Database Info

[Q] Inspire with Edge

Hello chaps,
Liking the site redesign - clearly been a while since I was last here!
I recently purchased a lovely, shiny new HTC Inspire off a friend. Beautiful bit of kit and the first time I've ever owned a "state of the art" device, so I was clearly pretty excited. I knew that I wouldn't be able to use it with T-Mob, even if I rooted it, due to the UTMS (3+G) frequency bands being incompatible. No problem, I thought, I'm not contracted to T-Mob, I'll just go get a rolling contract from AT&T. Easy right?
Well no. Because I'm a dirty foreigner, they won't give me a rolling contract without a $500 fee, which basically rules them out. Which means I have a lovely piece of kit I will never be able to use in the US
I was about to sell the device, painful as the prospect is, on eBay. But I thought I might try one last thing - living on T-Mob with just EDGE. Of course, it's not going to give me the full experience but might be good enough for my purposes (email, widget sync, light browsing). I don't stream Pandora or watch Youtube on my phone. Will EDGE be enough for me? Is it a pervasive ("always-on") connection or will I be looking at long delays between pull events?
Thanks!

Alexandicity said:
Hello chaps,
Liking the site redesign - clearly been a while since I was last here!
I recently purchased a lovely, shiny new HTC Inspire off a friend. Beautiful bit of kit and the first time I've ever owned a "state of the art" device, so I was clearly pretty excited. I knew that I wouldn't be able to use it with T-Mob, even if I rooted it, due to the UTMS (3+G) frequency bands being incompatible. No problem, I thought, I'm not contracted to T-Mob, I'll just go get a rolling contract from AT&T. Easy right?
Well no. Because I'm a dirty foreigner, they won't give me a rolling contract without a $500 fee, which basically rules them out. Which means I have a lovely piece of kit I will never be able to use in the US
I was about to sell the device, painful as the prospect is, on eBay. But I thought I might try one last thing - living on T-Mob with just EDGE. Of course, it's not going to give me the full experience but might be good enough for my purposes (email, widget sync, light browsing). I don't stream Pandora or watch Youtube on my phone. Will EDGE be enough for me? Is it a pervasive ("always-on") connection or will I be looking at long delays between pull events?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For what you want edge is fine. You really only need 3g when watching videos or streaming music. The internet will be a bit slower.

Thanks klquicksall, good to hear. It occurs to me there's one more data use I have and that's maps. These will clearly go a little slower but any idea if the experience will be unusably awful or just a little laggy?

Alexandicity said:
Thanks klquicksall, good to hear. It occurs to me there's one more data use I have and that's maps. These will clearly go a little slower but any idea if the experience will be unusably awful or just a little laggy?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you should download the 2g/3g control from the market and test it on your current or a friends phone that has 3g and see how slow it is.

I have read where some have had success using at&t phones with the prepaid voice/data/messaging plans from Walmart-straight talk. Don't know if it really works or just bs but worth looking into.

Newter - that could be a very good option if it works. Seems they recently switched from CDMA to GSM, which would be nice; the unlimited plan would be dirt cheap if they'll let me hit up GBs of data (I think they're not expecting smartphones on that plan!). One thing I expect will be that I won't be able to port my number, which is a bummer but I might use this opportunity to move to Google Voice..
I'll go talk to them about it tomorrow afternoon and see what they can do.

Alexandicity said:
Hello chaps,
Liking the site redesign - clearly been a while since I was last here!
I recently purchased a lovely, shiny new HTC Inspire off a friend. Beautiful bit of kit and the first time I've ever owned a "state of the art" device, so I was clearly pretty excited. I knew that I wouldn't be able to use it with T-Mob, even if I rooted it, due to the UTMS (3+G) frequency bands being incompatible. No problem, I thought, I'm not contracted to T-Mob, I'll just go get a rolling contract from AT&T. Easy right?
Well no. Because I'm a dirty foreigner, they won't give me a rolling contract without a $500 fee, which basically rules them out. Which means I have a lovely piece of kit I will never be able to use in the US
I was about to sell the device, painful as the prospect is, on eBay. But I thought I might try one last thing - living on T-Mob with just EDGE. Of course, it's not going to give me the full experience but might be good enough for my purposes (email, widget sync, light browsing). I don't stream Pandora or watch Youtube on my phone. Will EDGE be enough for me? Is it a pervasive ("always-on") connection or will I be looking at long delays between pull events?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
just be warned that when android on EDGE, you may often miss phone calls because the EDGE data connection, during a data trasnfer, kicks phone calls directly to voicemail. so there may be many times when gmail or something else is doing something in the background, and someone tried to call you but you never got the call. just watch out for this. sometimes calls will sneak thru, but lots of times they dont.
you could always manually turn off data though to avoid this.

if there's wifi wherever you are, you may not even notice a difference...just keep it on and use that when you're not out and about. maps will suck, i used to use maps on an intl phone with only edge frequencies with att but it worked decently well if you turn off satellite. worth a shot at least!

