How can you tell if a mobile phone has good reception before you buy it?

StewartR

StewartR

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The main thing for me is the company I live in a vodaphone black hole area and it does not matter what phone model, if it is Vodaphone it does not work! I have never noticed any smartphones being worse than old style phones.
 
davholla said:
The main thing for me is the company I live in a vodaphone black hole area and it does not matter what phone model, if it is Vodaphone it does not work! I have never noticed any smartphones being worse than old style phones.
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I'm with vodafone, when they changed the mast in our village from 3g to 4g the data connection was superb but the 3g voice connection went completely! Just what you need when you have wifi in the house!

They sent me a sure signal box to plug into the wifi. Making and receiving calls was brilliant again, the only issue was you had to put the phone into 2g/3g mode only!

Changed to samsung and get good reception without the sure signal now.

We put a lot of our lives into these gadgets and companies!
 
The signal box linked to in the article works for where you have a broadband connection. When I was looking at MiFi boxes a year ago you could get a non-EE one that would take an external antenna, possibly illegal.
 
IME every smartphone I've ever had has been disappointing in that the most important times I need it there's rarely been signal strength good enough; and while out in the Lakes that's just annoying, but I've even has such crappy reception I can't use the net in central London !!!

I'm on my 5th smartphone and 2nd network, and sorely tempted to go back to the good old basic Nokia with no internet or apps

Dave
 
I have also found smart phones to be very poor when it comes to weak signals, I spend some time out in the sticks walking, wild camping, Mountain biking and using the Mountain Bothies and for years I thought one of the particular places I went was a no signal area ( great at the time as I was trying to vanish and relax at this place) I killed my phone whilst out in the snow and brought a cheap Nokia thick phone next time I went I was surprised when I got a call on it. Being a radio Ham with some interest in such things I made further tests and the thick phone/ Nokia proved much better than the replacement smart phone ( Samsung). The added bonus was the fact the Nokia would last up to 3 weeks on one charge ( I suspect some of this was down to not using it much as It was only a phone and didn't have your general smart phone junk to play with). This will prove what a cheap skate I am now ! I broke the Nokias protective plastic screen so decided to fashion a new one using the thin plastic from a chocolate box ! This gave my phone a legendary status among my work mates although I do suspect they were taking the mick ! I have also noticed that there are a lot of dual sim basic phones about so you could always try a dual sim phone ( smart or thick) with two totally different networks on it which should help you have some chance of a signal.
 
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MiL has an old Nokia 3310 and has reception at home while her neighbour has an apple phone which is a brick unless he's out and about. Both on the same network (EE).
 
I know this is nothing to do with the question but the Forth coming 5G is kicking up a bit of a storm about it's safety here a link but much more online https://eluxemagazine.com/magazine/dangers-of-5g/
Something I do remember about phones and this was the first generation which were much lower frequency than the newer ones. In 1981 a CB radio frequency of 934MHZ was allotted and used by mainly radio Hams at this point Handheld units were band as it was thought too dangerous to have radio signals at this frequency near to the head, after a couple of years this frequency was closed for CB radio use as it had been allotted to mobile phone networks (not sure of this exact frequency was ever used) How come the safety fears had vanished ?
I'm not a totally Paranoid person but from my time as a radio ham I realize there are dangers connected with strong radio fields especially those at the Microwave end of the spectrum such as mobile phones and it has been said that the increase in cancer rate could well be connected with this)
 
Nod said:
MiL has an old Nokia 3310 and has reception at home while her neighbour has an apple phone which is a brick unless he's out and about. Both on the same network (EE).
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I found iPhone`s better than Samsung and HTC and LG but I think there are a lot of variables and you cant say for sure
 
Many reviews seem to gloss over reception and sensitivity these days, probably due to better infrastructure in towns making it less of an issue, but it's something I ALWAYS look out for. The iPhone 4 was notorious for issues with bad reception (antenagate anyone?) and they've never really shaken their reputation, even though they ostensibly work as well as anything else. Just like mapping on iPhones.

