Best high end smartphones for remote area reception from Bell?
As the title says...
I'm having a real hard time finding a smartphone on Bell that has good call quality and sensitivity in remote areas. Minimum specs would be the ability to work on WiFi and excellent performance with a bluetooth headset.
As you probably know, HSPA, which is the rising network at Bell, is still poorly covered in fringe areas, where CDMA (1X/EVDO) is generally found to be superior.
I have also discovered that, contrarily to the present CDMA network, which was technologically compatible for use with analog phones until the abilities to process analog signals were phased out around 2008, the new HSPA/UMTS network uses a completely different technology that is not backward compatible with CDMA, therefore new phones designed to work on this network cannot take advantage of this network's mature technology and established, superior coverage in fringe areas.
This has been my very limited experience using the Samsung Galaxy S2 for a few days, but it also seems to be the experience of other locals as well.
The question I therefore ask is what has your experience been in fringe areas with recent phones available from Bell, such as the Samsungs, HTCs and Motorolas, and whether, if you live in a fringe area, you have had to return a phone for reason of poor coverage/reception sensitivity, what phone it was and what you are using now, and your assessment of its reception quality and sensitivity.
I voted for the XT860 however the 512MB of RAM on the unit versus the 1GB on the Atrix is a disappointment. If you don't need a physical keyboard and can find an Atrix it might be better.
Primary handset: Unlocked Bell Motorola DEXT - Running Android 2.3.7 via CyanogenMod 7
Motorola and Blackberries generally have strong RF performance. My Motorola Device can pick up one or two bars of signal whereas my old samsung galaxy s would have no service whatsoever.
Thanks for the replies and keep 'em coming! It's great to get this kind of feedback.
Blackberry and other proprietary/locked devices/OSes are out for me, question of principle (I've been using computers even before the PC revolution and believe in free will and free choice, so NO Apple, BB or Windows Phone 7). Sorry for the rant or if I ruffled anyone's feathers
I'm more and more hearing that the Motos have great performance reception wise, I guess I'll have to get a Moto XT860 and check it out for myself. I'm just not too pleased with its screen and picture taking ability, that's quite a drawback for me, and I'm not sure about the keyboard. The plastic fake I saw at Bell really turned me off. In reality, I would have loved to keep the Galaxy for its excellent screen, if it hadn't been the poor reception and the horrible bluetooth performance, I would have definitely kept it. I intend to use cellular data simply to check incoming emails and use WiFi for everything else.
I know the OS is much maligned these days, but I'm told that BlackBerry phones have great reception.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
Blackberries have strongest receptions ever. In my basement I get full bars compared to my SII which only gets 2. Or it could also mean that their signal bar is just exaggerated and not realistic.
Blackberries have strongest receptions ever. In my basement I get full bars compared to my SII which only gets 2. Or it could also mean that their signal bar is just exaggerated and not realistic.
Check the signal strength in dBm. Bars are notoriously inaccurate, some brands are excessively optimistic, 2 bars may mean -95dBM on one handset, -85 on another.
Also, some handsets are more sensitive than others, some may work
all the way down to -110, while others will loose signal at -100.
Finally, some brands suffer degradation even when the signal appears strong, while others will work all the way to 0 bars.
In other words... Bars aren't a good indicator of reception quality at all, it's all about how sensitive the antenna is, how sensitive and clean the amplifier is, and how much power the transmitter can pump out and sustain to be received without loss by the cell tower.
It's really too bad that so few reviewers actually test reception in depth, as it is the most important quality a phone must have IMO.
lmao. When I had an iPhone I could barely get it to work well in a non fringe area. Constantly displaying no service when all my friends with blackberries and androids on the same network around me had full service, data connectivity dropping all the time and having the reboot the phone to get it to work again.
About the Blackberries... My Daughter uses one and just called a few minutes ago, she's visiting her childhood friend, at the very edge of Bell's cellular zone about 500 yards away from me. She's on Koodo, so the phones uses the Telus system, which here share towers with Bell. Her voice came in loud and clear, so I guess I can confirm the excellent call reception of her Blackberry
I should have asked those who put in 'other' in the poll to specify...
If you have reception issues at your house, let me know. I have set a couple HoFo users up with various Wilson set ups. Assuming you have good signal outside, this may help with your handset selection.
