No Phone Signal....

[Cortex]

I spend most my time in area of town that doesnt get great reception for my phone. But I've noticed the phone does a terrible job of searching for a better signal.

Often I have to recet the device just to get it to search. Does anyone know if there's an easy way to have the phone search for a stronger signal?

[gareth]

In general, phones do a better job of finding a signal on outbound calls than they do on inbound calls, so you could try "forcing" it by dialling out every so often to a number you know won't pick up, that way you don't incur a charge for the call :wink:

As it's digital though, even with one bar of signal strength your calls should still be OK, because it's either on or off.

I have the same problem with my XDA. I can have that and my Nokia 8310 sitting side by side on the desk, with the XDA struggling and the Nokia showing full strength. Still get the calls though.

Gareth

[Janak Parekh]

I have the same problem with my XDA. I can have that and my Nokia 8310 sitting side by side on the desk, with the XDA struggling and the Nokia showing full strength. Still get the calls though.
For what it's worth, I've heard that the ROM upgrade here has made substantial improvements in reception. The T-Mobile unit I have, which is running ROM v3.14, beats my Motorola P280 in reception. Unfortunately, I've heard O2 hasn't yet released this update, and you can't use the US firmware. :(

Cortex - as for your question - there's a way to "set preferred networks", but that's all I know of. The only GSM phones that I know of that can be more aggressive in searching are the Motorolas, where you can set them to "Continuous" signal acquisition.

--janak

[gareth]

For what it's worth, I've heard that the ROM upgrade here has made substantial improvements in reception. The T-Mobile unit I have, which is running ROM v3.14, beats my Motorola P280 in reception. Unfortunately, I've heard O2 hasn't yet released this update, and you can't use the US firmware. :(


--janak

Might as well switch back to semaphore then :lol:

[Cortex]

it seems that turning the phone off by clicking the signal indicator and then turning it back on will SOMETIMES get it to search....

[Janak Parekh]

it seems that turning the phone off by clicking the signal indicator and then turning it back on will SOMETIMES get it to search....
A soft-reset will probably force it to search. It's obviously a more extreme solution, though.

--janak

[anawaltaj]

How's this for extreme?

Things I often have to do to get my T-Mobile O2 XDA to re-aquire signal, if it lost signal or heaven-forbid I turned the phone portion off:
1) Soft reset (seldom works)
2) Remove SD card (worked twice, probably just chance)
3) Power off, open and close the SIM card door (I read this in a troubleshooting guide. Sometimes it works)
4) Power off, remove sim, power on, turn phone off, power off, insert sim, power on, turn phone on (This often works, but only if there is VERY good signal nearby and I'm over 80% on the battery)
5) Method four but leave the phone on the AC charger untill the light goes green before trying to turn the phone back on (works almost all of the time)
6) Method five, add in a hard reset, or method four with a hard reset if I dont have access to a charger (This works when all else fails and I use the charger. Sometimes it doesn't work without the charger, especially if the battery is below 80%)

I have had this thing since last October and have had lots of time to try this out. I have the T-Mobile firmware update from November 2002. The last couple of weeks have been so annoying that I finally have decided to look and see if other people have these problems. It seems that if I turn the XDA on when the LED is not blinking green (no signal, from a soft reset, had the phone part off and just turned it on or I was out of coverage) and the battery icon doesn't show the battery charge _before_ the phone tries to search, it _never_ gets signal.

Has anyone else had these troubles?

Have you noticed if when it wont aquire signal, the battery icon on the main screen is empty and status is unavailable?

Have you turned it on and had the phone app pull up with one of the following messages: "The wireless radio is turned off, you can only make emergency calls without a SIM" or "SIM disabled, contact support". The first message is a laugh, because if I click the antenna icon, it says "No signal [Turn phone off]". The second is also odd because I pull the sim out and put it into my 'free with activation' Mitsubishi phone and it works.

Does your backlight turn on for 5-6 seconds, then off for about a half a second, then back on while the phone is searching for signal? This makes _SO_MUCH_SENSE_ . How about we run the battery draining backlight when we are trying to go into high-power radio mode searching for towers? Ya, that's a great idea, lets find all ways we can to lower the available battery voltage by running the backlight and (seemingly) running the cpu as hard as we can so it also uses as many volts as possible.

Seriously, when my XDA is trying to aquire signal, the backlight flashes (very annoying when it's dark dark with it's 100% or nothing backlight) even when the backlight setting is on disabled. I am making a huge assumption on cpu usage. I don't know if it is running it's heart out or just waiting a lot for some blocking call, but the OS runs like tar when it's trying to re-aquire signal.

Please, share your experiances and tell me if I've got a bum phone (so I can get T-Mobile to replace it) or if this is just 'Par for the course'.

[Janak Parekh]

Really sounds like your phone is defective -- perhaps your SIM slot is broken. My phone always regains a signal, if once lost, within 60 seconds (like when I emerge from the subway). I've almost never had trouble with that, and I haven't turned off the phone in many days (although I do soft-reset occasionally).

It does occasionally wake up while searching for signal in a weak spot, but only for a few seconds.

--janak

[anawaltaj]

I am glad to hear it works better for others. I'd like to hear from more people.

You don't have any issues with turning the phone portion off and back on, at any reasonable battery level? What is the minimum percentage you can get the phone to turn back on at? It's 80% for me.

Waking up when searching for signal is ok with me, but does it kick your backlight on even if you have it set to disabled?

