious problem.

what i have noticed thats not just 3g reception its wifi too which is weird, i pick it up in my hand i lose a bar of wifi when i am in the same room as the cablemodem/router that doesnt seem right.
Usually when i pick up the phone it drops the three bars i hold it in my left hand usually. Another issue is i bought this phone thru amazon since it was 30 bucks cheaper for upgrade price, will att still allow for trade in or do i have to send back to amazon ?

I too have noticed this with my phone. Never really noticed until this iPhone 4 shiz came out. Guessing its par for the course.

areas where i used to get full bars i am not getting full anymore when i pick up the phone, it also happens with wifi which is really problematic.
Sitting in same room as router and cable modem and dropping below full wifi connection, and if i walk out of the room drops to one bar of wifi guess i will have to call att tomorrow and return my phone
Kind of off topic how thorougly do they check thier phones am i going to have to find an rom that has all the att bloatware stuff on it ?

This is a sad day really liked this phone , but appears i am going to have to return it , since this issue is a known issue so getting a new phone wont make these problems go away.
I was reading on another forum site that a lot of people having this same issue oh well i guess

wifi doesnt drop for me... thats really strange. in any case if you are only losing about 2 bars its normal and will happen with most phones. If you lose signal completly then its abnormal and ur phone/hardware is faulty.

yeah was reading about antennae issue on back part of phone where the battery cover is you cant touch it apparently. well i am going from 2 or 3 bars to zero bars pretty much.
An good example would be when i went into apple store which has 3g microcell tower in the store to hide the antennae problem with iphone 4 , i dont get full service and the iphones get full no matter how hard you grip them.
Going to give both samsung and att a call tomorrow morning to see what i can do i really dont think its fair to have to eat the upgrade and restock fee when phone cant perform normal functions

mongstradamus said:
yeah was reading about antennae issue on back part of phone where the battery cover is you cant touch it apparently. well i am going from 2 or 3 bars to zero bars pretty much.
An good example would be when i went into apple store which has 3g microcell tower in the store to hide the antennae problem with iphone 4 , i dont get full service and the iphones get full no matter how hard you grip them.
Going to give both samsung and att a call tomorrow morning to see what i can do i really dont think its fair to have to eat the upgrade and restock fee when phone cant perform normal functions
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If you got the phone from amazon and are returning it, then it is free to return with no restocking fee. At least thats what they told me. All you gotta do is call the number for returns so u can get a return shipping label from them. Did you ask if you could exchange for another captivate at a local At&t Warranty Center?

I will be calling att and samsung tomorrow when i wake up to see what they have to say. As far as returning it to att, if its a known issue then an replacement phone will have the same possible issues.
So i did an little experiment to test 3g and wifi. I walked across the room, which has the modem and router, and stood by the door. got no 3g service in my hand, and the wifi dropped from full bars to just 1 bar of wifi in the same room.

I don't know what you guys are talking about. I can touch the phone any which way and the bar fluctuates by a single bar, if even that. I get more fluctuation walking around in my house then I do holding it. The only time I've ever noticed a significant drop in reception has been literally covering the phone front and back with both hands. Maybe you guys are just in poor reception areas. Before you completely discount the phone and send it back, instead of relying on the bars, look at the actual db signal in the settings.

I have looked at those i get an big fat zero. the other issue i have is my wifi goes from full to 1 bar by just moving to other side of the room thats not good at all.
I have been to areas of my town where i know there is full 3g service, and i get maybe two or three bars. i was thinking maybe an case would mask that particular issue since i am not directly touching the phone. The fact that i really like this phone i would just do the case thing if that were a solution

asrrin29 said:
I don't know what you guys are talking about. I can touch the phone any which way and the bar fluctuates by a single bar, if even that. I get more fluctuation walking around in my house then I do holding it. The only time I've ever noticed a significant drop in reception has been literally covering the phone front and back with both hands. Maybe you guys are just in poor reception areas. Before you completely discount the phone and send it back, instead of relying on the bars, look at the actual db signal in the settings.
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I will admit the area where i live doesn't have the best reception in the world, but when i place the phone on an table or sofa, i get -105 dbm and 4 asu. once i pick it up drops to 0 dbm and 0 asu quite odd.

