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[Q] Great signal but terrible performance

I work in a midtown Manhattan hi-rise near Rockefeller Center and get full signal bars on any phone in and around the office.
The problem is I get terrible performance. Voice calls are garbled and drop, and sometimes callers go straight to voice mail. E-mail, data and web work sporadically and load slowly if at all. The phone will actually get hot just sitting on the desk as if its CPU or transmitter is locked at 100%, and the battery drains quickly.
It's the same whether it's an iPhone, Android or Symbian smart phone or just simple dumb phone, and other people in my office have the same issues. I even notice the same kinds of things happening out on the street up to maybe a block away, but it seems to be at its worst when I'm in the building. But two blocks away, walking through Times Square or other busy places, everything is OK.
Any idea what could be going on and if there's any way to get around it? This is on AT&T.

Change baseband?

I think it's the fault of AT & T

AT&T is a terrible company

+1 on the AT&T being crap

I tried changing baseband but it didn't help, plus like I said it happens on all different kinds of phones. I've also tried manually switching from 850MHz over to 1900MHz band but that didn't help.
Updating my kernel might have actually helped a bit. It's hard to tell though, because the problem comes and goes.
I'm wondering if the signals are too strong and overloading the phone. Or maybe I'm exactly halfway between two strong towers in this building and they're interfering with each other, is that plausible? This is in the heart of NYC after all, AT&T must have a lot of towers in a very concentrated area around here.
Samsung Captivate i897
Serendipity 6.4
Baseband I9000UGKC1
Speedmod Kernel i897-13E-500MHz

I had a similar problem in my area once, it was rectified by the Network Provider.
Its due the GSM inter cell inheritence. Are you located very near to a Mobile Antenna tower.
It would be worth checking your own office building terrace for same

watt9493 said:
+1 on the AT&T being crap
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i've had nothing but trouble with them in the past

Teampokerface
Heres how you fix the issue. I had a friend with the same issue. 1. open the window of your skyrise 2. take phone are throw it out the window 3. take elevator down to lower level. 4. Find nearest Verizon or Tmobile or sprint store and port your number. 5. take new phone from new network to your skyrise. 6. Congrats your problem has been solved. ANYONE WHO HAS AT&T NEEDS TO GIVE THEM THE FINGER AND MOVE TO ANOTHER CARRIER.

Thanks but if I wanted to hear people say AT&T sucks I would have posted this to Yahoo or something. I get a much better rate with AT&T through my company's FAN account, and I'd rather not pay double to another carrier if this is a technical issue that can be addressed.
For now I can use wifi around the office and put up with the spotty voice coverage, but I was hoping I might find some helpful technical advice here since this is supposed to be a developers forum with presumably mature users.
rathore4u - I'll see if I can find someone at my provider's tech support who understands the GSM inter cell inheritence issue you suggested. Thanks.

[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] Losing network with the Inspire 4g

Hi all, after a fruitful unlocking, rooting with the hack-kit, i updated the radio using the hack kit itself. However previously as well as with the new radio, the network reception was bad. I can tell this as my phone was showing no network whereas a friend along was chatting away on his phone. I thought this might have to do something with the radio. Hence i loaded up the Android Revolution HD 5.2.3 along with the recommended radio 12.54.60.25_26.09.04.11_M2; although the data speeds improved greatly, it is still losing connections in areas where other phones are easily able to make a call. I had this radio yesterday only, so should i wait for sometime or there is something wrong with the hardware?

I've also had this issue, and tried troubleshooting in the same ways. Randomly, my phone will cycle through all the connections (GSM, 3G, H, etc) and then go to "no service" no matter if i walk around or even go outside. I have called AT&T about this issue to see maybe if there are issues going on with the towers in my area...and they report no probems. The closest tower to my apartment is less than a mile away, and I live in a metropolitan area. So then they had me go to a store to have the sim card replaced because its plausible that a bad sim card could cause this issue. So far, with a new sim card, it's still having signal issues. So the next step is to do a warranty exchange.

AT&T service in my area is awful. Since moving south to Florida I have had the same problem but it's not unique to my Inspire. I experienced the same sort of nonsense with my old blackberry. Trying different radio/ril combos has given me some better results but it's an been an issue ever since I got south of Georgia.

