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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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Click to collapse
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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Click to collapse
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?
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
Recently unlocked and flashed a rom improperly and messed up my phone (see here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2599519 ) long story short I got my phone fixed at a repair shop, who also installed cm 10.1.3 on it for me.
After getting the phone back I had really shotty reception. In my house where I normally got 3 bars (with signal drops rarely) I was struggling to get 1, out front of my house where I normally had a full signal I had 2-3 bars that would constantly crash to 0 signal. I literally had to walk 3 blocks up a hill to get a strong enough signal to make a phone call without it getting dropped every 30 seconds. In places of strong signal I was and am still able to get a full signal without it dropping. Went back to the shop I had it fixed at (they removed the battery because he was having trouble with the power button, they also replaced my button as it only worked 1/2 the time) and the tech said it sounded like my antenna may have been damaged. They replaced it with a new (possibly used) one for free. Thought my problems were solved as when I got home I had a normal signal in my house. A normal signal for a few hours I should say. Its been 4 hours since I got the new antenna and My phone has gone back to its old habits of getting 1 bar for 20-30 seconds every minute or two. Anyone know of something internally that could be killing the antenna? Is it possible to tech spilled some solder or ****ed something up when he changed my power button that could cause this problem?
I just want to write this post maybe it will help anyone that has or will have the same problem. I looked all over the internet and could not find a fix, so here is my fix. Hope it works.
I work over seas on oil rig sites (remote locations) so I talk to my wife and family back home via different VOIP apps so its important to get a 3G signal, usually I lock WCDMA only network and get at least 1 bar which is sufficient. All of a sudden I started experiencing very weak 3G signal on my phone, weirdly this was at the same location where it had full bars in the past. This only applies for 3G, I could get 2G signal no problem.
In other areas that I know had good 3G signals and towers were close, it would work alright outdoors but once I get behind a door or a window 3G disappears even if I have it locked. I put in my sim card in my old Galaxy Nexus and it had 3G indoors with no problems at the same place and right next to the N5. So I started testing with both phones right next to each other when I lock 3G with the same SIM the Galaxy nexus would get 3 bars while the Nexus 5 would get the empty triangle (emergency calls only).
I couldn't get out of my mind that I dropped my Nexus 5 a hard drop, but I have a rubber case that took all the shock and the phone didn't get a scratch on it. This was before the 3G signal starts getting funny. Couldn't help but feel that I broke it somehow though. I felt like this might have got something loose inside. What didn't make sense to me is that if the antenna didn't work it wouldn't get 3G at all, indoors and outdoors.
So Step 1, I assumed it was a software issue. I went through a painful hard reset. To my surprise it still had the same issue afterwards.
Then out of desperation I saw this dude's video on how he couldn't lock GPS until he opened the back of the phone and found that the GPS antenna was not connecting straight.
youtube com/watch?v=K1-uCIb-t8I[/url]
So I started searching for where the 3G or 2G antennas are on the N5, but couldnt find anything that points that out. The phone was worthless to me like that so... I took a deep breath and decided to open the phone. Keep in mind, i'm an oilfield engineer and I still had a feeling i might [email protected]#k the phone up, specially that I did not have any tools with me.
So I watched this video on how to open up the back cover:
youtube com/watch?v=mkbmtu-1KSQ[/url]
and went through this guide on what's inside the N5:
theregister co uk/2013/11/05/nexus_5_teardown_shows_a_light_touch_thats_easy_to_fix/[/url]
Then I opened it, couldn't find anything to do, except maybe clean the minor dust off and blow on the ICs a bit. There is alot of pins that connect to antennas located on the back cover itself, so I closed it up, made sure its closed tight and all the pins touching, put in my SIM, and GOD DAMN!! IT WORKS AGAIN... I was getting full bars 3G!!!
So what I figured is that when I dropped it, one of those pins moved a little bit away and broke the connection between the antenna and the IC. Works great for the last 5 hours, solid connection.
Hope I would help anyone with this
PS: put the dots in the links, XDA won't let me post outside URLs
walid.eldalil said:
I just want to write this post maybe it will help anyone that has or will have the same problem. I looked all over the internet and could not find a fix, so here is my fix. Hope it works.
I work over seas on oil rig sites (remote locations) so I talk to my wife and family back home via different VOIP apps so its important to get a 3G signal, usually I lock WCDMA only network and get at least 1 bar which is sufficient. All of a sudden I started experiencing very weak 3G signal on my phone, weirdly this was at the same location where it had full bars in the past. This only applies for 3G, I could get 2G signal no problem.
