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are cases necessary ?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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.

How much can different phones affect signal strength?

So we've been testing a Verizon and T Mobile phone (currently have Sprint) as Sprint has been pretty poor in our area as of late. The T Mobile phone is a Galaxy Blaze, and with it we get amazing 4G signal in the street outside our house. However, we can move literally 3 feet closer to the house, and the signal will drop to absolutely nothing. Inside the house it just frequently switches between very low 4G and very low Edge signal. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Is there any chance that a different phone (we want Nexus 4's) would have stronger reception and not have this problem, or is our house pretty much screwed?

Different internal radios will be different, yes.
However, I get absolutely no signal in my house with my T-Mobile S3. I don't find this to be a problem since T-Mobile has native calling over WIFI. Whole house is covered by strong WIFI signal and the call quality has been pretty great when used that way. I don't know if you can get WIFI calling onto the Nexus 4, I would guess probably not but who knows (maybe someone has found a way) - I'd have to research that.
I don't know how well a signal repeater would work, but it seems like it could since you could place it outside the home where it would have access to a great signal and repeat it inside.
If your Sprint phone can roam on Verizon, I'd question how much of a difference it would make to switch to Verizon itself. I have had both and the signal in my home was basically the same - the Sprint phone was connected to the same Verizon towers the Verizon phone was. I'm sure there might be some technical reasons there would be differences at some point (radios, how roaming is dictated), but I never noticed them in practical use.
Depends on the plans you're looking at and where you're willing to compromise.

For whatever reason, roaming doesn't seem to fix the problem on Sprint here. Verizon gets great signal, but 4 days in the 2gb plan is clearly not going to work. This pretty much leaves T-Mobile our only choice. T-Mobile also seems to just get better and faster service everywhere we go, so it would still be better than Sprint, as we're used to not having service at home anyway. It would just be unfortunate to have to continue like that.

Excessive Tower Switching Causing Chronic Dropped Calls

Hi guys. I've got a saga to describe for those of you who are interested, but I'll try to keep it brief. I think it really boils down to one or two simple issues.
I've had Verizon phones for a long time, in Central Illinois. Probably about 10 years now. Rarely had problems with dropped calls. My previous phone was a Droid 1 ... worked great, very rarely (as I recall) had dropped calls.
Then in January 2012, as the Droid was killing me with general Android lag and unresponsiveness (but voice was still fine), I upgraded to a Galaxy Nexus. Loved it for Android performance. For the first 3 or 4 months I had it, I don't recall it giving me any undue trouble .. dropped calls were minimal if any, I think.
Then sometime around April or May, started getting a ridiculous number of dropped calls. Mostly at my home, throughout the day, but not just there, I've also experienced them a mile or two away from my house. The neighbor hood is fairly wooded, but that's never been a problem before.
Additionally, my wife has a "feature phone" (non-smartphone) also with Verizon and very rarely if ever has dropped call problems.
The topography at my house is along a river, we're right near a high bluff overlooking the river, with line of sight (besides the trees, of which there are not a ton, really) for at least a mile or so across the river. I think we're possibly within range of several cell towers.
I notice at most points when I'm in my house, using some apps that help you track signal strength and show you the cell tower ids, that I'm mostly one just two different ones, both of which seem to be maybe about 1 mile away. Also, if I'm walking up one flight of stairs, I pretty reliably see that same app showing the phone switching among possibly as many as 4 or 5 towers, in the space of about 5 or 10 seconds!
I suspect this may be caused by the topography in my area.
I also suspect that most of my dropped calls *may* have something to do with being in range of so many towers, or with the phone switching too frequently (or unnecessarily, really) among the towers, while I'm on the call, if this is possible (I have very little technical knowledge of cell phone radio technology -- hence this post).
Now, I've done a fair amount of research and talked to Verizon customer support about this at length. They've actually been very patient and good with me, but we still haven't arrived at the solution.
I originally thought the problem my be the Galaxy Nexus, but after getting a warranty replacement on that one, and even getting to try a Droid RAZR and then finally the GS3, I'm seeing virtually the exact same behavior on all of the phones. The symptoms do *not* seem to be directly related to signal strength exactly. I get usually about 50 - 60% of the total bars (maybe 3/5 or 4/5) in most parts of the house, yet *still* get these persistent drops.
Verizon's final best solution for me, basically, was to use a Network Extender. Despite my misgivings towards this, I have acquired one and it does seem to solve the problem for me, when I'm home, and when I'm in range of the device (its range seems pretty good in my house). One big problem with it though, ridiculously, is it seems that whenever it's on, my wife's Verizon phone starts dropping calls (and it never does otherwise). So there's a Catch-22 there, added to the fact that I'd rather not have to be running a Net Extender *and* the fact that I still see other drops when taking a walk or driving at least a mile or two from my house.
So, for those of you still with me, I'm wondering if
a) my theory about excessive switching, etc., is plausible, or if you have another one based on the facts I've outlined
b) if doing something like flashing an alternate radio ROM (I barely even knew there were separate ROMs for the radio -- I've done some rooting before of Android, but not the radio) might give me some more control or better performance. It'd be great if there were a setting somewhere where I could tell the phone to be less willing to switch towers or to give a higher preference to one tower, at least while in a certain GPS area (I know, I'm sure it's a reach).
Anyway, looking for a little education into why your opinions are of what may be causing this and if I have any remedies available that are feasible and may actually help.
Thank you for your attention and expertise.

