Database Users

Reception on the Leo

Haaaiiiii everybody!
Firstly, what a spectacular device. It's gorgeous, the screen is awesome, the performance is great (huge improvement over my last handset (tytn II) - not that i didn't love it like my own child mind), and love the sense UI wrapper thingy for winmo.
I bought the phone from mobiles.co.uk (is this just carephone warehouse? The invoice i got just looks like the ones you get from the shop itself) and i'm guessing it's the stock rom/unlocked, since i'm on t-mobile (UK) and i have the youtube app, co-pilot etc. And it asked me to set the network preset myself when i first turned it on.
My question is related to reception/signal strength. How are you all finding it? I've moved from orange to t-mobile, so i did expect to experience a slight reduction in the quality of coverage - perhaps simply because the urban folklore is that orange have the best coverage. However, it seems to be depressingly poor. My orange handset is pretty much 3 or more bars of HSDPA everywhere in my house. By comparison, the new HD2 is mostly just G (GPRS), very ocasionally 3G or H, and only ever 1 or 2 bars of whatever bandwidth it settles on.
Moreover, it seems to fluctuate strangely. My mental model for mobile signal strength - informed entirely by experience - is that it's related almost entirely to where you're stood. Once you find a decent spot, it tends to remain pretty consistent. However, sometimes with the leo, I'll stick it down on my desk and leave it for a few minutes, in which time it'll build up to perhaps 2 bars of 3G, but as soon as i pick it up, it tends to decrease gradually back down to 1 or 2 bars of G.
According to the t-mobile site i'm in a "Good" signal area for both 2 and 3g - i live near a big town (bolton), not out in the sticks. So i am somewhat disappointed so far. Is there any possibility i have a dodgy handset? or perhaps is this an issue with the radio part of the software install? Can i expect it to get better with future radio releases?
All this is indoors, but i did have a wander around outside for a few minutes earlier today, and the best i could get it up to was 2 bars of 3g.
A friend of mine also has t-mobile, and told me he seems to remember getting pretty good signal at my house, so i'm getting him to bring his android HTC (touch maybe?) round later so we can swap sims about and compare like with like. I'll have a better idea of what's going on then. I'm also aware that orange and t-mobile are almost certainly going to be merging rather soon, and they expect their networks to be one as of next summer, so i'll hopefully be back with my old coverage then, although this is a long time to wait. On a similar note, another reason this is worse than expected, is that i was under the impression t-mobile had more or less completed merging their 3g network with 3, which has the best 3g coverage in the country. Anyone aware of the status of this project? is it behind schedule?
Cheers for taking the time to read this all!
Simon

One other thing i forgot to mention, is that in some cases, it tries to switch between networks so frequently that web-browsing or any other data task is completely impossible. Last night i was lying in bed attempting to surf the web, and it kept changing between 1 bar of H, then dropping down to 0, then changing to 1 bar of 3g, then changing back to H. It was doing this every few seconds at one point.

I dont know where you got the idea that urban folklore says Orange has best network coverage! They are shockingly bad imo...
I actually ended up in a legal battle with Orange due to their extremely bad service/coverage... they were claiming around £70,000 pounds from me/my company after we refused to pay due to MANY shortcomings. Long story short.... i/we won. They didnt get a penny and we got to keep all of our hardware also.
T-Mobile have an extremely fast HSDPA network but again i find their overall coverage to be less then satisfactory.
I am under the impression that both T-Mobile and Orange use higher frequencies in their network and this results in their signals being alot worse at penetrating walls etc when compared to Vodafone and O2. Perhaps more knowledgable peeps could confirm this?
Anyway... back on point... with my HD2 (using Vodafone SIM) i am getting coverage in areas where previously no one on any network got a signal. In one particular restaurant i frequent... everyone else on my table had no coverage what so ever yet i was sitting there browsing the internet.

One other thing to note that may help you with your situation... the antenna for the HD2 is situated at the BOTTOM of the device. Other users have reported fluctuating signals when holding the dvice in their hand although i have no such experience myself.