If you have reception issues at your house, let me know. I have set a couple HoFo users up with various Wilson set ups. Assuming you have good signal outside, this may help with your handset selection.
+1. Thanks again for that expedited shipment last summer! My cottage trip was greatly improved. Some people think that a mobile phone has no place at a cottage, but try telling that to the dozen or so people trying to confirm last-minute plans while some are already there. The ringing of phones is nowhere near as much of a disruption as the screaming of people who can't get a signal.
If you have reception issues at your house, let me know. I have set a couple HoFo users up with various Wilson set ups. Assuming you have good signal outside, this may help with your handset selection.
WorldIRC, thanks for your help, but I already have EXCELLENT reception at the house .
I have a Wilson 15dB Yagi antenna on the roof oriented to Bell's tower 13 km away, connected with 30 feet of RG 213/U 50 Ohm super low loss antenna cable to a 62dB, industrial-grade, Cellular Specialties Model CSI-BDA510-AU, 850MHz wireless cellular amplifier that was designed to cover 2,500 TO 5,000 SQFT of commercial, institutional or industrial space, that I got about 6-8 years ago or so on eBay for a pittance, when the company that used it switched from Cellular to PCS cell phone service.
That amplifier is so powerful, it covers not only everywhere inside the house but also the yard, up to about 75 feet from the house. It has automatic signal discrimination to reduce interference, but it can be set manually as well. I've run it for years on end and only in a few cases did it freeze, requiring a shut off and cold start. It works on the 850 MHz band and is technology neutral: it has worked on old style Analog, CDMA, GSM and HSPA, as I found out while I was using the Galaxy S2. Data Speed boost on CDMA is about three fold (about between 600 and 1000Kb/s instead of 250 to 400), and I got respectable 5.5 MB/s in one test on HSPA, faster than my DSL internet connection, gobbling up 1MB of data in less than 2 seconds
Without the amplifier, signal hovers around -95 dBm outside the house, and about -100 inside, and the phone shows 1 bar.
With the amplifier on in the central part of the house, signal jumps to a minimum of -75 to -30 depending how close I am to the indoor antenna, and I get full bars everywhere except upstairs, where I get 3 bars I can feel its effects, my signal hovers around -85 dBm and 2 bars. I hit baseline approximately between 50 and 100 feet away depending on weather conditions (shorter range in rain/snow). Interestingly, the Samsung Galaxy S2 read on average between 5 and 10 dBm more (less signal) than the HTC Touch in the same locations when I tested the signal.
The only times I have lost signal is under really heavy ice storm conditions when more than 1 inch of ice had built up on the antenna, but it happened only once or twice that I needed to get up and chip the ice away.
I need the best signal from my phone so that I can be reached when on the road in my territory. I have had no issues with the HTC Touch anywhere even in the most marginal areas and sometimes, I even got coverage when the map said I shouldn't be getting any. This is markedly different to the performance of the Samsung Galaxy S2, who lost signal over a substantial portion of a road I frequently use, whereas the map shows better coverage than on 1X for the HTC Touch.
If I can't find an HSPA handset that works at least as good as my HTC Touch, I may simply keep using it until it dies. As a matter of fact, I have collected three of these over the years, two of which had become defective and, last night, I made one good phone of these two so now I have one good spare beside the one I'm using, a broken digitizer and a motherboard with a defective USB port
In any case I've decided it was high time I got myself a Wilson Sleek for the car, even if I don't need it it's simply better for the phone not to have to use its radio at full power all the time, and much better for the battery as well.
+1. Thanks again for that expedited shipment last summer! My cottage trip was greatly improved. Some people think that a mobile phone has no place at a cottage, but try telling that to the dozen or so people trying to confirm last-minute plans while some are already there. The ringing of phones is nowhere near as much of a disruption as the screaming of people who can't get a signal.
+1 too. I've had amplifiers for the last 10 years or so, previously a wired one and now a wireless one, they're a must in cottage country to boost your signal to the level that bagphones used to have. Much better for voice and much faster for data and in some cases can make the difference between being downgraded to 1X (typically at 40Kb/s from my experience) from EVDO (averaging 700Kb/s in my case).
Best high end smartphones for remote area reception from Bell?
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Originally Posted by cmstlist
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