Thanks for the advice guys. I unlocked it and am running under t-mob. As expected, only EDGE, but the connection seems robust enough. I set up Wifi which will get me all my heavy stuff and the EDGE does seem sufficient for email, sunc and map-based browsing (takes perhaps 5 seconds to fill a map screen?). On the plus the battery seems to be pretty good!
Roger - are you saying that EDGE usage will block calls? Will that happen all the time EDGE is connected or just when it is active? Or is it an "interference" thing that reduces GSM reception when EDGE is transmitting?

Alexandicity said:
Thanks for the advice guys. I unlocked it and am running under t-mob. As expected, only EDGE, but the connection seems robust enough. I set up Wifi which will get me all my heavy stuff and the EDGE does seem sufficient for email, sunc and map-based browsing (takes perhaps 5 seconds to fill a map screen?). On the plus the battery seems to be pretty good!
Roger - are you saying that EDGE usage will block calls? Will that happen all the time EDGE is connected or just when it is active? Or is it an "interference" thing that reduces GSM reception when EDGE is transmitting?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it will only block a call if data is actively being transmitted at that particular moment. an idle EDGE connection will let calls come thru no problem. just something to be aware of, as lots of times data is transmitting in the background, i.e. gmail is updating, or receiving an email, the market is checking for updates, etc.

I used a T Mobile exclusive phone, the HTC Dream / G1 for close to a year and never had issues with turn by turn Navigation unless I had less than stellar coverage from at&t.
Like others have mentioned, if you are like me and use mainly WiFi than you're not really missing much.
This is an incredible device, and with the ROM choices from it just being released a little more than a month ago is a great sign of amazing things to come.
On another note I myself enable GSM only to save battery life as well when I know I won't be needing it. Just an FYI.
Sent from my customized to the teeth HTC Inspire4G

Wi-fi reception range on smartphones

Hey all!
After doing about an hour's worth of research in total, I noticed that there is a general lack of information on the topic of wi-fi reception range of various smartphones.
I for one would consider such information useful, as it could be used to compare performance of the various devices out there. So I figured I'd start this thread to collect some data and experiences.
If you are interested in participating, then please test how far you can move away from your wireless router while still maintaining a reasonably stable connection(i.e. you can browse the web without constant timeouts).
Overall, please try to include the following information if possible:
- Brand and model of your device
- Approximate distance from your wireless router
- How many walls/ceilings/big objects are between you and your router(try as few as possible for the most accurate result)
To start it off, here are my results:
Device: Samsung Galaxy S2
Range: ~50ft(15 meters), 20-30% signal strength average
Obstructions: A desk and 1 wall.

Just some points to consider:
WiFi routers differ in terms of transmission power, thus rendering the results useless without any information about the router.
Other radiating sources might cause interference which will negatively affect the signal
A "reasonably stable connection" is a very subjective opinion. The dBm value would be better.

Yeah, scientifically speaking this is sort of a wasted affair. Curiosity sake though, why not.
This is probably a better test of router transmission than anything, fun nonetheless .
HTC Incredible S, HD revolution 1.0.1 rom (yeah thats right, I haven't updated)
~50 feet. Through 1 floor, 3 walls, 1 door.
Or at work: ~30 feet through one wall.
I can say though, with a sad face, that the iPhone's get better wi-fi reception at work.

Hmm, I suppose you are actually right! For some reason I forgot to consider that the wireless router itself also plays a big role, seeing as they tend to be quite different from each other. I guess I assumed the routers would just about always have bigger range than the phones, but I suppose this isn't always true, is it?
That does make it rather difficult to get accurate and reliable results.. A shame

My Incredible gets decent reception throughout my house. One end to the other the signal is a bit low. Outside sitting about 100 feet from the router inside I get decent reception.

That would be nice, but frankly i think it's impossible to make a decent comparison, there are too many different reuters...

i have se mini desire hd and a hero and they all still get wifi at the bottom of my garden going through two walls, about 100 ft from bt hub

Using a linksys modem from 2005, on HD2, I get poor, but still working signal at the other end of my house (at least 50 feet away from my modem through 4 walls)..

Device:Samsung i5700 Spica
Range:~50ft (15 meters) 40% signal
Obstructions: Nothing

It seems to me like the phone would be more important than the router (assuming that the router has a longer transmitting range than the phone) because in order to establish a TCP connection you would not only need to be able to receive signals from the router, but also send signals back to it. So it would really be your phone's Transmition rate that matters. This of course is not true if different routers are better at receiving week signals than others.

