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I need help understanding how AT&T's HSPA+/3g towers work

K...
Well I had an Infuse (HSPA+) and as a lot of people have said, it has a weak antenna and I just sold it. I have a Nokia phone from T-Mobile (dumb phone; unlocked) and it pulls in such great signal. It's a 3g phone(?) though, but we all want/have 4g phones nowadays, right? (I know HSPA+ isn't real 4g, but I my point still stands) The Nokia was a Nokia N... something (can't remember... too lazy to look. ) and in some spots of my house, it easily pulls in five bars consistently and usually constantly stays on 3g while my Infuse was almost always on EDGE and even in some cases, GPRS. That's how bad it was. I'd get lucky to get three bars anywhere in my house with the Infuse, but with the Nokia, I can easily pull 3-5 bars. I know bars don't always mean everything, but with this phone, texts DO go through all the time (and quickly) and call quality is almost always perfect whereas the Infuse constantly dropped signal. The Nokia's kind of a 3g phone (I say that and there was a question mark early on in this post), but occasionally gets "3.5g" (which is most likely HSPA+). Normal 3g is HSUPA while enhanced (HSPA+) 3g is HSDPA. My question is can HSPA+ phones connect to AT&T's HSUPA towers? Or are the 3g towers all one tower? This sounds so basic even to me, but I'm just checking because I'm supposed to be getting a Galaxy S2 soon and I'm hoping its signal is almost (if not, the same) as good as the Nokia phone I'm using. And will I know if it's on HSUPA? The Nokia was usually on 3g, but occasionally said 3.5g and that must mean I don't have a lot of HSPA+ coverage in my area, right? AT&T's maps SAY I'm supposed to have a lot of HSPA+ coverage here though. I trust that the Galaxy S2 will have stronger signal strength?
Tl;dr: If I were to get a SGS2 or even a LG Thrill or Nitro (Definitely not getting them... they're just examples. No one has ever really said these LG phones have weak antennas along with the SGS2 save for wifi, but I don't really care about that.), would they get good HSPA+ signal like how the Nokia N- something gets good 3g signal or what? Not sure if this makes any sense still...
Other unimportant crap and thoughts to self: I used to think AT&T had horrible coverage (because I'd get lucky to get a decent signal with the Infuse), but after using this Nokia, it's the only reason I've convinced myself to get a different phone instead of switching to Verizon, which I KNOW is reliable. I was very impressed with the signal I was getting in the Nokia phone and was quick to decide to sell the Infuse and use the nokia as a temp until I get a SGS2. I saw some SGS2 vs Infuse vids and the SGS2 always had better signal. A lot of people have also said the Infuse had a weak antenna and the SGS2 was only weak on wifi, which I really don't care about at all. Definitely can't wait to get the SGS2 though.

Anyone in the Toms River - Manahawkin NJ area???

I'm curious what your reception is like on the GS3? I'm very solid 4G on the majority of the main roads, Rt9, Rt.37, Rt.72 (at least from the Pkwy to LBI), I hit 55mbps down from speedtest.net app using one of the NYC test sites. However, as soon as I move a few blocks off the main roads my my bars go from full to half and then inside I barely pull down a bar or two. My friends with At&t don't have this issue, I go to place in Barnegat about 4 miles off the parkway west of the parkway on Bay Ave. I barely get no data and barely a phone signal at all, if I go inside I get the NO symbol. My friend with At&t gets full bars, even down in his basement inside a finished office room. WTF? I wish I could switch but I have unlimited data and even though at best I only get 3mbps with 1-2bar 4G I still use over 20GB of data a month so I can't. Anyway, is there anyone else from the area with similar experiences? I almost feel as if the reception is getting worse around here.

