Bell and telus network

**Red 90** · 01-30-2012, 02:32 PM

I'm led to believe from what I've read that the bell and telus networks share the same towers. However I have a blackberry bold 9700 from telus for work and a Samsung galaxy nexus on bell for my personal use. In my office u find I have full signals on my blackberry, but virtually no signal from my galaxy nexus.
Does this mean they don't use the same antennas ?

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**RightThere** · 01-30-2012, 03:37 PM

Same towers, same network. Everywhere.

Probably has to do with the phone itself. Is it different SIM cards?

**Red 90** · 01-30-2012, 04:22 PM

I'm not sure if the bell sim card for the Samsung galaxy nexus is the same for the blackberry bold 9700.

I'm getting about -65dbm on the blackberry signal and -113 dbm on the Samsung. That's worlds apart.

Not sure if there is any settings that I can try to help with that.

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**B407** · 01-30-2012, 04:31 PM

Bell and Telus do use the same towers for their HSPA network. Blackberry's tend to have above average RF performance, therefore you are more likely to get reception in an area where other devices may struggle.

**HC - NO "i"** · 01-30-2012, 05:34 PM

Wirelessly posted (Opera/9.80 (X11; Linux zbov; U; en) Presto/2.9.201 Version/11.50)

Red 90,

Greetings.

Just the raw RSSI readouts may not tell the full extent of your situation. The signal quality, sensitivity of the two sets of different baseband components inside... Same network, but there are still two different bands, i.e. UMTS Band II (1900), V (850), that your two different handsets could land on either one or the same. The Galaxy Nexus also performs relatively worse in the RF department against many BlackBerry.

**Red 90** · 01-30-2012, 05:46 PM

I think your right, I just swapped my sim card of my telus into my Samsung galaxy nexus and the signal is still weak. I guess the radio in the galaxy isn't as good as the blackberry.

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**Red 90** · 01-30-2012, 05:49 PM

Originally Posted by HC - NO "i"

Wirelessly posted (Opera/9.80 (X11; Linux zbov; U; en) Presto/2.9.201 Version/11.50)

Red 90,

Greetings.

Just the raw RSSI readouts may not tell the full extent of your situation. The signal quality, sensitivity of the two sets of different baseband components inside... Same network, but there are still two different bands, i.e. UMTS Band II (1900), V (850), that your two different handsets could land on either one or the same. The Galaxy Nexus also performs relatively worse in the RF department against many BlackBerry.

I thought that if my Samsung doesn't get a good signal it would revert to a stronger 3g signal. However when it goes back to the 3g signal, its still weak. Is there a way to tell which band one is on?

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**HC - NO "i"** · 01-30-2012, 08:47 PM

Red 90,

1. Actually, I should clarify a little more on the baseband components... What I do not understand is that the baseband hardware of Galaxy Nexus is more or less identical to Galaxy S II i.e. Infineon/Intel X-Gold 626 (XMM6260). Perhaps the antenna designs are different (after all, Galaxy Nexus supports AWS band while the Galaxy S II does not). But, the Galaxy Nexus also seems to perform relatively worse than Galaxy S II on the same network (not by a wide margin though). So if the observations remain the same with both Bell and TELUS' common UMTS/HSPA+ RAN, it leads to speculate on the stock baseband software e.g. UGKL1 in Galaxy Nexus (GT-I9250M) vs UGKG2 in Galaxy S II (GT-I9100M) and the interactions with the hardware.

2. Well, do not get confused by the jargon i.e. "3G", "H", "H+". Regardless of the status, they are all in the SAME UMTS/HSPA+ network. The indicator is to identify whether or not you have got the HSPA+ access. When the handset is idling with no active data session, it will show "3G" instead. It does not indicate the quality of the signal. The parameters like Ec/N0, Ec/I0 or CIQ are more "proper" to tell the signal quality than "bars" or RSSI readouts.

Unfortunately, I do not know how to get into the Test Mode of the Galaxy Nexus like with the Samsung Galaxy S series i.e. *#0011#

**cedqc418** · 01-30-2012, 09:50 PM

Hello
Two of my friend have nexus here near quebec city
And have see same problem like you
Not extreme like you but between iphone and nexus
Nexus have a bad signal ;(

**HC - NO "i"** · 01-30-2012, 10:11 PM

cedqc418,

Greetings.

I do find the Apple iPhone 4S has got a relatively better RF performance than the Galaxy Nexus.

**Red 90** · 01-30-2012, 11:19 PM

At the same time when I got my Samsung galaxy nexus my gf got the iPhone 4s. Although its not a huge difference I do find her signal is slightly better as well.

I'm finding that with a poor signal teetering between no signal and a signal, my battery is draining down pretty quickly in the office as compared to my home.

Samsung made an awesome smartphone with a lot of good stuff, but I find some of the core features of a good phone such as batteries, antenna and loudspeaker are rather marginal

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**Steve Punter** · 02-01-2012, 06:20 PM

Originally Posted by Red 90

I'm not sure if the bell sim card for the Samsung galaxy nexus is the same for the blackberry bold 9700.

I'm getting about -65dbm on the blackberry signal and -113 dbm on the Samsung. That's worlds apart.

Not sure if there is any settings that I can try to help with that.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using HowardForums

Seems everyone ignored this message and went off on a tangent about the RF performance of various phones. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY there will be a difference of this magnitude between a phone with even the WORST RF known to man and a phone with the best. Tops, you're going to see maybe 5 to 10 dB difference between the extremes, but not 48 dB!!! -65 dB represents a signal that is 65,000 times stronger than one that is -113 dB.

Were you able to determine any other RF information, such as which band the phones are on, which PN Offset is the dominant signal, etc? If can determine that the phones are indeed looking at the SAME signal, then there is something seriously the matter with the Nexus. I suspect however that these two phones are NOT operating on the same site and/or band. We need more information.

**datmaster** · 02-01-2012, 08:51 PM

the db numbers may not be correct for comparison, but the fact does remain that the Galaxy Nexus (and the S2x I tried for that matter) are much poorer signal strength than the blackberry, it isn't a case of a bad unit

**Steve Punter** · 02-01-2012, 09:33 PM

Originally Posted by datmaster

the db numbers may not be correct for comparison, but the fact does remain that the Galaxy Nexus (and the S2x I tried for that matter) are much poorer signal strength than the blackberry, it isn't a case of a bad unit

I have no reason to believe that the OP gave me fallacious signal strengths, and even if they are slightly inaccurate there's no way there are THAT INACCURATE. I'm not sure how he got the signal strength on the Nexus (since *#0011# doesn't work on that phone). If he used an app, it is possible that the app didn't return the correct RSSI, but until we hear from the OP concerning this, why do you believe he us faulty information?

**Red 90** · 02-01-2012, 09:53 PM

How I looked at the signals are from the Samsung galaxy setting under the phone info and it will show the dbm readings. On the blackberry as well, under the settings phone information it read -65 dbm. It does fluctuate but always around the -70dbm mark and the nexus is always between -100 to -113dbm readings. Once it goes past -113, I lose signal completely. If anyone can tell me how to get more info I'll look into it.

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