We live in a relative blackspot for phone signal too, though I believe it's been improved. The first mobile phone I could use while sat on my settee was a Lumia 640 - none of the candybar types, nor previous 2 (HTC desire and Moto RAZRi) would work indoors. The present Xiaomis seem almost as good as the Lumias.
 
Iphones, like most other phones, can now be set to wifi calling now if your plan allows it. I have poor Vodafone reception at home, but it is brilliant now I have wifi calling.
 
I think these days it's less of an issue unless you live in a weak signal area anyway (case in point the walking/countryside examples above). And even then it's probably more important to do your research on what providers offer signal in the areas you frequent. Dual sim phones are available too so you can have the best offerings depending on different areas.

The London analogy above is likely to be more of an example of oversubscribed masts for the relevant provider than signal issues.
 
Caerus said:
I found iPhone`s better than Samsung and HTC and LG but I think there are a lot of variables and you cant say for sure
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Mrs Nod's Samsung has a signal as does my Nokia (?) 625, again, both on EE.
 
david357 said:
Iphones, like most other phones, can now be set to wifi calling now if your plan allows it. I have poor Vodafone reception at home, but it is brilliant now I have wifi calling.
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It assumes you have decent broadband - lots of rural areas with poor coverage also have laughable internet speed.

I recall you need ca. 2MB line for wifi calling to work, that's a pipe-dream for my parents who live in a rural location.
 
Nawty said:
It assumes you have decent broadband - lots of rural areas with poor coverage also have laughable internet speed.

I recall you need ca. 2MB line for wifi calling to work, that's a pipe-dream for my parents who live in a rural location.
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We recently looked at a house in the middle of nowhere that had 1mb adsl.

Ee did claim to have 65mb 4g in the area however and offered one of their 4g home Internet packages. You can even get an external aerial on request to improve thing. More expensive than a normal Internet line however and often data capped.

More and more people are looking at community schemes where Internet is bought in to a suitable area and then piped over point to point wifi links to other building(s).

P2p wifi is reletively cheap, I not long ago installed 2 units for sub 200 quid that has. 1.3km range.
 
neil_g said:
We recently looked at a house in the middle of nowhere that had 1mb adsl.

Ee did claim to have 65mb 4g in the area however and offered one of their 4g home Internet packages. You can even get an external aerial on request to improve thing. More expensive than a normal Internet line however and often data capped.

More and more people are looking at community schemes where Internet is bought in to a suitable area and then piped over point to point wifi links to other building(s).

P2p wifi is reletively cheap, I not long ago installed 2 units for sub 200 quid that has. 1.3km range.
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My parents are a community of one, so that won't really help. But yes, 4G (and hopefully 5G) would sort the problem - you get decent 4G if you walk to the top of the field. It is more expensive though.
 
Nawty said:
My parents are a community of one, so that won't really help. But yes, 4G (and hopefully 5G) would sort the problem - you get decent 4G if you walk to the top of the field. It is more expensive though.
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Its irritating that these issues still exist. We ultimately decided against this nice house because of the internet (or lack of). Sad but working in 24/7 IT I can't risk not having reliable uncapped Internet.
 
Nawty said:
I recall you need ca. 2MB line for wifi calling to work, that's a pipe-dream for my parents who live in a rural location.
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And yet digitised speech at the quality used by phone systems only requires 8 kbit/s. Go figure.
 
You need less bandwidth to text than to do a voice call, i.e. text will often work when there's not enough signal for voice. I once carried on a text conversation in the Highlands when the only reception for text was got twelve feet up in the air. So I texted handheld, "sent" it, strapped it to my walking stick, and lofted it up in the air till I heard the "text sent" noise. That was back in the old-fashioned days when you could configure your phone to tell you when it had sent a text, and when the recipient had had it delivered into their phone. You can't do that today, because smartphones have dropped that useful feature.
 
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