Audio Oblivion said:
I dont know where you got the idea that urban folklore says Orange has best network coverage! They are shockingly bad imo...
I actually ended up in a legal battle with Orange due to their extremely bad service/coverage... they were claiming around £70,000 pounds from me/my company after we refused to pay due to MANY shortcomings. Long story short.... i/we won. They didnt get a penny and we got to keep all of our hardware also.
T-Mobile have an extremely fast HSDPA network but again i find their overall coverage to be less then satisfactory.
I am under the impression that both T-Mobile and Orange use higher frequencies in their network and this results in their signals being alot worse at penetrating walls etc when compared to Vodafone and O2. Perhaps more knowledgable peeps could confirm this?
Anyway... back on point... with my HD2 (using Vodafone SIM) i am getting coverage in areas where previously no one on any network got a signal. In one particular restaurant i frequent... everyone else on my table had no coverage what so ever yet i was sitting there browsing the internet.
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Audio Oblivion said:
One other thing to note that may help you with your situation... the antenna for the HD2 is situated at the BOTTOM of the device. Other users have reported fluctuating signals when holding the dvice in their hand although i have no such experience myself.
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Thanks for the response! Interesting story about orange there. I think urban folklore is one of those things that varies from one urban environment to the next. Needless to say, orange has always been pretty strong for me here at home, so i am slightly disappointed with the performance of T-Mobile so far. I'll get my friend down here with his handset and see what the comparison is like, and i'll bear that antenna tip in mind!
I was considering vodafone, but their 3g coverage didn't seem to be as expansive as t-mobiles. Who knows, perhaps they'd have been as bad in my area if not worse? Another thing that swung me in the direction of t-mobile was the data packages. The guy at vodafone told me they offered no increased usage packages for mobiles. Whereas with t-mobile, for an extra fiver a month, i can - at any time, and for any number of months at a time - upgrade from 1gb fair usage to 3. And they will NEVER charge me for going over anyway, just cap bandwidth.
EDIT: forgot to mention the indoors thing. Yeah i'm a physicist by trade, so it did occur to me that operating frequency could be to blame for poor coverage in doors.

I'm waiting for my phone to arrive tomorrow (fingers crossed) so I can't comment on that, but I live in Atherton (which is just down the road for everyone else). My house and around my street is bad for all mobile reception. Currently I am on vodafone with a i900. If I leave my phone on the table I will get 2 bars but when I pick it up it usually disappears all together. I had a HTC Diamond for a day on Orange and that was worse. My friends are on O2 and they seem to get ok signal here, and a few years ago I was on Three which gave me the best signal in my house but was generally worse elsewhere.
I have an old Nokia as a works phone on Orange and that continually out performs my omnia for signal strength.
I was hoping the signal strength in this phone would be good. After flashing my radio in my Omnia many times it made no difference and I did not know the annettene on this was at the bottom of the phone (just like the Omnia). It seems strange to do this.

I can't comment on T-Mobile's coverage (although I did leave Orange a few years ago because of their shocking coverage) but I get generally excellent reception on 3 here in London. Unfortunately, the only place where the reception is bad is at one of the offices that I spend half my week at but 3 have marked that as a network blackspot on their website
If it helps, someone at another site I work at was amazed that I am able to make phone calls standing in the central stairwell of the building which is in the City. He can barely make a call when standing right next to the windows but he's using an iPhone on O2

I have seen no difference in indicated signal strength between my HD and my new HD2. However, what is clear is that the phone sound quality is better on this HD2 - even for the same location and same signal strength - something that is easy to judge at home.
I would guess your issue is to do with the T-Mobile strength in your house, versus the old Orange network signal, rather than the handset. When you do a comparison with your friends handset on T-Mobile do not go only by the indicated signal strength on the handset. It would be worth looking at the band switching issue by direct comparison and also to measure the actual download speed when data connected.
Regarding your H (HSDPA) and 3G switching - I think that you will find that HSDPA only kicks in when you actually have data being exchanged (actual exchange not demand). On all of my recent devices the H only shows when (for instance) a web page is actually in the process of downloading - what you report is not strictly band switching. However, some people do see performence issues when the device keeps truly switching bands (2G/G, and E, to 3G/H). Although a pain some find it better to force the device into a particular band to avoid such an issue - but there is always a consequent possibility of loosing all signal.
I'll be interested to hear how the comparison goes.