Love this topic, truly wonder why wifi range isn't among standard specs of phones. Tried and tried to find information on it but not yet.
I was dad so got all the hand me down phones . At one time I had all these phones and tried them, wi-fi range being important because I spent a lot of time out in the shop.
2012 Samsung Exhilarate i577 #2 on wi-fi range.
2013 HTC One M7 #3 (lovely phone, they only let me have it for couple of months, but wasn't impressed with range.
2014 Moto G XT1045 #1 and still the champ. cracked screen and little storage, can't believe it's a 2014 phone it was beat on so much by daughter. But still use it as a wi-fi stereo w/ bluetooth speaker.
2016 LG K10 #4 Sucks. In most ways. It seems like it's fast but not. had to get with US Cellular, they basically gave it to me for $20
So yeah, still want to know why it isn't in the specs of a phone? pretty darn important.

Android enthusiast
Guys my first-ever post in any forum!
I am too lazy to post any thing but this thread made me take this step. I have two devices right now. Results :
Xiaomi 4A (80 USD)
Range from router (100+ feet) if not less. I crosses the road and still getting reception. (Using youtube)
Blackberry priv (Flagship) NEW
30 feet and wifi disappears
I am testing this Xiaomi 4a since months and difference is too higher than any brands stop dude i.e. iPhone 6s, priv and note8. Sorry if I missed some format but please end my curiosity by telling how the hell can a midrange phone out perform giants with such huge difference? In Xiaomi 4a I receive signal where no other phone ever got even single bar.
Will appreciate.

https://ehtrust.org/science/peer-reviewed-research-studies-on-wi-fi/
https://ehtrust.org/france-new-national-law-bans-wifi-nursery-school/
Use wifi sparingly. Avoid taking kids to wifi schools and limit time in shopping centres and shops wherever possible. Way too many access points. Run a 24-hour wifi router at home at your own risk.
That said, too many variables for meaningful range results, though I have yet to see any product worse than the Teclast x80 Pro I briefly owned. I am still shocked that the wifi could pass basic testing, let alone be foist on the masses.

last not list
in this is kind of idea i share others

2011:laugh::laugh::laugh:

Hebekiah said:
Love this topic, truly wonder why wifi range isn't among standard specs of phones. Tried and tried to find information on it but not yet.
I was dad so got all the hand me down phones . At one time I had all these phones and tried them, wi-fi range being important because I spent a lot of time out in the shop.
2012 Samsung Exhilarate i577 #2 on wi-fi range.
2013 HTC One M7 #3 (lovely phone, they only let me have it for couple of months, but wasn't impressed with range.
2014 Moto G XT1045 #1 and still the champ. cracked screen and little storage, can't believe it's a 2014 phone it was beat on so much by daughter. But still use it as a wi-fi stereo w/ bluetooth speaker.
2016 LG K10 #4 Sucks. In most ways. It seems like it's fast but not. had to get with US Cellular, they basically gave it to me for $20
So yeah, still want to know why it isn't in the specs of a phone? pretty darn important.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Listing the range specification wouldn't be THAT useful though -- manufacturers would be listing the range from results in a test lab under the best-case scenario, which would be mega-inflated beyond meaning in the real world and wouldn't help anyone. For range maybe they realize that there are too many variables to even get away with doing that *shrugs*

HORRIBLE Signal on the Standard S6

Hi
So I recently upgraded to the standard S6, and I've been experiencing very, very bad cellular signal reception. At places I would have good (or sometimes even great) signal with all the LTE phones I've owned throughout the last months (iPhone 5, Xperia Z1, Lumia 920), I'm getting very poor or even no signal at all. Not to mention mobile data basically not working at all.
As far as my research goes, I'm definitely not the only one experiencing issues like this. Even a friend of mine who bought the same S6 on the same carrier with the same contract has experienced similar issues. Though there seem to be a lot of "affected" phones, there isn't really much of a solution available online, so I figured one of you might be able to help.
Would really appreciate any tips and workarounds, or even some more people having issues like that with their S6's.
Cheers!

I've just purchased a Galaxy S6 and it is without doubt the worst phone for reception I have ever owned.
My 4G signal at my home on my old Galaxy S5 was always 3 to 4 bars on my S6 im lucky to get between 1 to 2 bars.

It would help if you told us where you live, what carrier you're with, what model s6 you have, is it carrier branded or international unlocked, have you talked to your carrier's customer service, etc. Without any info it just sounds like Samsung bashing.

I get less bars than with my moto x2014 but I get 4g+ instead of 4g and 4g+ is faaaaassssst

Mine is exactly the same signal bars as every phone i've owned but has much faster data and clearer calls.
I would say you either have a bad phone, bad network, or issues with a mobile mast in the area etc etc.
Comparing to past phones is useless because what worked yesterday might not work today. Intermittent issues anyone?

Mine is currently in repair for poor signal. I doubt they will fix it, I think they designed the S6 antennas extremely poorly.