It's one thing when the service is bleek in a certain area, thus causing you signal issues. But in an area that has AT&T coverage all over, like in the instance of my area, then you really can't blame the coverage. In my situation, AT&T was unable to explain why I'm having these issues in the area that I am in. They even logged in my account that if replacing the sim card has no affect, then they will go ahead and do a warranty exchange.

cavsoldier19d said:
It's one thing when the service is bleek in a certain area, thus causing you signal issues. But in an area that has AT&T coverage all over, like in the instance of my area, then you really can't blame the coverage. In my situation, AT&T was unable to explain why I'm having these issues in the area that I am in. They even logged in my account that if replacing the sim card has no affect, then they will go ahead and do a warranty exchange.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well the coverage in my area should be great. The closest tower to my home is just over a mile away. I live right outside of Tampa. AT&T has coverage here. If I can get 5 bars on "H" one moment and 0 bars on anything a moment later without moving the phone I doubt it's just generally poor service in my area specifically. In any event I hope you're issue gets solved. I'd be interested to see what the resolution is

Well i understand the network issues might be there, but then if i see on the other phone (Galaxy S) its showing full network at the same place. So I assume there is something in my hardware or software which is having some issues...

Be sure to check teh signal strength between the two phones(android) by pressing *#*#4636#*#*>Phone Info Compare the dBm and asu of the two. Make sure the contacts between the batt and sim covers are clean as both are antennas for different radio's(sell and BT)

Tx Redneck said:
Be sure to check teh signal strength between the two phones(android) by pressing *#*#4636#*#*>Phone Info Compare the dBm and asu of the two. Make sure the contacts between the batt and sim covers are clean as both are antennas for different radio's(sell and BT)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok... will try with this and see what is the problem... anyways it's just a 3 day old new phone and the battery cover... well i am still trying to open it... what a mess... would you recommend flashing another radio and check or i am the only one with the network losing problem here?

Out here in Cincinati my signal has been going to garbage and I'm stock. If I put the sin in my Samsung focus I get 4 bars and 3g, in my inspire I'm lucky to get 2 bars. I think it has to do with inspire and 2.3.3 dident help me at least
Sent with Dr. Brown Technology & my HTC Inspire 4G

[Q] Struggling with Reception.

I have not done anything software wise to my phone, its still a factory rom and radio for ATT... now my issue is I'm struggling all the time with reception with this phone. I don't remember it being this bad when I first got it and now its just becoming a huge annoyance.
I'll have phone calls breaking up with a display showing 3-4 bars of service and also having troubles sending txt messages quite often.
I'm in an area that is labeled as HPSA coverage area and my "voice" coverage map for my area is not bad at all... for example where I work is listed as "BEST" coverage and if I walk outside I'll have 2 maybe 3 bars of service.
There is nothing visibly wrong with my antenna/sim cover but should I attempt to replace it and see if that could be causing the problem?
There is nothing out there on the web for improving reception on a Inspire 4G phone and there is now way to shut off the HPSA and revert to 3G, but at the same time I really should have to since my whole state is covered with blue for HPSA coverage.
Any input on things that I can try would be great.
Thanks.

BerettaFreak said:
I have not done anything software wise to my phone, its still a factory rom and radio for ATT... now my issue is I'm struggling all the time with reception with this phone. I don't remember it being this bad when I first got it and now its just becoming a huge annoyance.
I'll have phone calls breaking up with a display showing 3-4 bars of service and also having troubles sending txt messages quite often.
I'm in an area that is labeled as HPSA coverage area and my "voice" coverage map for my area is not bad at all... for example where I work is listed as "BEST" coverage and if I walk outside I'll have 2 maybe 3 bars of service.
There is nothing visibly wrong with my antenna/sim cover but should I attempt to replace it and see if that could be causing the problem?
There is nothing out there on the web for improving reception on a Inspire 4G phone and there is now way to shut off the HPSA and revert to 3G, but at the same time I really should have to since my whole state is covered with blue for HPSA coverage.
Any input on things that I can try would be great.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hpsa is basically 3g just optimized packet transmission. You can change your phone to run on edge network (which is why i personally do because then i can get a ton more battery life) Also it doesnt matter what your area is 'claimed' to be for coverage, there are a ton of outside factors that influence your signal. What you can do is take the bottom cover off and clean the gold contacts on the phone itself with alcohol and using something metal, lightly scrape the cover-side contacts to shine up the metal (but not removing the material itself)

Well aware of all the things you mentioned, as well as I've tried cleaning the contacts multiple times. Used an eraser on the cover side to polish the contacts and got no improvement with signal. I also can not find any way to shut off HPSA or 3G on this phone... and I've read that with the AT&T Inspire it's not possible. I'd love to switch to Edge when at work because as you said it would extend battery life immensely.
But I guess the real issue is I never had these problems before with any of my phones or this one at first, granted I have some dead spots which I'm well aware of and accept since I do live in the hilly north east corner but to have this phone degrade with signal over the time I've had it just seems a bit odd.
I was just wondering if anyone else has experienced signal loss with an Inspire 4G over the life of the phone without having any physical damage done to it. As well as having much less signal strength in comparison to other phone models.
I'm contemplating getting a new phone but I want to ensure that whatever I get would have better reception. I'm close to my 2yr resign IIRC and when I do find out that date I will probably replace this.
Its just the whole antenna on the Inspire seems to be lacking and very small in my mind, and placed very badly.