chris_lyon82 said:
I'm waiting for my phone to arrive tomorrow (fingers crossed) so I can't comment on that, but I live in Atherton (which is just down the road for everyone else). My house and around my street is bad for all mobile reception. Currently I am on vodafone with a i900. If I leave my phone on the table I will get 2 bars but when I pick it up it usually disappears all together. I had a HTC Diamond for a day on Orange and that was worse. My friends are on O2 and they seem to get ok signal here, and a few years ago I was on Three which gave me the best signal in my house but was generally worse elsewhere.
I have an old Nokia as a works phone on Orange and that continually out performs my omnia for signal strength.
I was hoping the signal strength in this phone would be good. After flashing my radio in my Omnia many times it made no difference and I did not know the annettene on this was at the bottom of the phone (just like the Omnia). It seems strange to do this.
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Funnily enough, my phone mistakenly thought i was in atherton the other day - gps indoors being the cause. Interested to hear how you get on when the phone arrives.
jakem said:
I can't comment on T-Mobile's coverage (although I did leave Orange a few years ago because of their shocking coverage) but I get generally excellent reception on 3 here in London. Unfortunately, the only place where the reception is bad is at one of the offices that I spend half my week at but 3 have marked that as a network blackspot on their website
If it helps, someone at another site I work at was amazed that I am able to make phone calls standing in the central stairwell of the building which is in the City. He can barely make a call when standing right next to the windows but he's using an iPhone on O2
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I think it's probably just a case of orange having better reception around my local area than t-mobile unfortunately. All this said, it's not too much of a bother, since obviously i can just use the wireless network for data access whilst at home. Not really gone out and about with the phone yet as i'm waiting for my number to port across.
tony.wheeler said:
I have seen no difference in indicated signal strength between my HD and my new HD2. However, what is clear is that the phone sound quality is better on this HD2 - even for the same location and same signal strength - something that is easy to judge at home.
I would guess your issue is to do with the T-Mobile strength in your house, versus the old Orange network signal, rather than the handset. When you do a comparison with your friends handset on T-Mobile do not go only by the indicated signal strength on the handset. It would be worth looking at the band switching issue by direct comparison and also to measure the actual download speed when data connected.
Regarding your H (HSDPA) and 3G switching - I think that you will find that HSDPA only kicks in when you actually have data being exchanged (actual exchange not demand). On all of my recent devices the H only shows when (for instance) a web page is actually in the process of downloading - what you report is not strictly band switching. However, some people do see performence issues when the device keeps truly switching bands (2G/G, and E, to 3G/H). Although a pain some find it better to force the device into a particular band to avoid such an issue - but there is always a consequent possibility of loosing all signal.
I'll be interested to hear how the comparison goes.
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Interesting - thanks for the info! Yeah i'm leaning towards just relatively poor T-M reception locally as the explanation now myself. I'll bear those tips in mind when testing. My plan was to choose a location in the house where i know my own phone will only maintain something relatively poor, like a single bar on the GPRS band. Then leave the phones side by side in this location and see what they both settle down to. Then swap sim cards around - if they are different - and repeat. Are conventional bandwidth testing sites appropriate for mobiles? or do they involve the transfer of comparatively large amounts of data? Is there an alternative you can suggest if so?
Ah perhaps that's a winmo6.5 difference? I know on my old kaiser, the H is there all the time, even when i've used kaiser tweak to disable the internet/data connection. By that i mean the large H, as opposed to the small letter which appears above the signal bar when the data connection has actually been established. I have wondered why modern phones differentiate between H and 3G, since we're told they are, in reality, the same band. Haven't most providers just upgraded all their 3g transmitters? I'd have thought phones would have always believed themselves to be connected to "H" - in 3g zones - and it would simply be a case of signal determining the sort of bandwidth which can be sustained.
Not sure when i'll get chance to do the test, but i will post back in this thread once it's completed!

Hi,
I know it's an obvious statement but I would imagine it's just down to location. I live in South London, have an HD2 on T-Mobile and get pretty much consistent 3G/HSDPA coverage throughout the house. Downloads are quick and email and weather syncing very prompt.
I've had contracts with pretty much all major service providers and I must say that T-Mobile probably has the best coverage of them all along with '3'...