jasondhsd said:
I'm curious what your reception is like on the GS3? I'm very solid 4G on the majority of the main roads, Rt9, Rt.37, Rt.72 (at least from the Pkwy to LBI), I hit 55mbps down from speedtest.net app using one of the NYC test sites. However, as soon as I move a few blocks off the main roads my my bars go from full to half and then inside I barely pull down a bar or two. My friends with At&t don't have this issue, I go to place in Barnegat about 4 miles off the parkway west of the parkway on Bay Ave. I barely get no data and barely a phone signal at all, if I go inside I get the NO symbol. My friend with At&t gets full bars, even down in his basement inside a finished office room. WTF? I wish I could switch but I have unlimited data and even though at best I only get 3mbps with 1-2bar 4G I still use over 20GB of data a month so I can't. Anyway, is there anyone else from the area with similar experiences? I almost feel as if the reception is getting worse around here.
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At Mariners Marina (on the bay in Barnegat) I get four bars (Verizon, GS3). On the bay, more or less near the shore, two or three bars. Middle of the bay two bars and sometimes just 3G. On LBI three or four bars most places.

[Q] Oneplus One Tmobile

So does the factory unlocked oneplus one work good with tmobiles 4G lte bands, I currently have the att note 4 and has terrible connectivity and signal strength with tmobiles network never had issues with tmobiles phones them selves had great signal till I bought a factory unlocked att note 4 it works but the signal is bad, I want the one plus one but anyone use it with tmobile and how is the signal compared to a tmobile phone?

It does work well. Not as well as the TMO S5, it doesn't have all the bands. That being said, my LTE speeds have dropped to around 20mbs in certian places were they once might have been 35mbs., you'll have to do a speed test to even notice. I live in middle of nowhere AL, this is a rest i just ran. tl/dr OPO works great on TMO

Cool seems good, another thing is the signal strength I use my phone a lot and this att note 4 hardly ever gets signal at the border I work by the Otay border. my other tmobile phones had excellent signal.
So signal wise is it almost the same as tmo s5 ? Let's say in certain areas where you used to get very low signal with the s5 does the oneplus one still get signal? I almost never get full bars unless I'm outside with my tmobile phones I would literally almost have full bars or close to full bars anywhere and that's what I'm looking for.

Cr1z619 said:
Cool seems good, another thing is the signal strength I use my phone a lot and this att note 4 hardly ever gets signal at the border I work by the Otay border. my other tmobile phones had excellent signal.
So signal wise is it almost the same as tmo s5 ? Let's say in certain areas where you used to get very low signal with the s5 does the oneplus one still get signal? I almost never get full bars unless I'm outside with my tmobile phones I would literally almost have full bars or close to full bars anywhere and that's what I'm looking for.
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I travel for work a LOT and what i have found is where i got poor LTE on my S5 i now get HSPA+ on thr OPO . basicly same speed though. Again im in the US. I have no idea what border you taking about and being New Years, I'm not looking it up . I still get signal where I always have.

Cellular strength and throughput

We know how much you like to stream, ahem, "videos", and so cellular data is mega-important. Rate this thread to express how you think the Huawei Nexus 6P's LTE performs. A higher rating indicates that it's fantastic: throughput is excellent and signal strength is top-notch.
Then, drop a comment if you have anything to add.

Using on AT&T, signal strength is good. And it has band 30 which will be good in the future when they get that rolled out.

Using on Verizon. With my old Note 3 and also my work iPhone 6 Plus, at work where the signal is terrible, it would switch to 3G periodically. With the 6p, i haven't had a single instance where it switched to 3G. Just for kicks, i put in my coworker's T-mobile sim card. He has iPhone 6 Plus and he gets 1 bar on his iPhone and i saw 3 bars

LTE on T-mobile - good strength compared to my Nexus 5 - can get LTE in some areas where I did not before. Shows full bars though LTE discovery shows different strength levels on band 4. Waiting for band 12 support to see full impact and hopefully with carrier aggregation to give better throughput.

