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I get continued lost calls at home where I have strong signals on all of our phones (Verizon). I learned about field test mode from a popular science article which directed me to this link:
http://www.wpsantennas.info/pdf/testmode/FieldTestModes.pdf
These instructions work on the TP2:
Enter *#*#364#*#* and your phone will enter test mode. Signal strength
follows RSSI. Number shown is not –dBm. Strong signal is 31 (approx
-50dBm), weak signal is 4 (approx -105dBm). The higher the number,
the stronger the signal. Press END or DONE to exit.
When I do this after RSSI there is NCell info1,2,3,4,5. They all come in at 0-99 dbm. RX Quality is 99. I have no bars on the phone at all, and I am continually dropping calls.
Someone that knows something about this, please talk to me!!!! What numbers are you getting? It appears that my TP2 gets lousy reception while other VZW phones in my house do not. This is a replacement TP2, and I do not recall problems with the first one.
I'm unsure as to why you arre dropping calls. Unless your signal is around -99db which WILL cause you to drop calls.
Go into your Windows folder and look for a file called "FieldTrial.exe" . Run that and take a look at both the 1X & HDR screens. You can find tower info along with acurate -db values for each. Easier than having to enter test menu codes. Also, when checking for signal strength, keep your hand away from the upper back portion of the phone. That's where the antenna sits. I find I will lose almost -10 db at times if my hand covers that spot and the phone is lowered.
Am I looking for RX Power, ie reception power?
That is coming in at -90 to -94 dbm.
1X is coming in at -88. My hand over the antennae changes it by 2-3, but it appears very weak already.
Now what do I do, I never compared the other phone, but I can hardly use it at home. I have been with Verizon and every other phone, and all the phones my family members have get great reception. This is my second TP2, I am not up for doing this a third time.
Before I exchange my phone again, I was wondering if there is 100% confirmation of this issue. I use my phone with WiFi in landscape mode, so this problem is really bothering me.
If you not having the issue, why worry about others?
I am having the issue. I apologize if I wasn't clear, but I had said that "this problem is really bothering me" as in it is literally bothering me.
No i don't have this issue. Can't even make it happen. If that's couse of the signal strength i have on the wifi's i use it on, who knows. But it's never been a issue here!
Can't say I've found it an issue but I don't use my phone in landscape for anything
Death Grip.
Hi OP, Ive had this problem when browsing in landscape, a certain grip can knock WiFi signal strength right down or if its already low completely kill it. Another thread on here advised
Settings - Wireless and Networks - Wireless Settings - Advanced - Tick Best WiFi Performance.
This seems to have made a significant improvement and TBH I havent noticed a change in battery life.
Hope that helps.
(Never had the problem WRT 3G/4G)
Third Sensation also has death grip issues, performance setting doesn't seem to help substantially. Bummer. I guess I'll just have to find an new handling position when reading.
no problems here, works fine
Symbi said:
no problems here, works fine
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you using it in landscape mode and gripping the left side (near the HTC logo) with your left hand? Also, you must be a reasonable distance away from your router. If you are within 8 feet, the drop isn't noticeable.
When I first got the phone I was staying in a hotel. WiFi dropped constantly if I held the phone in my "normal" grip. Now I'm at home and I'm unable to kill it, no matter how I hold it.
Yeah I have the problem too when I use it in landscape mode sometimes it'll be so bad I'll be put on 4g thinking if I should replace it I also have the lock screen issue is there really sensations out there with absolutely no death grip?
Got my Sensation yesterday. Just tried the death grip test and can't make it drop below 4 bars no matter how I hold it. This is with "Best wifi performance" unchecked. Wifi Analyzer does show a drop in signal strength of about 20dB, but I never lose connectivity. Played a YouTube HQ video and it never stutters in landscape, with both hands wrapped around the phone. Based on the signal drop it's very likely that in a low signal location holding it certain ways would cause connectivity loss. But that's very likely true of any phone.
So, being conservative I'd say at least some Sensations with some routers do not have the problem.
Hi. I've heard that there may be a difference in the models. Some have 3 pins connecting to the back cover/antenna and some have only 2 pins connecting to the cover. If people could post if they're having problems and how many pins they have under their back covers there could be a link?
i just purchased my phone last Saturday, and i am already on my second phone. they both exhibit this "death grip" issue, and the problem is very apparent--enough to render the wifi useless for me.
it does seem to be based on the wireless AP though. i do not experience an issue at work, nor at certain public wifi points. however, my cheesy home wireless AP seems to have a problem, and i suspect most hotel wireless APs will as well. since i travel for work, this is a problem.
i was informed by a T-Mobile employee that this is a known issue with the first generation of these phones. phones manufactured after June 1st are supposed to have resolved the problem. i am currently waiting for their shipment of these new phones to arrive so that i can get a replacement to see if it truly does resolve the problem.