Ok, so the friend who's also on t-mobile popped round this evening. Didn't have time to do any testing in my own home, as we had an errand to run. However, during the journey i had the phones side by side to make a direct comparison, and also had time to do this briefly once we'd arrived at our destination. No time for bandwidth comparisons yet - just looking at indicated signal strength and band. Important to note that his handset is a G1, running android, so as indicated before, comparing actual "bars" of signal is perhaps somewhat arbitrary and fruitless - who knows what differences there are between the way microsoft and google calculate signal strength.
First thing to note is the H/3G indicator issue. One of the previous posters does indeed seem to have it quite right in saying that 3G only changes to an H whilst a transfer is actually in progress. My handset does sometimes seem to flick from 3g to H whilst i'm not directly making data calls, but i imagine this is some auto sync in the background, either from the weather app, or the facebook app, or the facebook-linked contacts. Whilst browsing, it says 3G all the time, until a link is clicked, in which case it changes to H for the time it takes the page to load, then back to 3G. Not sure if this is just a change in winmo from the last version i had to this or, or an HTC customisation.
In terms of signal/banding the phones were more or less the same, with a couple of notable exceptions. Firstly, at one point during the 30 minute journey, my phone had switched to a full GPRS signal, whereas his was still on 3g, with a fairly weak signal (1 bar). This lasted for about 30 seconds at 30mph, and then the HD2 went back up to 3G. I wouldn't read anything into this, as the two platforms no doubt have totally different strategies when it comes to maintaining network connections and the criteria for switching up to a higher band etc.
The only other interesting occurrence was after we'd arrived. Sat side by side on the couch, my phone was reading 3g with 1 bar of signal strength, occasionally 2, whereas his was a pretty consistent 3. Outside the building we were both more or less full signal. Now, i'm not sure whether we can compare these reported signal levels - as i said above i'd have thought each platform did it a different way, unless there's some standard they all have to conform to. Also, i opened up opera to check something offline, and occasionally my connection dropped down to zero bars. However, this did not disrupt browsing. Didn't even seem to slow it down. Still read H when loading pages, and it was still fast and smooth, and at now point did it drop to GPRS or lose a connection entirely. Interesting because on my old kaiser, zero bars was quickly followed by the searching for connection graphic. In other words, nothing would work with zero signal. Now, i'm not sure whether the signal strength thingy is just calibrated differently on the HD2 (maybe 0 is the new 1) or perhaps the software does a better job these days of maintaining a connection - who knows.
However, only thing to report so far is that indoors, in this particular location anyway, the HD2 seemed to be reading a lower signal on it's indicator than the G1 IF the two can be compared as directly as this.
All pretty qualitative so far, so i'm going to have a go at some bandwidth tests and band comparisons in the more challenging areas of my house when he's next over.
gargon01 said:
Hi,
I know it's an obvious statement but I would imagine it's just down to location. I live in South London, have an HD2 on T-Mobile and get pretty much consistent 3G/HSDPA coverage throughout the house. Downloads are quick and email and weather syncing very prompt.
I've had contracts with pretty much all major service providers and I must say that T-Mobile probably has the best coverage of them all along with '3'...
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Click to collapse
I think that's certainly the primary factor at work here. What i was mainly concerned with, was whether the handset itself was under-performing - i.e. would other phones with t-mobile sims achieve better reception. Strangely, in the past i had always dismissed "signal" as a property of the network rather than the handset. Obviously though, with a few minutes thought, it's easy to see how the hardware is also an important factor. Not all receivers are born equal - even though i imagine these days it's pretty much a solved problem, from an engineering perspective - just like all software to interpret radio signals and hold connections isn't either.

I also went orange to t-mobile, and the speed is way faster. Just your luck really.

arfster said:
I also went orange to t-mobile, and the speed is way faster. Just your luck really.
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It's not really too bad. But yeah, bad luck that really i can only use it for voice calls at home. Even half a mile closer to town though, it holds a full 3G signal, and i too have been really impressed with the speed whilst browsing - much faster than my old orange connection. In truth, it's not important that the data calling stuff works at home, since i have a wireless network. The same is true of all my friends, so i can just connect to theirs whilst over. The data calling is more important when out and about, and in this respect the phone seems to perform really well
So far no sms bug either, but i'm not taking this for granted.

Hmm, voice quality is nicer but reception's worse I reckon compared to my Touch HD with the 1.16 radio. Instead of getting "H" for HSDPA reception all the time at work it's flicking between 3G and H.
Also have data connection problems after roaming between 2G (GSM) and 3G (3G / HSDPA) - WM will refuse to connect online until I manually force Flight Mode on and off.
On the 1.48 rom. Looks like they have several bugs they need to fix in the Radio...

aussiebum said:
Hmm, voice quality is nicer but reception's worse I reckon compared to my Touch HD with the 1.16 radio. Instead of getting "H" for HSDPA reception all the time at work it's flicking between 3G and H.
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I see that also, but only when not using it. When it's connected, it sticks on H ......and it's really, really fast - quickest mobile data I've ever seen. Yesterday I'd switched off wifi by mistake, and didn't even realise.

_tangent said:
as indicated before, comparing actual "bars" of signal is perhaps somewhat arbitrary and fruitless
i'm not sure whether we can compare these reported signal levels - i'd have thought each platform did it a different way..
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An analysis I can't really fault. OK,I know my N95 8GB runs off symbian but quite often I'll attempt to place a call when its showing 3 or more bars of "signal strength" for it to drop the call instantly followed by an onscreen message of "network error" which equates to "I have no signal" as its suddenly not showing any signal at all even though my location hasn't changed at all (and yes,I am aware that the signal travels via a "cell" which may have suddenly had to cope with more traffic than its capable of and as a result dropped one of its clients-me!).
I too live in an area where reception is far from ideal (phone works best if I go outside and balance it on top of a fence post behind my shed lol ) and as I travel a lot (HGV driver) I need a network that's pretty robust and o2 seems to be the best I've used so far.
Have you tried using something like a broadband speed test (personally I'm not sure how accurate these are, as you tend to get quite a spread of results if you carry out repeated tests, although in theory you could average them out) such as this one here :http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/ which may help you find a baseline for the actual performance on your current network?
Final point to make,again maybe no relation but might be worth mentioning..I play a lot with various sat-navs and have found in the past that it can be possible for one to effect the performance of another one by being in close proximity to it ie: one will get a full lock on sats but the other wont as device A seems to hog any signal and only when A is turned off will B be able to get a lock onto any sats...a situation like that may hamper the initial observations you've made so far over to you