pipnmike said:
Using on Verizon. With my old Note 3 and also my work iPhone 6 Plus, at work where the signal is terrible, it would switch to 3G periodically. With the 6p, i haven't had a single instance where it switched to 3G. Just for kicks, i put in my coworker's T-mobile sim card. He has iPhone 6 Plus and he gets 1 bar on his iPhone and i saw 3 bars
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Yup same here. this thing gets better signal at work (in a 12 story building) than my Note 4 on VZ. just to be sure it isn't a software bs thing. I tested speedtest and it pulls 7-8 mbs vs 1.5-3 mbs before (note4). So not sure which of the two VZ freq it pulls from normal or XLTE but the radios/antenae seems stronger than the note 4. in any event, I am quite happy and satisfied with my signal!! (orange county, calif)

T-Mobile signal at my desk at work has been inconsistent with my past two phones (Moto X 2014 and G4), but the 6P manages to hold on to LTE more often than the other two did. It also seems to switch back to LTE from HSPA+ quicker.
The biggest difference is HSPA+ performance. With both the Moto X and G4, HSPA+ performance was always awful, to the point that I just figured T-Mobile's HSPA+ spectrum was too saturated to provide decent results. The 6P manages to get much better data throughput in these conditions, so I am loving that.
LTE performance seems to be on par with the other phones, but with so many changes in the network, I never know if it's the phone or new things going on in the network.

I noticed that the signal strength is far superior than what i was getting on my S6 Edge. The 6P gets signal in places my S6 didn't so im a very! very! happy camper.

Cell reception has been pretty bad on mine so far...
Could anyone check if covering the visor area with your hand affects cell signal? (You will inevitably cover part of it when holding the phone horizontally with both hands or just the left hand) On my phone, just loosely covering the visor area with my hand lowers signal by one to two bars, and lowers data transfer rate from ~16MBps to less than 10MBps..

Of course it does. Every phone has an area or two that allow you to really hurt the signal by covering them with your hand.

WIthout a doubt the cell signal is far superior to that of the Nexus 6 that I replaced. This was easily seen driving down the road which with the Shamu would have areas that there was no signal at all, yet with the 6P I had at a minimum 2 bars all the way up and down the road. Even in my house where I had to switch to WiFi calling because of so many trees , I also get a good LTE signal throughout the house.
WiFi performance itself is amazing as it is literally faster than my $4k gaming laptop. This is what I got on my 300 connection
http://screencast.com/t/dHcAt6FuxN6
http://screencast.com/t/2Vn4MF5Iw

pipnmike said:
Using on Verizon. With my old Note 3 and also my work iPhone 6 Plus, at work where the signal is terrible, it would switch to 3G periodically. With the 6p, i haven't had a single instance where it switched to 3G. Just for kicks, i put in my coworker's T-mobile sim card. He has iPhone 6 Plus and he gets 1 bar on his iPhone and i saw 3 bars
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Hope this is the case for me too! I have the Nexus 6 and lose LTE occasionally... it irritates me too, because i can toggle Airplane Mode and LTE pops back up. So hopefully this is the case for me as well.

collinjm01 said:
Hope this is the case for me too! I have the Nexus 6 and lose LTE occasionally... it irritates me too, because i can toggle Airplane Mode and LTE pops back up. So hopefully this is the case for me as well.
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I used to see this with my Nexus 6 and G4 all the time. I had to use LTE Discovery and its Auto Cycle feature to stay on LTE longer at work. With the 6P, if it does drop out of LTE, it recovers a lot quicker than all the other phones.

Coming from my Nexus 6, I have much better reception everywhere in the Phoenix Valley
Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

I am on AT&T and I am finding myself getting better LTE reception than ever before. My previous phone was an Xperia Z3 and the 6P is definitely superior.

Way better signal than the Moto X 2014 or Oneplus One!

I'm on Verizon and have not had a chance to test it in my fringe areas. I do have a Wilson signal booster in the house and my Note 4 would typically show a signal strength of -84 to -86db. The Nexus 6P is consistently in the mid -70s. (Lower is better)

My cell reception is amazing.. Texts in and out of the depths of where I work.. Voice quality was muffled at times but seems better with root

I have a Nexus 6 & ordered a 6P using it on Verizon. Is the reception about the same? The 6 was my first moto phone & had much better reception than my LG G2 (previous phone). Will I lose call quality?