*#*#4636#*#* dial this and get into your config menu. change network type to edge/gsm i think it is? been a while since ive used stock ui
fyi the antenna is supposed to be small as it has to be designed to receive certain frequency. antenna length has to do with what signal it is using. bigger is not better
theres an app on market called 2g/3g toggle. it will put a button on your screen to take u to that menu screen instantly

That worked but which network do you switch to, It was on WCDMA Preferred
Also that app only brings me to the network settings in the phone, not to this menu.
I selected "GSM Only" for now to see what it does.

BerettaFreak said:
That worked but which network do you switch to, It was on WCDMA Preferred
Also that app only brings me to the network settings in the phone, not to this menu.
I selected "GSM Only" for now to see what it does.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
correct, gsm only will keep you on edge network. if you want your regular hspa+ setting just change it back to wcdma preferred

I'm all of a sudden having no service, i think at&t is having issues.

Please use the Q&A Forum for questions &
Read the Forum Rules Ref Posting
Thanks ✟
Moving to Q&A

This is a matter of interest to me as well. I've been looking at some videos for "fixing" the reception of other phone models by finding the gold contacts and extending the "antenna" by attaching a piece of aluminum foil to the antenna points. Now with the Inspire, the contact points are in the battery cover, but you'd have to open the unit itself to see anything more than that. I'm thinking that some reception problems may be due to worn contacts. I'd be interested in what kind of substance would be appropriate for "restoring" the contacts. Also I'd be interested if someone *has* opened up the unit and "extended" the antenna with something like aluminum foil.

From what I could gather the cell antenna is actually on the bottom cover for the SIM an SD cards. All I did was use an eraser on the contacts to clean them up and yes I did try to lay down foil to extend the antenna but from what I have read regarding radio's and such the antenna size and shape is specific to the signal its trying to pick up, so that could either work great or fail completely when you try to extend it. It did not help for my situation at all.
Lately the phone will not send txt's with one bar of HPSA or just on Edge which makes no sense to me and also I'm quite often only getting one bar unless I can see a tower right next to me which is a bit sad and I do not remember having this issue before.
Also changing the preferred network did not prevent it from using or wanting to go to HPSA while I'm at work. It would operate the same as before. Its impossible to get this phone to stick on regular 3g which I feel I have better coverage of that network in my area.
I'm contemplating rooting the phone and trying some different radio's on it to see if that will help me at all.
I never had this many signal issues with my 3Gs and I'm contemplating going back to that phone until I can upgrade again since this is just so aggravating... More so than having to have the same txt sounds as everyone else with an iPhone.

I think it us just AT&T having problems on their side. Some days I gave great reception, and others it struggles to maintain one bar all day. Its getting very annoying for me, and I probably won't be with them for much longer...Verizon looks much better right now.

Funky Network Signal Mystery

Optimus T...Ok I got this phone from my uncle because his dog chewed it a little. I took it apart and the teeth went through the plastic casing and made marks in the metal frame but there was no visible damage to the internals. I replaced the frame and the plastic casing, boot the phone up and tested it for a couple months.
The phone is running:
cyanogen_thunderg-ota-eng.mik-6.5.8
franco.Kernel.v19.4-cfs
(I am not even sure if that ROM and Kernel are out dated or if there is a more stable ROM/Kernel to be used.)
Anyway, the main issue I am having with this phone is really strange. You see normally people have Network signal problems in buildings maybe even in their house but this phone is completely opposite. When I am in my house or in a building/store I have no problems and network strength is at mid to full. When I am out though driving around even in the busy part of town where you would think the strongest signal is, there is absolutely no network strength. It doesn't even register a network in range at all.
Any ideas what could cause this would be helpful, thank you. The only other issue I have noticed with this phone is when you put someone on speaker they hear echoing but I don't think the two issues are related.

Nobody has any thoughts?

Please someone. More info, Mik's says OLD BASEBAND and I have v10a. When I go to Networks it lists two tmobile and one cingular. It says it cannot connect to any of the networks.
I installed devoid-froyo-final and it actually finds two family mobile networks (like it should) and one cingular and can connect to them all. What is the issue here? devoid-froyo-final actually even lists them as cdma, gsm and Mik's does not show this info

Well though devoid-froyo-final registered the networks better, in town I still have the same issue. It can not find any networks and has no signal. This is in the same area my other phone has full bars and 4g... I wish I could figure this out I like this phone as a back up, oh well.

1) You're on the old baseband i.e v10 which was a bit weaker than the new baseband i.e v20 imho.
2) These sims work on other phones without any niggles ?
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