[Q] Weird Signal Issues

Ok ladies and gents. I swear I used search, and even searched a few other device threads.
Remember the big-todo over the iPhone 4 and how holding it wrong lead to a loss of service? I've got what seems to be the same thing, sort of, with my phone. Lemme explain the whole situation.
I had an iPhone 4, and it got pretty great service. I got at least three bars in my house. My brother made the switch to the skyrocket and initially loved it. all that changed when the signal issues attacked.
From near day-one, he couldn't get it to work. He had to have gone through 20 ROMs over three months. In a last ditch effort, he bought a used S3 and passed the skyrocket to me. I thought I could fix it. Here I am, 4 months later and it's gotten worse if anything.
I've tried 4 different ROMs (including stocks, superlites, CM10.1, and PAC) and have come to settle on CM10.1. I initially had UCLi3, and thought that was the signal problem, seeing as when I went to UCLL3 it got slightly better, and then UCLK4 was working better than my iPhone did for about three days. It tanked overnight and out of frustration I switched to the UXUMA7 and it worked even BETTER for about a week before it went south as well.
My APNs are correct, I know that much. I switch to AT&T Phone, and I will get a little phone service if I hold my phone up and squint just right when standing next to a signal tower. AT&T LTE will give me great service in a heavy service area by a tower, but zero phone service. I was able to make one phone call yesterday, but had to use bluetooth, as the running theme here as well is that it always loses service the minute my hand/body is within a foot of the phone.
Any ideas before I throw caution into the wind and shell out for a new phone? I'm about to live abroad in about three weeks, so I may have to anyway, but I'd rather not pass a lemon to someone else.

Im guessing its the LTE problem that 4.2.2 roms have they changed how it calculates how many bars shows with signal dbm. Its the same signal just shows up as less so just use whatever radio you have had the most success with leave apn at AT&T LTE. You could try going to settings, mobile networks, network operators then choose choose automatically it might give you a more steady connection but its not really required.
If you still have problems you could take out your sim card and use *#2263# and change band to WCDMA all insted of automatic and that should solve your problems.

I typed it in like you have it there to no avail, and tried it again using an astrisk at the end as well. Nothing. Is that the right code? Seems to me I've read somewhere that CM disabled using that...
*Edit: Found the code for "phone info" which worked, and within that was a radio preference setting. But no WCDMA All, so I put it on WCDMA Preferred. My next question is that if ATT is GSM, why will this help even if I can get to the RF selector?
*Edit 2: Confirmed. ROMs not running touchwiz will not run most of the codes. I'm flashing the stock 4.1.2 to see if I can get that code (and subsequently the right RF option) to work until I can figure out how to switch RF options on CM 10.1.
*Final Edit: Found the option, changed it, realized what was going on. I'm on AT&T, meaning GSM and LTE. When I changed it to CDMA All, it switched me over to a strictly HSPA network, which ignored any other available ones. I got to playing with the settings and found that not only are they not the answer to my problem, but they had the potential to make it worse. I really feel that the issue at hand may be hardware. I blew out the RF chip on my first smartphone years ago (a state-of-the-art Palm Treo 700w) and it acted this same way. I'm wondering if the owner before us wasn't screwing with it and messed it up. A little tin foil can answer that question.