[John K]

I have an XDA on O2 running ROM 3.14.13 ENG

It's performance as a phone is far worse than any other that I have owened. It will lose signal for no apparent reason, often going from several bars to no signal without being moved an inch.

Switching the phone off by clicking on the signal icon will sometimes encourage it to find a signal when it's turned on again, as will a soft reset.

If it was just a phone I would definitely have taken it back and exchanged it for a different model. However, at the moment the benefits of having my PDA and phone combined outweigh the poor performance.

John

[Cortex]

i second john k's comments

the phone works well when im in an area with good coverage -- it always has a signal, always connects to the internet -- i love it.

i was in portland, maine and also austin, texas and the coverage was excellent. if i only lived in those areas i would think people who complain about the phone were nuts...

but in boston, massachusetts the coverage is pretty bad. i often find that there are spots where the signal strength will go from full to nothing without moving. or i'll be in a call... "can you hear me? can you hear me now???..." and the phone indicator will be reading 3 bars?!?! also there are areas (like my house) where the coverage will vary between 3 bars and 0 bars on a day to day basis. i think this is probably due to being at the edge of the receiver/transmitter antenna's range or possibly between 2 antenna's that are competing for the phone.

if i soft reset the device it always searches for a new signal but it take about 15-30 seconds to do this. the problem i have is sometimes it looses the signal and then doesnt automatically search for a new one. i turn the phone on and there are 0 bars. so i soft reset, wait 15-30 seconds, it searches and then sometimes gets a 3 bar signal. i suspect this is occuring when im between 2 antenna's and its hopping on a different antenna/transmitter. regardless it would be nice if a program such as sbp's GPRS Monitor would include a button that activates the phone signal search with a single tap....

i also wonder if in the phone setup screen (there is one that lists about 20 lines of different carries almost all of which say "T-Mobile") if there is a way to tell it what the search order should be in different parts of Boston so it can hang on to the signal better. but unfortunately, i really dont understand what that particular setup screen is doing...

[anawaltaj]

so i soft reset, wait 15-30 seconds, it searches and then sometimes gets a 3 bar signal.

When you do this, has it ever done any of the following:

* Never aquired signal, and the battery status indicatory stays empty and reports unavailable if you click it.
* If you had the backlight enabled and set to 10 seconds it doesn't turn off for the entire 15-30 seconds, and if you try to turn it off (hold the power button for a few seconds, or use the backlight settings controlpanel ap) it still stays on.
* Menu clicks, starting applications, and overall pda performance slow to a crawl (or at least they are nothing like the performance when it isn't searching for signal.)

I live in a lower coverage area, and I'm sure that's aggrivating the problem with the phone.

My boss has the same device, we purchased them at the same time. We have had discussions about the phone from time to time, and I thought we were experiancing the same issues. He is using a small motorolla phone almost exclusivly lately and offered to let me use his T-Mobile O2 XDA for a few days. I'll be testing and comparing his system to mine.

He says that as long as his battery isn't low and he's in coverage he can turn his phone off and on anytime. He does experiance the same problems I do if he goes out of coverage for a while (hours, not seconds like going through a tunnel) and turns the phone off, it doesn't want to turn back on when he comes back into coverage. According to him a soft reset always works.

[Cortex]

i havent noticed any of these issues....

i have my screen set to dim a little later -- like 15 seconds or so.

[Janak Parekh]

It's performance as a phone is far worse than any other that I have owened. It will lose signal for no apparent reason, often going from several bars to no signal without being moved an inch.
I haven't had this problem in a good signal area. That said, the signal meter on the Pocket PC Phone isn't very good -- it has a tendency to jump too much, even more than the T68i. It's possible you're in a weak signal area but the bars are being misrepresented sometimes.

Speaking as someone who knows T-Mobile's terrible signal areas (T-Mobile works in two parts of my bedroom, not in the hallway, OK in the back of the kitchen if it's not in my pocket), the Pocket PC Phone performs slightly better than my T68 and slightly worse than the P280. In my house, it constantly loses and regains a signal, behaving as it should, as far as I can tell. I haven't had anawaltaj's problems.

The only real problem that I have is that the unit as a whole tends to wake up a bit too often, which I haven't had the time to debug -- not sure if it's a program causing it or the phone itself. It's annoying, but doesn't seem to have a major effect on battery life.

--janak

[Cortex]

what is fun though is calling T-Mobile to complain about reception -- and to use the phone to do it!

T-Mobile: "Can I help you?"

Me: "H... I'm call.... the rec.. tion... phone isn't very good. Can y.. hear me? ..llo??"

T-Mobile: "I'm sorry you aren't coming in clearly. There seems to be a problems with your reception."

Me: "I ..ow. I'm us... ket PC phone. ..d ...ke to file a complain..."

:lol:

I honestly was experiencing this while I was complaining about the poor coverage in my area (and also to CHANGE MY DATA RATE TO UNLIMITED FOR $20!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Woooo Hooooo!!!!!!!!!)

[Janak Parekh]

I honestly was experiencing this while I was complaining about the poor coverage in my area (and also to CHANGE MY DATA RATE TO UNLIMITED FOR $20!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Woooo Hooooo!!!!!!!!!)
So, this is a big problem for me. I was planning to switch to Verizon, which I know has good coverage in my house, with the i700... but I'd have to pay ~ $90 for less minutes and unlimited, whereas with T-Mo I'd continue to pay $50 and get unlimited too. ARRGGGHHH!!!

--janak