_tangent said:
Funnily enough, my phone mistakenly thought i was in atherton the other day - gps indoors being the cause. Interested to hear how you get on when the phone arrives.
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I've been playing around with my phone now for 2 days and I am happy as my signal is a lot better than my Omnia 1. I even managed to have a phone call yesterday whilst sat down on my couch I do still have the problem though that when I pick up my phone the signal will drop 1 or 2 bars down and if I hold it long enough it will loose signal all together. But like I say it is a lot better than my Omnia and this only happens in my house which has poor signal anyway.
Overall I'm happy with the signal strength so far. I'll see how I get on with it over the next couple of weeks though.

I have just upgraded from a diamond to HD2 and I have found the reception to be much worse in my house than the diamond. The phone keeps fluctuating from 4 bars to 1 and often looses the network all together. My diamond was pretty stable in the same places. Is it possible to tweak the performance or do we need to wait for the next ROM? I have updated to 1.48 UK ROM.

EVO Wifi is terrible

There are big threads on this on the Andrioid Central and HTC user forums. Many folks are experiencing terrible wifi performance. My experience is typical; right next to my router I can pull 13Mbps+ (via speedtest), but if I go into the next room or anywhere else in the house my signal drops to one bar and thoroughput plummets to <1Mbps. Both my iPhone and iPad work great around the whole house.

No problems here. In fact, I've been very pleased with the wifi, 3G, and 4G coverage I have here compared with the wifi and 3G I had with my Hero. My speeds are also markedly better. I was pulling 1.9Mbps with 3G yesterday and at that point, I don't think I have any reason to complain about service.

No problems with mine either. Maybe Apple is trying to discredit other products while they are running... lol

i thought i was the only one seeing this, i walk a few steps away from my router and it drops to zero or just one bar. i guess it works best with a wireless N router

My Evo's wi-fi reception isn't as horrible as some claim it to be, but it is noticeably weaker than that of my Touch Pro. When I go downstairs, I drop down to one or two bars, where as my Touch Pro stays at a solid three bars.

Try and take your router out of dual/tripple band mode and run it on only G or N and see how it does.
I've noticed running with backwards compatibility messes a lot of phones up.

i'm having the same issues...
running a linksys 802.11/b/g/n router
seeing the same issues with my ipad, but not with my old iphone
can this be remedied with a simple hack to the os? or would it be totally hw related?

YoungAceAtlanta said:
i thought i was the only one seeing this, i walk a few steps away from my router and it drops to zero or just one bar. i guess it works best with a wireless N router
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Same for me man, its terrible. Mine isnt rooted or custom rom'd yet though so well see whats up when they start hax0rin the phone a lil more.

Chriscic said:
There are big threads on this on the Andrioid Central and HTC user forums. Many folks are experiencing terrible wifi performance. My experience is typical; right next to my router I can pull 13Mbps+ (via speedtest), but if I go into the next room or anywhere else in the house my signal drops to one bar and thoroughput plummets to <1Mbps. Both my iPhone and iPad work great around the whole house.
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YoungAceAtlanta said:
i thought i was the only one seeing this, i walk a few steps away from my router and it drops to zero or just one bar. i guess it works best with a wireless N router
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Poor Wi-Fi performance would be a dealbreaker so how much of a reality:rumor is this?
I would have to take Sprint up on their 30-day Satisfaction Guarantee-return policy if this issue is not resolved..
BTW, N I've heard will not be supported until 2.2

YoungAceAtlanta said:
i thought i was the only one seeing this, i walk a few steps away from my router and it drops to zero or just one bar. i guess it works best with a wireless N router
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I have a wireless N router. Someone on one of the other forums says that Android 2.1 only runs G wireless anyway, although I'm not knowledgeable enough on that yet to confirm that it's true.

