[Q] signal boosting - General Questions and Answers

hi guys,does anybody know if there is anyway to boost signal on smartphone?i have a huawei u8800 and im using 3 network in uk..thing is,at my workplace the only network with average signal is vodafone..but i cant change now as im on contract..i've heard about thoose gen x "stickers" that we place underneath the battery but it seems not true :S even though they are only like 2 pounds on ebay..cant use any signal extenders or anything like that as at my workplace im not really aloud to use my phone so i was looking for some kind of trick a bit like the sticker !
thanks guys

I'm afraid it's not possible since you cant change the physical hardware of your phone. Some phones have better antenna than others. You either have to use some external signal amplifier or get a phone with a very good quality antenna.

Related

External antenna/signal boost?

Hello! I'm looking for a way to boost my signal. I've noticed that when I have under 3 bars (and even if it bounces up to 3 and back down) my battery drains quicker than it can charge. At work as long as I have 3+ it will charge faster but if I'm at a different spot and its under 3 it drains. Also, it heats up (usually hangs out around 98.6 degrees but sometimes it'll go 105+). My main reason for wanting a boost at home is because I tether to play games when my sisters hog the house connection. So I'm looking for a cheap way to boost my signal. Small repeater sort of thing or something. To my understanding the little spots under the cover allow you to plug in external antennas, so where can I find everything for that? (And yes I saw that people can't get signal back after)
THANK YOU
Mechachu said:
Hello! I'm looking for a way to boost my signal. I've noticed that when I have under 3 bars (and even if it bounces up to 3 and back down) my battery drains quicker than it can charge. At work as long as I have 3+ it will charge faster but if I'm at a different spot and its under 3 it drains. Also, it heats up (usually hangs out around 98.6 degrees but sometimes it'll go 105+). My main reason for wanting a boost at home is because I tether to play games when my sisters hog the house connection. So I'm looking for a cheap way to boost my signal. Small repeater sort of thing or something. To my understanding the little spots under the cover allow you to plug in external antennas, so where can I find everything for that? (And yes I saw that people can't get signal back after)
THANK YOU
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We used to live in an AT&T dead spot (yeah, yeah, who doesn't?) and ended up putting a powered wireless repeater in the house with an external antenna on the roof. I believe the manufacturer was Digital Antenna. They're not cheap, but the wired versions (if you can live with that) are a bit cheaper.
As long as you have high speed internet at home get an Airave. It puts up a tower in your house and processes everything over your home internet connection. 5 bucks a month i believe.
http://support.sprint.com/support/device/Sprint/AIRAVE_by_Sprint-dvc1230001prd/?id16=airave
Problem solved.
I thought about airwave but people ten to not pay the internet from time to time xD and does the signal crap out if people use the internet? Its only a 768 connection (country ftl) and people tend to netflix and cam -_-
Mechachu said:
I thought about airwave but people ten to not pay the internet from time to time xD and does the signal crap out if people use the internet? Its only a 768 connection (country ftl) and people tend to netflix and cam -_-
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Click to collapse
The airrave uses your internet connection for 3G data and voice calls. If your internet is slow to begin with and ppl are hammering it all day long the airrave won't work well for you. Also, it doesn't hand calls off to the real cell network, so if you're on the phone and you leave your house the call will drop. If you have good signal outside and bad signal inside, one of those repeaters is the way to go - but it ain't cheap.
Dang ok. What about something like the Wilson Magnet Mount Cellular Antenna at Radioshack? (Its on the site. Id link it but you need 8+ posts >.<)
I'd just limit your sisters ip address/mac address with a QOS policy, so that she can't hog all the bandwidth. (would be done at your router)
I've heard and seen on this board some nasty results from connecting external antennas to the connection point behind the battery cover. Do a search in the forums to see, I can't remember exactly off the top of my head.
Ya I only saw a couple people mention problems and it seemed to be things that they had only heard
Whatever you do DO NOT CONNECT an EXTERNAL ANTENNA to the CONNECTION POINT.
So far, everyone on this forum who has tried so with a Galaxy S has ended up with some permanent baseband (or whatever is responsible for the gsm/cdma part) corruption. What ended up happening was that the internal antenna would turn off. In some cases it meant that they could only call with the external antenna plugged in, and in other cases is meant that neither the external or internal antenna would work. (note: This has happened only on captivate and vibrant so far, so I am not sure what will happen on CDMA but.... Better safe than sorry right!?).
oh and sorry for the large font.... It catches your eye... ~_~
krackers said:
Whatever you do DO NOT CONNECT an EXTERNAL ANTENNAto the CONNECTION POINT.
So far, everyone on this forum who has tried so with a Galaxy S has ended up with some permanent baseband (or whatever is responsible for the gsm/cdma part) corruption. What ended up happening was that the internal antenna would turn off. In some cases it meant that they could only call with the external antenna plugged in, and in other cases is meant that neither the external or internal antenna would work. (note: This has happened only on captivate and vibrant so far, so I am not sure what will happen on CDMA but.... Better safe than sorry right!?).
oh and sorry for the large font.... It catches your eye... ~_~
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lol I did that when i got my first smart phone, the htc touch. Thankfully back in those days sprint would fix any problem or give you a new phone no questions asked for 55 dollars. ( I used to find inventive ways to break my phone. Like the mentioned external antenna, or a homemade battery back)
I'm interested in a solution to this as well, preferably something that doesnt have a monthly fee attached.
In my basement, I get about 1-2 bars of service, and sometimes nothing at all. Is very frustrating to receive texts up to an hour late.
talk about ad placement
This came up right under the latest post in this thread:
Tri Band Yagi 700Mhz - 2500Mhz 9dBi
Our highest gain directional tri/multi antenna - for 700-2500mhz networks (including Verizon LTE, Sprint/Verizon/AT&T/Alltel 3G, and more).
LINK
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Thank jebus for adfree android and adblockplus for firefox...
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