When I throw my gorilla grip on my sensation (just below the point of annihilation) I have no signal issues. No change.
Maybe only certain sets have the issue, because I haven't faced it at all. I browsed the web using WiFi and had no issues. I have issues with the signal, but that is more due to my service provider and where I work. Otherwise, no dropped calls and surely no deathgrip.
My Phone has the. Issue. When I hold it with a death grip, I can see my wifi bars going down. I don't know how it affects the practical use and the internet speed.
Mo0oSaH said:
My Phone has the. Issue. When I hold it with a death grip, I can see my wifi bars going down. I don't know how it affects the practical use and the internet speed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That would be 'signal attenuation' rather than 'death grip'.
I don't have any signal attenuation on my Sensation. It does not matter how I hold the phone. My phone is dated 6/6/11.
Sent from either my N1, NS, or Sensation4G....
My first Sensation had the best screen but the worst connection with the death grip. My second handset has the worst screen but the best connection with death grip. Much like ALL android phones, you always have to compromise with some feature/defect.
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
Hi,
Some users on a Dutch forum reported a loss of signal strength (both Wifi and phone) when the back of the Moto G is covered by your hand. I checked and I can repeat the problem. If I cover the lower half of the back, my carrier signal goes down by two bars. When you cover the upper half, the Wifi signal drops substantially.
To test if this was a real loss of signal instead of an issue with extremely sensitive bar display, I have installed Wifi Analyzer. It shows a drop of 5 - 10 dB on the Wifi signal so its a real issue.
Do others have the same problem or are there some faulty units around?
I cannot reproduce this. XT1032 8GB retail GB version.
16GB UK - I can get WiFi to drop by covering the back.
Mobile signal does not drop though.
Doesn't worry me as I don't press my hand on the back when holding the phone.
I can also get the signal to drop wrap my hand around my routers antenna.
I would think it's quite normal for a signal to drop if you cover the antenna or receiver. The phone has to have the receiver somewhere and wherever they put it you will be able to cover it if you try hard enough.
scott_doyland said:
16GB UK - I can get WiFi to drop by covering the back.
Mobile signal does not drop though.
Doesn't worry me as I don't press my hand on the back when holding the phone.
I can also get the signal to drop wrap my hand around my routers antenna.
I would think it's quite normal for a signal to drop if you cover the antenna or receiver. The phone has to have the receiver somewhere and wherever they put it you will be able to cover it if you try hard enough.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Remember the 'you're holding it wrong' defense of Steve Jobs when the iPhone dropped its signal?
I don't need to press, just by holding the phone in a natural way to take a call the signal will drop. And like I said covering only half of the back is sufficient.
That Debaj can't reproduce it, suggest it's not in all Moto G's
Moto G 8GB German, left-handed (in case it makes a difference) and it occurs most often when the signal is at 4 instead of 5 bars to begin with.
DroidLov said:
Hi,
Some users on a Dutch forum reported a loss of signal strength (both Wifi and phone) when the back of the Moto G is covered by your hand. I checked and I can repeat the problem. If I cover the lower half of the back, my carrier signal goes down by two bars. When you cover the upper half, the Wifi signal drops substantially.
To test if this was a real loss of signal instead of an issue with extremely sensitive bar display, I have installed Wifi Analyzer. It shows a drop of 5 - 10 dB on the Wifi signal so its a real issue.
Do others have the same problem or are there some faulty units around?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine does the same to an extent but not nearly as bad as my old phone. Two bars missing sounds quite serious, though. Have you tried taking the rear cover off and checking to see what it does?
Wifi signal drops 1 bar (from 4 to 3) when covering top of the back. Not a big deal to me
Mobile signal doesn't drop when covering the bottom of the back.
Moto G 8GB, British retail version running US global 4.4.2
EDIT: Holding the phone in the left hand drops the signal by about 5dBm. Holding the phone in the right hand leads to no loss in signal. The only way I can get my Moto G to lose some signal (from 4 bars to 3) is to hold the phone in my left hand AND cover the bottom bezel with the right hand. It drops about 15dBm.
Thanks chowy993, scott_doyland, WabbitKiLR and Debaj for your feedback.
I guess there is something wrong with my Moto as I have an 8-15 dBm drop on the carrier signal just by holding my hand it in the normal 'telephone position' (but not next to my head). I measured it with an app called Network Signal. It drops into the red zone at over a -100 dBm so its a serious problem which will cost me battery life and loss of connectivity in some places .
I tried this with my wifes Moto G and the wifi drops one bar if I put my hand over the back. The mobile signal remains the same. Then I tried it with my Galaxy S3 and got exactly the same result.