Forgot to update this thread, sorry. I recently sent it in (ofc covered by warranty), and it is far better now, but still not quite as good as on the other mentioned phones, HSDPA is still pretty slow right now and I rarely get LTE. So if you're facing simmilar problems, even though I always hat to do it, I recommend you send it in to Samsung. Also, consider asking your carrier to give you a newer SIM-card since that could be a reason to from what I've heard.

How common is the GPS problem on the LG G5?

Hi XDA family,
I'm thinking about getting a cheap (but brand new) T Mobile LG G5. (The lack of a notification light on the G6 is a deal killer for me)
How widespread is this faulty GPS issue on the G5? I read all about it here on XDA and it sounds like a miserable situation to deal with. But those kinds of issues usually seem more common than they actually are because people who have a perfectly working device never start threads to say "My GPS works great!" but people who have broken phones start "My GPS is broken!" threads by the dozens.
So how likely am I to get a bad GPS phone? Is it a 50-50 shot or a 1 in a 100 shot?
Basically just look to know if it's highly likely that I'll get a bad phone or if it's improbable.

I bought two of these phones and both have horrible GPS...always loosing signal...have never had so many issues with gps before in a phone

I also have 2 lg g5 in the family. My brother and I. Using them for more than 6 months. Mine is the tmobile version, my brother's got the us unlocked one. Zero gps issues so far.

suhridkhan said:
I also have 2 lg g5 in the family. My brother and I. Using them for more than 6 months. Mine is the tmobile version, my brother's got the us unlocked one. Zero gps issues so far.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also have H830 factory unlocked. GPS locked with 2 sec from cold start and indoor.

For anyone's future information I've dealt with 4 of these phones. 1 had a main camera focus issues after a month, 1 phone worked fine, and the 2 others had serious GPS issues straight out of the box. The signal was so poor it was pretty much unusable. Lucky youtube has some fixes that show which pins need to be jacked up. After this the GPS was amazing.
So I had a 50% strike rate with the GPS issue.
I'm pretty shocked with the faults of this phone. Most likely the last LG's I'll be buying. If you can't design a phone with a working reliable GPS you don't deserve to be in the business.

Returned Pixel 5 for poor reception

I used the Pixel 5 since release data on the 15th October here in UK for 20 days.
Find everything more than acceptable for the £600 price, top speaker aside.
However the mobile reception much worse than the Pixel 4 and Note 10 i have right now.
At work I can not maintain 4G connection and often switch to H+, which is soo slow can't even load website at a decent speed. This is not a problem with my other 2 phones I tested last week.
Guess it's too good to be true for a Pixel phone don't have any deal breaking problems at launch. Maybe this is due to the cheaper SOC, or Google will realise a software patch.
But with the lock down coming decided to return the phone before the post office shuts.
Hopefully not too many other Pixel 5 users have the same problem.

Bigmille said:
I used the Pixel 5 since release data on the 15th October here in UK for 20 days.
Find everything more than acceptable for the £600 price, top speaker aside.
However the mobile reception much worse than the Pixel 4 and Note 10 i have right now.
At work I can not maintain 4G connection and often switch to H+, which is soo slow can't even load website at a decent speed. This is not a problem with my other 2 phones I tested last week.
Guess it's too good to be true for a Pixel phone don't have any deal breaking problems at launch. Maybe this is due to the cheaper SOC, or Google will realise a software patch.
But with the lock down coming decided to return the phone before the post office shuts.
Hopefully not too many other Pixel 5 users have the same problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, all good here. Can't fault reception anywhere. I'm with you on top speaker though [emoji849]
Sent from my Pixel 5 using Tapatalk

I had to do the same with my Pixel 4A. Returned the 4A for the 5.
The 4A I got had atrocious reception. I knew something was wrong with it the moment I tried using mobile data in areas I never had problems, and all of a sudden had nothing BUT problem after switching to the Pixel 4A.
I can happily say my 5 has fixed these issues. Apparently, in order to cut costs on the 4A, google uses ****ty radios that gives you awful reception, in comparison to other phones.

My Pixel 5 displays a lower signal than my Oneplus 7t does but i can still make calls in all the same places and 4g data throughput is identical. When comparing them using Network Cell Info the real strength of the signal is all but the same between the 2 phones, the only real difference is the Pixel 5 goes to a band 20 cell much, much sooner where as the 7t hangs on in there like grim death to the nearest tower.

*dredges memory*
I'm sure Pixel phones have always had a more "honest" representation of signal than some other manufacturers.
The choice of what signal represents what indication is highly subjective and provided the throughout is the same, largely irrelevant.
Having said that I've noticed that in some places where my Mate 20 Pro used to hang onto a 4G signal the Pixel 5 can only manage 3G.

I live where there is a marginal signal. Comparing my previous Galaxy S10 to the Pixel 5 using Network Cell Info the signal strength is almost identical.