Mine is also bad i get 10 to 15ft away and it drops to nothing.

rickgomez2003 said:
Mine is also bad i get 10 to 15ft away and it drops to nothing.
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mine drops to * to 1 bar when I go around the house, but it's still working and never disconnects so I don't really care.
-edit- our router sucks too btw so I'm not surprised.

Evo wifi
I just got my Evo as we were heading to Mexico for vacation. My whole family has (including me) and iphone but I had my Evo with me when we went to a restaurant to eat. The restaurant had wifi coverage but we had to get a password to access. Accessing the wifi with the EVO is a bit more time consuming than the iphone but I didnt care about that. What i DID care was everyone else was saying..CONNECTED as my EVO was still searching. It did find the signal about 15 seconds later. Now the frustrating part. My signal kept dropping while my family, with iphones kept bragging about their signal never dropping. Finally the signal dropped totally from my EVO and I had to use my wifes iphone. I love the EVO and want this phone to work for me. Im not an Iphone fanboy either. I feel like this is something that will be fixed with an update.

wfhowell said:
I just got my Evo as we were heading to Mexico for vacation. My whole family has (including me) and iphone but I had my Evo with me when we went to a restaurant to eat. The restaurant had wifi coverage but we had to get a password to access. Accessing the wifi with the EVO is a bit more time consuming than the iphone but I didnt care about that. What i DID care was everyone else was saying..CONNECTED as my EVO was still searching. It did find the signal about 15 seconds later. Now the frustrating part. My signal kept dropping while my family, with iphones kept bragging about their signal never dropping. Finally the signal dropped totally from my EVO and I had to use my wifes iphone. I love the EVO and want this phone to work for me. Im not an Iphone fanboy either. I feel like this is something that will be fixed with an update.
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If it isn't fixed I don't see how I can get-keep the EVO..please keep us updated on this issue..

SMARTPHONEPC said:
If it isn't fixed I don't see how I can get-keep the EVO..please keep us updated on this issue..
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aww, see I came from an android phone without wifi, so i'm used to not being able to rely on it lol.

Mine's just OK. I do get coverage throughout the house, even 2 floors up (router in basement). But when I'm sitting right next to the router, literally 2 feet, I do not have full bars. (1 shy). Can't really complain too much, but I do wish it was better.
Speedtest
Next to router: 9438 down, 3996 up
1 floor up: 4492 down, 4102 up

Wifi reception for me is pretty awful, only the "dot" comes on with no circumferential bars when I'm at home and I get no signal at all when I'm at work (where both my laptop & iPhone 3G do fine). This is looking like a deal breaker for me.
Gary

Here in Puerto Rico the vast majority of houses are built in concrete... My EVO's WiFi seems to fare worse than my iPod touch's WiFi (which in turn fares worse than my netbook's). In the family room, with one room and one concrete wall in between me and the standard G router, I get a signal and it works fine.
With two concrete walls (one room and a bathroom) in between me and the router signal is borderline but it still seems to work, tho I'm often seeing just a dot. With three concrete walls in between me and the router (two rooms and a bathroom in between) I get no signal whatsoever.
Under those same conditions the iPod touch would ocasionally get a signal in certain corners of that room while the netbook's never had trouble getting a signal unless I go to the far end/corner of the room. I'm not terribly worried about it since I'd use the WiFi the most in the family room but it's a bit troublesome, hopefully it's improved w/an update.

I can confirm EVO wifi is much worse then my TP. I'm trying to move my router to a more central location now to accommodate it. :-\ hopefully we'll get N in 2.2 it's not a deal breaker, just an annoyance.

You can always make a directional antenna focuser out of a soda can too, it sounds ghetto but actually works... There was an article about it on MaxiumPC about a year ago.