I posted a thread about this a short while ago on the 31st December: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2592673
I can confirm I have this issue too! I cannot do any video or voice calls over WiFi if I hold my phone in my hand. The connection repeatedly drops until I put the phone down.
As soon as I hold it, I completely lose all WiFi signal (I have full bars at the time), and can also lose all 2G signal too (from full bars to Emergency Calls Only). My only solution was to simply leave the phone on a surface.
Mine is being sent in for a repair tomorrow for this reason. But sadly it appears even if the phone is replaced/repaired, that this is simply a issue with the Moto G in general?!
Never experienced such poor problems like this on a phone before.
I have the exact same problem on my 8 retail UK version I posted about this here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2588286
And people were saying its the way I was holding my device. It isn't I can completely make my device lose signal just by being in a call. And cover the the bottom of device. It seems like there is a bad batch and Motorola needs to sort it. I'm on my 3rd device now and its still doing it. Gutted really because its a brilliant device. It seems to be the 8gig version having these problems I got told.
Sent from Motorola G.
XT1033 Dual Sim.
Cannot reproduce the issue at all, neither mobile nor wi-fi drops even with the back fully covered by both my hands. Held it like that for five minutes and no sign of it.
AluKed said:
XT1033 Dual Sim.
Cannot reproduce the issue at all, neither mobile nor wi-fi drops even with the back fully covered by both my hands. Held it like that for five minutes and no sign of it.
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Click to collapse
Count yourself as a lucky then I think I'm going to replace my 8gig for the 16gig.
Sent from Motorola G.
UK 16 gig model and I can get my WiFi to drop by one bar but mobile signal is unchanged no matter how I hold the handset. Bad news for u mate, sorry.
I looked into this problem.
Believe it or not, it seems to be down to the use of spray deoderant.
Most spray on deoderant using aluminium oxide. When it get's on your hands, and you hold the phone, the light metal coating causes a charge differential with the phone's antenna (basically your hand and the phone act as a single film capacitor).
This is different from the issue with the iphone, this was because the metal bezel of the phone actually changed resistivity when held directly with the hand, effectively changing the length, and therefore effectiveness of the iphones antenna.
I suggest washing your hands thoroughly. You can also use a multimeter on your hand, set to milli Ohms to see if you have an unusual resistivity (probably due to aluminium oxide).
Roll on deoderant is another good option.. Or just be smelly of course. I never wash, shower or using any cleaning products and my phone has perfect signal all the time.
mranonymous1 and maccboy2010 can you check if it's identical to my problem: holding the lower end is a drop in carrier signal, upper half of the phone: wifi drop ?
DroidLov said:
mranonymous1 and maccboy2010 can you check if it's identical to my problem: holding the lower end is a drop in carrier signal, upper half of the phone: wifi drop ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I no longer have my phone as it's in for repair. I can tell you though that for the week or so of use that it was awful. Mine was extremely sensitive that a video/voice call over WiFi would instantly end the second I even went near the phone/picked it up.
It was the WiFi dropping that was more of the issue for me than mobile network signal (I struggle to get 2G signal anyway where I live). But I could easily lose all mobile network signal from holding normally too.
Ok, I checked again and the problem only occurs if the signal level is not that good to begin with. It then drops enormously making calls impossible. Handsfree calling in the same circumstances is no problem.
When I am at a place with a strong carrier signal my hand hardly influences the level. So it's sort of a worst case scenario but it explains why others don't notice the drop.
DroidLov said:
mranonymous1 and maccboy2010 can you check if it's identical to my problem: holding the lower end is a drop in carrier signal, upper half of the phone: wifi drop ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes mine is the same as yours if I hold a the bottom signal drastically drops.
Sent from Motorola G.
I can confirm covering the bottom drops my signal.
Sent from my XT1032 using xda app-developers app
Also happens with my moto g. Covering the top indeed affects wifi and the bottom affects signal.
Anyone else experience any weird loss of signal or performance in radio when the phone is oriented in a certain way/hold in a certain position covered by your palm?
I seem to notice this a lot but when I hold the phone on the bottom with two fingers it seems to pick up in signal again real fast
1dtms said:
Anyone else experience any weird loss of signal or performance in radio when the phone is oriented in a certain way/hold in a certain position covered by your palm?
I seem to notice this a lot but when I hold the phone on the bottom with two fingers it seems to pick up in signal again real fast
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I actually thought about that recently when thinking about the earlier iPhones and their reception problems when people held them a certain way. I waited until my phone had a fairly low signal and experimented with holding it different ways. I couldn't get it to change no matter how I held it. On the other hand, I have a Tudia semi-rigid case that affects my Bluetooth signal a little. My home phone bluetooth connection loses some distance when its in the case and breaks up more when talking on an extension.