[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

Improve Nexus S WiFi antenna

Hi everyone!
Is it possible to improve the wifi antenna of my nexus s? With my last nokia it was possibile by salding an extra copper wire, is there any similar mod that I can do on it?
Thankyou..
not 100% sure but the antennas are in the back cover along with the nfc chip.
If you remove the back cover, you can see the connector.
The connectors are for the nfc chip
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Improve Nexus S WiFi antennaArrow
I have just bought my Nexus S and am experiencing a weak wifi signal. I normally get 3 bars on all other hardware in my bedroom but am only getting 1 bar which occasionally goes up and down to 2 bars. When I am 3 meters away from the Wifi access point i only get 3 bars out of 4. All my other hardware gets full bars. When i am 6 meters away from the access point I have only 2 bars showing for wifi.
The wifi signal icon seems to fluctuate alot. Does anyone else have a similar problem?
-----------------
Always wonderd
ourtut said:
The connectors are for the nfc chip
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using xda premium
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Click to collapse
I always thought that these connectors were for a power mat to recharge the battery...wow I'll go to bed smarter tonight !!
First and foremost bars don't mean anything really. The signal strength typically is better but what matters is the SNR (signal to noise ratio). This can by typically improved by allowing your router to switch channels automatically (from the default 6) to find the most open one. Adding your own antenna is a bad idea and it likely will make the problem worse. Those antennas are precisely designed (exact configuration) for that ranges of frequencies, adding wire will ruin those characteristics.
With GB the wifi signal was completely awful...but now with ics wifi isn't that bad....I'm not having a lot of issues now...
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA
I haven't seen any difference in wifi signal between GB and ICS: in both of them I get 1-2 bars while my ipod gets full signal. BTW it isn't a good idea to mess up with your phone's antenna.
Most probably it is not.
WiFi antennas on theese devices can even be SMD only (trying to improve is waste of time), or "copper plate sticker" type, ussualy stickered on the internal back cover.
I've been messing around with the second type on crappy chineese WiFi phone - I've added a tiny connector used in mobilephones and connected simply a piece of coax wire to make a dipole. After few changes signal finally got a bit better, but also because in original it was really poor.
If there is a sticker-type antenna, it is theoretically possible to change antenna quite easy. In practise, you will hardly get it better because you can't just put some wire in and done (well, you can, but it will be like wining a main prize in lotery if it gets better). The wire should have right size, right shape and must be on right place. And milimeters makes a difference there, so have fun
Most likely it can get better only with some kind of external antenna, but you could hardly use your phone as mobile then
Easiest way to tune-it-up could be disconnecting the original sticker and connecting a flexible internal notebook type of antenna, but even that will probably be too big to fit inside - it must not overlap another antenna. And that's not the only rule.
Even if it does not overlap anything, it can interfere with other circuitry or Tx-devices. Bluetooth works on almost the same frequencies as 2.4GHz Wifi, for example. It's a piece of science theese frequencies, actually
I'm absolutely NOT thinking of trying to tune it up on my LG O2x, coz I know it won't be better
So my phone is useless for controlling my RC AR Drone then?
Wifi signal is crap, I'm pretty handy with electronics but I've read that even the chipset they've used in the NS is rubbish... Does anyone know which reasonably new handsets have good wifi range? My old N1 was pretty good but it's just too old.
if someone can confirm that it's the antenna and not just a sh*t wireless card then i'll have an attempt at replacing it with laptop antennas.
A little question, it won't be easier to improve the antenna of the WiFi router, instead of the mobilephone's one?? You can do that simply, by putting a can on that antenna (Search on google for the tutorial, it really worked for me).
Regards
Hmm.. I think you can.
lollo64 said:
Hi everyone!
Is it possible to improve the wifi antenna of my nexus s? With my last nokia it was possibile by salding an extra copper wire, is there any similar mod that I can do on it?
Thankyou..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check the Battery Cover, and you will find that. But it's not sure
Wooooow Nexus S have WiMax
There's definitely something wrong with the Nexus S 4G's wifi. I have to be next to the router to be able to use the wifi. No other device, phones, tablet, notebooks, etc has an issue. Odd that others are having the same issue.
Did they forget to connect the wifi antenna?
just upgrade your phone maybe? and your antenna is somewhere in the back.
I found that the WiFi on my NS went to **** after upgrading to JB.
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Antena WIFI extend signal