My State of the Evo address

For starters i love this phones hardware. Almost all of the hardware specs of this phone are excellent. The 1ghz CPU by qualcom is a very good choice, but not quite a bleeding edge chip. Having a dedicated gpu would have been a better choice for the resolution and processing requirements of the other parts of the phone (gpu's can accelerate alot more than games).
512MB ram is a good choice and certainly enough for most needs. However ram is super duper cheap these days and i'd much rather have 1gb of good system ram than 1gb of extra storage space(which is what the evo gives us). the 4.3 inch screen is certainly sufficient, and in this space i dont think there really are much better panels resolution and aperture wise available.
I have certainly enjoyed playing with the 8MP camera in video and snapshot mode, but it also has its flaws. Being very sensitive to light the framerate (in video mode) can go from whats looks like(because i have no way of actually checking) lower 20's to less than 10 frames per second. Also while the 8MP sensor allows for nifty resolution it does not make for the cleanest image(in both video and snapshot mode). Due to lower quality optics being used and very little logic. I've found that flash also seems not to fire in correct sync with the (non mechanical IE FAKE)shutter of the camera sensor. Causing blurred images even with the flash on, I even attempted to circumvent this problem by manually setting the iso mode in the camera options to no avail. Also i really love the back facing camera and i would love it if i could actually use it for something.
I dont like fring its ugly and buggy, i dont like QIK. I dont know what it is, i just know i wont like it(J/K). It honestly never even occured to me that skype was not available for android yet (dont even mention that verizon peice of garbage). And it looks like we get it either until the end of the year. If even then (for video). I have had some opportunity to try out video on evo. And while some videos look good they are often not the right ratio and leave the screen largely empty. Some videos had obvious framerate & sound sync issues. Even on youtube. Let me go ahead and say i have not even played with HDMI, fm radio, or bluetooth. None of these do i really use, However i do like lots of extras and you cant go wrong with any of those. I tried only a few games out primarily raging thunder 2. I was not impressed by this games performance in the slightest. I would expect a 1ghz phone to be able to outperform atleast a Nintendo DS. I believe this part calls for a facepalm. I believe im supposed to thank HTC and their infinite wisdom for the 30FPS cap on the phone.
As for the 4G. I live in north dallas inbetween several major urban area in small residential housing area. Before signing up for my evo one quick trip to the sprint website and a little bit of address information would have me believe that im lit up like a christmas tree for miles all directions with 4G connectivity. Only after purchasing and bringing the phone home to realize i have no 4g connectivity at all do i back to the sprint website and go back to my coverage map. Yup see there i am all green, oh wait what is that? when i zoom in all the sudden the maps starts looking like swiss cheese. As i zoom all the way down my exact house do i see im not covered at all. Upon further testing i found that many areas that say they have 4G do not infact have 4G at all. After finding a 4G tower less than a mile away from my home. I drive to the tower to test my phones capability. Speedtest avarage download being 4300kbps or 430Kilobytes per second or about 4mbps. And upload averaging almost exactly 1000kbps or 100 Kilobytes per second or 1mbps. Well bellow the stated peak limit of 10mbps for downloads, and 1.8mbps peak of uploads. Mind you im sitting right beside this tower. I get much further from my home wifi. As i start driving, toward my house. I lose coverage in less than half a mile. Upon further consideration of this 4G technology i dont think its ever gonna work(right). I cant imagine them putting up enough towers to blanket a city yet alone suburbs or rural. There just is'nt enough real estate. I want to love this device, however this phone needs alot of love, and up against the onslaught on new phones just over the horizon, it needs it quick. Otherwise this could easily end up a dead end long before it ever reachs maturity. I have only owned my phone for 10 days. I will return it(if major upgrades dont happen soon) and go back to a peice of crap metroPCS phone for another six months while i wait for either this phone to get its act together or jump on one of the new LTE phones from the competition. Also i'd like to ask, what would you guys prefer a new single network connection combining all voice and data functions like the new LTE network verizon/metropcs is designing with possibly less bandwidth or a multiple network IE seperate voice and data connections with possibly more bandiwidth. Please consider all the known implications before replying. Lets keep this critiquing unbiased as possible please. If theres anything major please feel free to let me know.
And all i wanted was video conferencing.
Metathias

How did you locate the 4g tower closest to you?

notmike said:
How did you locate the 4g tower closest to you?
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I drove around till i got 4g signal Then meandered my way around following signal strength til i could see it. Never got full bars for 4g until i had line of sight. It was a big tower too. Still only covered about 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile.

4g upload is capped at 1mb

where is the map you can zoom on? can't seem to find it.

supdawg said:
4g upload is capped at 1mb
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Where does it say that? Mine is 1.3-1.6 normally

I can't believe I read...
that entire message. I must be off to wash my eyes!

Don't post stuff like this without an industry source. As far as I know, this is not true. I often get 1.7 in downtown Chicago.
supdawg said:
4g upload is capped at 1mb
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

Read it.
GumboChief said:
Don't post stuff like this without an industry source. As far as I know, this is not true. I often get 1.7 in downtown Chicago.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's been mentioned by Sprint, Most Blog Sites, and Many other People. It has been shown on upload tests through SpeedTest, DSLReports, etc that its capped at 1MB or very close to it.
Please provide a screen shot of 1.7Mb/s upload as I have not seen that either and I have fast 4G where I live.
Here is from the developers site about cap.
http://developer.sprint.com/site/global/home/4g/wimax_experience/wimax_experience.jsp