Just to make sure, I removed my phone from it's case, and plastered my hands all over it. With a solid 3 bars, I touched sides, with two fingers all the way to a two handed deathgrip. Not only did I not get a degradation of bars, at one point I got a bar increase! I palmed the back, front, cradled it my hands, held it to my body. I didn't get any change in bars.
Maybe it's the band of cell phone signal in your area. I know that either the 1900mhz or 850mhz is better than the other in terms of penetrating power, so if your signal is going over the weaker one, that may be the issue.

I am just going to give samsung a call , when i actually use phone i am not touching the back of the phone. I have taken it into area where usually you should get full service and i dont get it if i hold it in my hand.
I also did an comparison with my old 3g iphone and the 3g was getting two to three more bars...
The other major issue is my wifi signal dropping from full to one bar in the same room of the router that shouldnt be happening

well its like i said, this signal issue that you few are having isnt that wide spread. go get a replacement sim, if that doesnt work then simply have ur carrier replace your phone. you should be within the 30 day trial period anyway... dont bother talking directly with samsung, getting a phone replacement from att would be quicker.

well the only issue with returning the phone i dindt buy it directly from att , got it thru amazon so returning to get a new one may be a bit problematic i think.

The iPhone's issue is different - it has an external antenna, and one finger in the wrong place rendered no signal - one finger bridging the gap between antennas - creating an electrical conductive circuit.
The Captivate (and all other phones) have internal antennas covered with plastic (the phone's case) - so the antenna is already covered.
Apple tried to deflect criticism by talking about "The grip of death" killing signal on other phones. While this is true, it is not what plagues the iphone - although it can. All phones will show signal drop if you wrap your hand (or some other signal blocking material) around the phone.
The Problem with trying to measure the signal drop, is that signal bars are not very accurate - you need to be in the phone menus where it shows you actual signal strength in DB - I don't think you will get this for WiFi though. Then of course there are all kinds of external interference issues - Microwave ovens, cordless phones, etc.
So, unless you measure this stuff in a controlled environment, like consumer reports did, where you can control the transmitter and all eliminate all external influences, then most observations are not including all environmental factors.
My phone works great, regardless of what the bars say.

well i have seen my phones service go from -105 dbm 4 asu to nothing when i picked up the phone. and then i would get the nice blue circle with line thru it.
I did an speed test also with phone while holding it and when putting it on an table , the times i would actually get no bars on my phone while holding i would get 1/3 the dl speed of when it was sitting on a table.
I will have to wait till tues to get an replacement phone and hopefully i wont have the same issues

so are you getting the replacement from att or amazon?

Possible "death grip" issue?

I have been battling very inconsistent 2G signal levels and stumbled on a repeatable pattern with my phone. If I hold the phone in my left hand as I would while holding it to my left ear while talking the signal drops at least 12-15dBm (this is with my case removed). I can see this behavior in forced WCDMA as well but the signal swing is much smaller due to the lower initial signal strength.
Anyone else see this behavior? I love this phone but have been dealing with very inconsistent signal strength (compared to the Vibrant it is replacing). I don't know if another sample would improve things but I don't want to commit past my 14 day remorse period.

Try not to cover the lower part (where between battery and USB jack) where the antenna is.