Hi guys I have a usb wifi reciever, and I want ti extend the range, I have a flat near my house with wifi and its about 400metres away, I wanted to know if some how I can extend the signal reception to pick up this wifi, the usb reciever has a small antena that can be taken of, could I attach coaxial or other kind of cable and attach it to my tv antenna or a satelite dish I have to pick up sky? Please aswer me, I think this is the right section, for me this question is a big thing because ive been without internet for 9 years know, I only have my phone! Thanks!
Sent from my Neo V using Xda Premium
An antenna is made for a specific wavelength, there is some physics behind it so you can't just put a big antenna and expect it to work. What you can do is extend the range of the emitter. You can do that either by getting a high gain antenna or a directional one.
I've also seen people receiving wifi from a distant router with a directional receiving antenna, but it has to be especially made for wifi, you can't use a tv one.
Also take in consideration interference. If there are lots of objects and other devices operating in the wifi signal range between you and the wifi router that signal is going to lose its quality so even if you'd get 100% signal, it might get jammed by all the interference.
wststreet said:
An antenna is made for a specific wavelength, there is some physics behind it so you can't just put a big antenna and expect it to work. What you can do is extend the range of the emitter. You can do that either by getting a high gain antenna or a directional one.
I've also seen people receiving wifi from a distant router with a directional receiving antenna, but it has to be especially made for wifi, you can't use a tv one.
Also take in consideration interference. If there are lots of objects and other devices operating in the wifi signal range between you and the wifi router that signal is going to lose its quality so even if you'd get 100% signal, it might get jammed by all the interference.
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Click to collapse
Thnks for the clarifications, ive seen this antena on ebay but dont know what the range is! Any idea?, what u said about directional recieving antenna, whats that? Could u please upload some pics? Thanks, I dont think interference will be a big problem because I live in a rural area! Thanks for your aswer!
Press thanks if I helped!
Sent from my Neo V using Xda Premium
That looks like a cheap antenna. I don't think anyone can tell for sure what you need to receive a signal from that far away. There are so many unknown things you need if you want to make the calculations.
The gain of the antenna is used to calculate how weak the signal can be and still be received.
Think of it as hearing a guy scream at a distance.. you can have an amplifier next to your ear, you might hear him if it's a directional amplifier but you will also hear everything that's between you and him. Although sound waves are different than electromagnetic waves, you can think of it like this to understand why the long distance is such a big problem.
wststreet said:
That looks like a cheap antenna. I don't think anyone can tell for sure what you need to receive a signal from that far away. There are so many unknown things you need if you want to make the calculations.
The gain of the antenna is used to calculate how weak the signal can be and still be received.
Think of it as hearing a guy scream at a distance.. you can have an amplifier next to your ear, you might hear him if it's a directional amplifier but you will also hear everything that's between you and him. Although sound waves are different than electromagnetic waves, you can think of it like this to understand why the long distance is such a big problem.
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Thanks for taking time to aswer, the distance I was hoping to pick up is about 450 m no more! Will interference still be an issue?
Press thanks if I helped!
Sent from my Neo V using Xda Premium
mitchellreece said:
Thanks for taking time to aswer, the distance I was hoping to pick up is about 450 m no more! Will interference still be an issue?
Press thanks if I helped!
Sent from my Neo V using Xda Premium
Click to expand...
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Try this: http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html but I don't think this will work at that range.
If your usb wifi reciever have an external port for antenna, try to connect an axternel antenna to increase the range. This may work. Or you can buy a cheap wifi router to bridge with the one existing in the flat.
And YES, interference may be a problem!

Too good wifi reception

Hello, this is my first topic on this board about my first Chinese phone. I had various iphones and android, but always brand ones. Now I received the Chinese phone and I like it a lot, but there is one issue...
Wifi signal is too GOOD. It is annoying. Signal does not drop going out of my house or moving to the next flat with different router (I live in one flat and work in another flat) so the phone picks up relatively poor wi-fi signal from another flat and does not drop it for the new one, as it has too good of the reception.
1) I am just wondering, could this be a health and safety hazard? Presumable Chinese manufacturers don't give a damn about it, that is why popular brands have weaker reception.
2) Is it possible to adjust how strong the device reception of Wifi is and or how quickly it drops network for the better reception.?
The biggest problem is, it seems I am one of the few who has this kind of issue, as if I try to search for it, I only get results how to improve the reception, not how to reduce it...
Many thanks in advance.
Ram

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