Next time I am on Michigan & Randolph, I will run a test. I dont have it in my current log as I blanked my phone last week for whitslack rom.
mrmomoman said:
It's been mentioned by Sprint, Most Blog Sites, and Many other People. It has been shown on upload tests through SpeedTest, DSLReports, etc that its capped at 1MB or very close to it.
Please provide a screen shot of 1.7Mb/s upload as I have not seen that either and I have fast 4G where I live.
Here is from the developers site about cap.
http://developer.sprint.com/site/global/home/4g/wimax_experience/wimax_experience.jsp
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

For those getting > 1mb, that may change in the future. I know 4G is capped at 1mb here.

supdawg said:
For those getting > 1mb, that may change in the future. I know 4G is capped at 1mb here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My speedtest was on June 17th, when going to see my eye doctor. I am really curious to check, now.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

Spotty 4g...

I finally get 4g by my house.... but the weird thing is it connects only when I'm inside my house and not outside. I get like 2 to 4 bars of 4g but when I browse web pages they tend not to load all the way and eventually time out.... if I refresh the page a few times it will eventually load. This doesn't happen when I'm on 3g....
Is it just that I have poor 4g reception? A bad evo or what?
BTW I'm on ava v9 with kingx #10.

wimax is too broad, it really would make some sense that you cant get a signal if the only signal is being cut down by buildings, in front of my complex we can get 4g, inside my apartment i get decent 4g but any further into the complex and i have to be pretty line of site to get a working signal

maybe thay have jammers

I have had signal issues like this before, just where I'm on the edge of signal.
I played with the wimax settings and it is a lot more reliable now. You should search for the thread, I can't remember the title, something about better 4g for longer. It works really well. You can change how often the radio scans for signal, and how easy it drops a signal once it has it.
Hey... This thing makes phone calls too!

I found the page with the 4g tweaks and it helped a little but what I think helped more was to use a different browser than the stock one... right now I'm using dolphin hd and it seems to load pages fine.... even if it don't fully load it displays what is downloaded so far.
The odd thing about my wimax settings was that a lot of it was set to a value of 10.... even the dbm ones.
Here are the link to the tweaks if anyone wants them:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=733773&highlight=longer
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=726877

Ok I still cant load all pages while on 4g and using dolphin hd browser. It is slightly better though.
I also get that wimax signal is supposed to be stronger while outdoors rather than indoors but I can only connect while in doors and especially in my room.... now that I think of it I do have a new airave unit in my room..... does airave transmit 4g?

I still cant figure out the issue....maybe its just poor 4g signal...
I still get 1-2 bars of 4g...

Erroneous Speed Tests on Atrix

Need your Help, I went into a AT&T store today, and got to play with a Sales Persons Personal Atrix, not a Demo. The Phone is very fast we downloaded Speed Test from Exreme Labs, I kid you not, "Blink" and it was done, I thought initially we had a disconnect, but not so. I have a concern, we ran Speed Test about 8 times and averaged 1.35 mbps Download and 1.38 mbps Upload??
How can that be? is it possible that there is a problem, I have also heard wide spread complaints of similar slow speeds.
I was curious to see, "could it be a set of "Bad Circumstances" One of the Other Sales Reps had a New IPhone4 and was kind enought to download Speed Test- We ran it, and had a Huge Difference- The IPhone was showing very fast speeds Download and so,so upload, via Extreme Labs Speed Test-
As I played with the Atrix, I went to different sites and dowloaded varied items, You Tube, Web Sites in the Middle East that are very labor intensive sites, Atrix FLEW through this stuff- The Atrix Raptor Fighter Jet Type Performance cast a big shadow of "Doubt as to whether the results were accurate", can anyone Help Please!
Thank you

I bet the sales rep had their Atrix on WiFi or they managed to get their phone updated/ provisioned properly to enable HSUPA.

can you explain your comments a little better, yes the phone was on wifi

The speed issues aren't about wifi speeds.
1. Pop that iPhone and the Atrix back on AT&T's network and run those speed tests again.
2. Watch the iPhone 4's upload speeds quadruple the Atrix.
3. Stare at the AT&T salesperson trying to sell you the phone and ask "Where the hell is your 4G now?"

sounds like the Atrix guy was using a relatively slow wifi connection and the iPhone guy might have been using 3G wireless
also, I've found my iphone 4 to be pretty susceptible to interference on the 2.4ghz band with wifi
Just ran a back to back with my atrix and iphone 4 on my home wifi. atrix on 5ghz and the iphone on 2.4ghz
atrix - 18169 Kbp/s down 8838 Kbp/s up
iphone 4 - 9814 Kbp/s down 2816 Kbp/s up
atrix over regular wireless 3232 Kbp/s down 336 Kbp/s up