In other areas that I know had good 3G signals and towers were close, it would work alright outdoors but once I get behind a door or a window 3G disappears even if I have it locked. I put in my sim card in my old Galaxy Nexus and it had 3G indoors with no problems at the same place and right next to the N5. So I started testing with both phones right next to each other when I lock 3G with the same SIM the Galaxy nexus would get 3 bars while the Nexus 5 would get the empty triangle (emergency calls only).
I couldn't get out of my mind that I dropped my Nexus 5 a hard drop, but I have a rubber case that took all the shock and the phone didn't get a scratch on it. This was before the 3G signal starts getting funny. Couldn't help but feel that I broke it somehow though. I felt like this might have got something loose inside. What didn't make sense to me is that if the antenna didn't work it wouldn't get 3G at all, indoors and outdoors.
So Step 1, I assumed it was a software issue. I went through a painful hard reset. To my surprise it still had the same issue afterwards.
Then out of desperation I saw this dude's video on how he couldn't lock GPS until he opened the back of the phone and found that the GPS antenna was not connecting straight.
youtube com/watch?v=K1-uCIb-t8I[/url]
So I started searching for where the 3G or 2G antennas are on the N5, but couldnt find anything that points that out. The phone was worthless to me like that so... I took a deep breath and decided to open the phone. Keep in mind, i'm an oilfield engineer and I still had a feeling i might [email protected]#k the phone up, specially that I did not have any tools with me.
So I watched this video on how to open up the back cover:
youtube com/watch?v=mkbmtu-1KSQ[/url]
and went through this guide on what's inside the N5:
theregister co uk/2013/11/05/nexus_5_teardown_shows_a_light_touch_thats_easy_to_fix/[/url]
Then I opened it, couldn't find anything to do, except maybe clean the minor dust off and blow on the ICs a bit. There is alot of pins that connect to antennas located on the back cover itself, so I closed it up, made sure its closed tight and all the pins touching, put in my SIM, and GOD DAMN!! IT WORKS AGAIN... I was getting full bars 3G!!!
So what I figured is that when I dropped it, one of those pins moved a little bit away and broke the connection between the antenna and the IC. Works great for the last 5 hours, solid connection.
Hope I would help anyone with this
PS: put the dots in the links, XDA won't let me post outside URLs
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats nice , but lots of ppls have the signal issues with nexus 5 , and it isn't antena disconect for 90 % if us. I have separated the phone many times. , done about 5 hard resets's tried diffrent verions of radio's diffrent ROM's etc... nothing work's. Frineds have nexus 5 2 of them , and they can get 3g and 4g when they want, and i can only get Edge which is 2g. which is unusable..... I noticed that i have 3g only when i am in other towns, but not mine home town.... I tried diffrent sim cards, and diffrent netowrks, nothing seams to get the 3g at home, plus the gsm sucks, it interupts the calls.. So i must be the frequencies of the working 3g network in mine home town ? Then how i don't get 4g ? Why other ppl with the same phone, and same network have 3g when put next to mine ? NO one knows...
Same Issue
i am having the same issue, just having "E" Edge and cannot connect to 3G/4G, done everything to resolve the issue, took apart the antenna part of my phone but all the connectors and wires are intact, did hard reset several times, tried different ROMS including stock ROMS, tried the *#*#4636#*#* selected all the Radios but no luck, used 2 different sim cards but no use, same damn "E" in the status bar, APNs are all in place, nothing is wrong with the settings so far, dont know wots da problem with this set.
Please help us.
Since I've had this phone I've noticed that my WiFi signal is always weak at my house unless I'm right by my router. Well the other day I was upstairs which is not by the router and I took my TPU case off to put my sd card in and noticed that I had full WiFi bars. Since then I've been testing the WiFi by taking the case off and putting it back on around different parts of my house and its definitely the case. I have great signal with it off and as soon as I put it back on it takes my signal down to either nothing or the dot at the bottom of the WiFi signal sometimes maybe the dot and one bar. I've tried this like 50 times just to make sure this is what's wrong. Even if I cup my hand around the top half of the back of the phone it cuts my WiFi signal down to nothing. Is anybody else having this problem or do I have defective wifi on this device? There is no way I'm using this phone without having the TPU case on it and getting it all scratched up.
I experince same problem. It seens to disconnect from the wifi router. the signal get very weak 2 m far from the router. I just got my phone last week, so i am still testing. but one of the things that i did was to change my router to brand new one (dlink) because the old one seens to get freezing when updating play store (i put this in other post) i don't know if this are related.