[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] Zero bars, but near a tower (T-MO)

I have seen from time to time that I will either have zero bars, or have a good signal (3-5 bars) but no data, even though I am close to a cell tower (like within half a mile or so). What's more, I have seen where people on other networks in those same places may have full signal & data (I'm on T-Mobile). Now, to be fair, I have seen it go the other way around where I was the only one with signal/data. But my question is, is there anything I can do when I am in an area like that? Is there a setting I can change on my phone to allow/force it to use the tower? By the way, I'm not talking about some rural, obscure area. I am talking about I-64 between Richmond and Norfolk, as well as parts of I-95 between RIchmond and DC.
I have a Note II, and my wife has a SGS-3 (both T-MO) and she has the same zero bars as I do, so it is network related and not phone.

I'd suggest you phone the carrier because it's clearly from their side.

Choosing/blacklisting cell towers

I’m not sure this is the place to ask or if someone who knows the board better can move this.
I’m using cell phones as rural internet because there’s nothing here other than signing a 2-year contract and using satellite internet, and there’s a fiber-optic project supposedly under a year away.
I recently got moved (Straight Talk) from AT&T towers to T-Mobile. Uptime is around 30%, and after observing and trying to use for a week or so I figured out: Some towers work, some don’t. I can see a signal strength in “about phone” around -115 dbm when there’s no internet, that’s more like -92 when it works. I can fairly reliably get on a working tower for a couple minutes by:
Go into Airplane Mode (Android 5.02) for a minute, turning the radio off, then back on. Turn the wifi hotspot back on. On the computer drop and reestablish the connections to the phone’s AP (ifdown, wait, ifup), ping something to test. Slightly cumbersome and it switches back fairly soon. Sometimes minutes, sometimes hours. How busy the phone system is may affect this.
This particular phone is rooted so I could edit some text files if I knew which. I don’t know if the weak signal tower doesn’t work just because of the weak signal or if it’s located someplace without internet. If I could choose a preferred tower, or blacklist the bad one, or set the minimum acceptable signal to like -100 dbm, those would all work. There are probably apps for this. Or maybe it’s control the phone companies don’t want you to have.

ab1jx said:
I’m not sure this is the place to ask or if someone who knows the board better can move this.
I’m using cell phones as rural internet because there’s nothing here other than signing a 2-year contract and using satellite internet, and there’s a fiber-optic project supposedly under a year away.
I recently got moved (Straight Talk) from AT&T towers to T-Mobile. Uptime is around 30%, and after observing and trying to use for a week or so I figured out: Some towers work, some don’t. I can see a signal strength in “about phone” around -115 dbm when there’s no internet, that’s more like -92 when it works. I can fairly reliably get on a working tower for a couple minutes by:
Go into Airplane Mode for a minute, turning the radio off, then back on. Turn the wifi hotspot back on. On the computer drop and reestablish the connections to the phone’s AP (ifdown, wait, ifup), ping something to test. Slightly cumbersome and it switches back fairly soon. Sometimes minutes, sometimes hours. How busy the phone system is may affect this.
This particular phone is rooted so I could edit some text files if I knew which. I don’t know if the weak signal tower doesn’t work just because of the weak signal or if it’s located someplace without internet. If I could choose a preferred tower, or blacklist the bad one, or set the minimum acceptable signal to like -100 dbm, those would all work. There are probably apps for this. Or maybe it’s control the phone companies don’t want you to have.
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It may be possible to exclude certain towers, but for all intents and purposes, it is not possible to include/select/lock-in specific towers. Here is why, if the tools and methods to do so were readily available, then, inevitably more people would use those tools and methods. The more people were to use those tools/methods, the more unstable the whole network would become because the system would not be able to shift the load between towers to equalize/stabilize the network as a whole.
This is because the system works by balancing load, sometimes a signal can be weaker than another but, at the same time, also be faster than other. Stronger signal does not always equal faster speeds.
The concept would be similar to having more than one router/wifi signal at home, then, having everyone in the house and any/all neighbors that are in range, all connected to the same signal/router. The signal they are all connected to would be slow and unstable, the system must have the ability to "bounce" everyone around between all of the routers in order to keep performance at optimum levels "across the board". If everyone is "locked" to the one signal/router, the system can't manage itself, which leads to degradation.
Poor signal in rural areas can be expected, there isn't much you can do about it. The towers are positioned to provide coverage to as many customers as possible from their location. Also, some of the issue in rural areas is a "line of sight" thing. The lay of the land can be a hindrance to signal.
I also live in a rural area of a rural town. I get crappy signal when using cellular network, more down time than up time. I deal with having a decent(but still slow) signal for 1-2 minutes and then when the phone's system runs the next wifi/cellular data re-scan to search for better signal, everything stalls as if I'm getting no signal and it doesn't resume until it either keeps the connection it already has or it just drops out completely for 5-8 minutes until the next time the re-scan can find a signal to connect to. Then the cycle starts over with decent signal for 1-2 minutes or so, until the next re-scan, anyway. I have to turn of mobile data when at home because the virtually continuous re-scanning drains the battery and the device runs warmer than it should normally.
Sent from my SM-S767VL using Tapatalk