On t-mobile for the most part I am getting good signal. But....
I am noticing that many times I drop my LTE connection and just get HSPA and or 3g....
I am also loosing my LTE signal and a point that the cell site is close by so it is not because of weak signal.
I looked at coverage maps and used an app called LTE discovery I don't see the new T-Mobile bands here in Atlanta yet... Maybe that will help..

LTE has been great for me here in Irvine CA, got 84 Mbps download. WiFi speeds are good too, but WiFi range is much worse than my nexus 5. Bluetooth range isbworse too. My n5 keeps my WiFi signal down at my street corner, 6p loses thebwifi half way there. Same with Bluetooth, it loses bt signl half distance that my n5 does.

Cellular strength and throughput

We know how much you like to stream, ahem, "videos", and so cellular data is mega-important. Rate this thread to express how you think the Google Pixel XL's LTE performs. A higher rating indicates that it's fantastic: throughput is excellent and signal strength is top-notch.
Then, drop a comment if you have anything to add.

Awesome. Verizon just put up a new cell tower by us. 68 down and 15 up.
Sent from my Pixel XL using XDA-Developers mobile app

I'm getting LTE service in places that were dead zones compared to my 6P.

I'm getting 120Mbps down, 30Mbps up here on Telstra.

I guess I am the odd ball out, coming from an iPhone 7 Plus and a Note 7 this phone def has the worst signal of the three. The other two would average at my house 3-4 bars of signal the Pixel is 0-1 bars. Now to be fair it hasn't dropped a call, I have not tested the throughput of it as of yet.

Fate0n3 said:
I guess I am the odd ball out, coming from an iPhone 7 Plus and a Note 7 this phone def has the worst signal of the three. The other two would average at my house 3-4 bars of signal the Pixel is 0-1 bars. Now to be fair it hasn't dropped a call, I have not tested the throughput of it as of yet.
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So the reception isn't actually that great. I wonder why all the reviewers were raving about it then. I can't imagine a half-metal phone manufactured by HTC having such fantastic cell reception.
Have you checked the actual dBm values? You can't really compare by "bars" side-by-side. I know that my Galaxy S6 got about 10dBm better reception than my Nexus 5, not sure how it is for the Pixel XL.

I know this probably isn't the right place for it but in London we use our phones to pay for transport and the NFC chip here is lightning compared my note 7. Just as fast as the oyster payment cards we use which open the gates for us Londoners.
Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

Pixel XL reception's seems to be a bit less than my tried and true Nexus 6. I will measure with LTE Discovery app over next few days.

The real question is ,
Anyone was able to trigger LTE-A (4G+) which peaks to 150+mbps or is it just LTE and we have to speedtest every now and then ?

Emerald Core said:
The real question is ,
Anyone was able to trigger LTE-A (4G+) which peaks to 150+mbps or is it just LTE and we have to speedtest every now and then ?
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*#*#4636#*#* is your command, change it, experiment boom, done

Sorry hit send twice.

Now that I have the phone... The cellular reception on the Pixel XL is as good as, or better (by a few dBm) than the Galaxy S6.
However it's hard to tell sometimes when it's in LTE+ carrier aggregation mode

My signal strength has been good. When I'm outside, I usually have full bars. Then when I get inside a building, I lose 1 bar. I have at&t, Google pixel xl, cruzerlite case.

Here's my speed test details from being inside a building.

How exactly do you enable LTE-A or VoLTE in the 4636 menu? I can't seem to figure it out.... I know I can't enable VoLTE provisioning; it lets me turn the switch on, but if I back out and go back in, the switch has reverted to off.

Tmobile baby??

i think my opinion comes more from the provider than the phone itself. My wife also has a Pixel XL but she's on Project Fi and I'm on AT&T. She gets better service than I do in most places, which is more TMO vs ATT than anything else. we live in NY and i'm underground a lot while traveling to work and home. I'm always getting 5 bars of LTE coverage in the train at Grand Central but I might as well have no service. There's never any data.