Murray from Palm-Mac recently wrote the following about the BlackBerry Bold– “ Having absolutely dismal signal reception didn’t help….how can a phone go from 3g full strength to GPRS 1 bar in a matter of milliseconds, just sitting on a chair next to you?”
I wrote about the Bold- “Call quality is excellent and so is signal strength. I can get a very good 3G signal in my house all of the time, but cannot with any other phone.”
So, why the difference? There are a number of potential reasons-
He is using T-Mobile and I am using Vodafone.
We do not live together (shudder the thought!) and thus are in completely different areas of reception.
I know what I am talking about and Murray…
To be serious for a moment, this does highlight a potential problem with writing reviews of smartphones because the number of factors that can affect a mobile signal are infinite. I always use my Vodafone SIM for reviews because 3G reception can be erratic where I live and work. Of all the phones I have reviewed the Bold is by far the best at obtaining and keeping a 3G signal, whilst devices like the iPhone are pitiful in this department. At home the signal will completely drop out up to 20 times a day on a first generation iPhone and the later 3G model, but is constant on all other phones. Having said that, almost all Windows Mobile devices I have reviewed cannot gain a 3G signal in my house while most Symbian devices can.
It is my experience that Symbian devices tend to perform uniformly well in this department and the Windows Mobile phones do the opposite.
I can only presume that Murray has poor reception where he lives, but if that is the case why do other phones he has used work fine in the same place?
I could presume that there is poor 3G reception where I live, but why does the Bold work so well?
There is no answer to this question, except to say that when buying a new phone make sure you do your research first to ensure it will perform where you work and play. The problem is, how can you research something that is impossible to find an answer for?
Interesting point about the research before buying. Shaun has an added advantage here in that he gets a lot of units to test, and can therefore (I assume) make a reasonably informed decision about things like call quality and signal strength.
I (and I suspect) most other users don’t actually get our hands on machines in our “life” environments, until we’ve actually handed over the money – often too late then. Research and reading reviews is fine for most aspects of research, but doesn’t adequately enable me to really assess things such as signal reception.
Incidentally, my iPhone almost always has 3G reception., and generally it’s rock solid. And I live in Wales!