OK, thanks. Line of sight - I'm at 1600 Feet elevation, people driving by stop to use the cell service before they go back into the next valley.
I've been with Straight Talk since 2015, originally using AT&T towers, I think we used 13 GB of data last month. AT&T worked very well, I'd say faster than satellite internet. Verizon is also an option.
A weak signal isn't the same weakness for everyone, some people will actually be closer to it. And the population density isn't very high around here. Lat 42.65, lon -72.83. I pay about $60/month for "unlimited data", some fraction of that must end up going to T-Mobile. If the county weren't going to be getting fiber optic networking soon I'd expect the money might go into building out cell systems to handle the load. There seems to be no scaling back and limiting everyone to some number of KB/sec, with that number decreasing as more people use it. My data's either in service or it isn't. -115 dbm is weak by everything I've seen.
I also have a Huawei E3372 modem I can put my SIM into. I bought a pair of small gain external antennas with 3 meter cords. I'd need to get those up high and run something like a Raspberry Pi as a router.

ab1jx said:
OK, thanks. Line of sight - I'm at 1600 Feet elevation, people driving by stop to use the cell service before they go back into the next valley.
I've been with Straight Talk since 2015, originally using AT&T towers, I think we used 13 GB of data last month. AT&T worked very well, I'd say faster than satellite internet. Verizon is also an option.
A weak signal isn't the same weakness for everyone, some people will actually be closer to it. And the population density isn't very high around here. Lat 42.65, lon -72.83. I pay about $60/month for "unlimited data", some fraction of that must end up going to T-Mobile. If the county weren't going to be getting fiber optic networking soon I'd expect the money might go into building out cell systems to handle the load. There seems to be no scaling back and limiting everyone to some number of KB/sec, with that number decreasing as more people use it. My data's either in service or it isn't. -115 dbm is weak by everything I've seen.
I also have a Huawei E3372 modem I can put my SIM into. I bought a pair of small gain external antennas with 3 meter cords. I'd need to get those up high and run something like a Raspberry Pi as a router.
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I am on Straight Talk also, but I'm on the Verizon side. In my opinion, the Verizon side is little better and has somewhat better coverage than the T-Mobile, Sprint or AT&T side. Other than when at home, I get perfect signal strength, the only reason I get crappy signal is I'm one of the ones dealing with line of sight. I'm several miles outside of town in a low-lying area between two hills.
Sent from my SM-S767VL using Tapatalk

I should try Verizon. They're the default for landlines here but I got the impression they only did contract phones. I have 3 working Motorola XT1527s plus my modem, not interested in some contract phone. This T-mobile experience is my first other than AT&T. There's a website where you can download APK files to sideload, that runs through T-Mobile last I knew.
I think I've figured out how to talk to a human at Straight Talk. Call during east coast business hours, and in the 2nd menu mention data issues. The night/weekend people never seem to accomplish anything. They're eager to help bit they're most effective at the bulk of common issues like billing or changing a SIM. Took me over 10 phone calls last time to get anywhere.