tips for getting 4g reception indoors? - EVO 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

i have a pretty poor signal (3g and 4g) inside my apartment. 4g doesn't come in at all really, and 3g is about 3 bars at most, sometimes it briefly goes to 4 bars. i live on the ground floor of an old brick building, but i'm willing to try any tricks to get a 4g signal indoors (making a ledge for the phone up by the ceiling? by a window?). if i stand in front of my window on the sidewalk i get a fine 4g signal, but i don't want to set my phone on the sidewalk outside to wireless tether
has anyone experimented with any techniques to get a good signal? i heard 4g has a more difficult time penetrating through walls and insulated glass (i just have old windows with 1 single thin pane of glass). is there any way to position the phone to best get a signal (avoiding contact with certain parts of the phone? where is the 4g antenna specifically within the phone, at the top?)? can i somehow make an antenna somehow and place it outside my window and connect it to my phone in some way? are there sprint indoor antenna booster devices of some kind?
forgive me in advance if this has been covered... yes i did try searching but unfortunately when the device itself has "4g" in the name im getting a lot of invalid results
thanks!

Related

3G is just out of reach

Any one know if it is possible to force a 3G connection, my house is located right between where 2 towers overlap, as I pull up to my house in the car, I have a 3G connection, but a soon as I walk into the house I can see the 1 tower drop off and the other pick up, problem is the stronger tower is only an EDGE connection. I bought an 8db gain antenna, but that just made the EDGE connection stronger.
Shy of moving my house 1 block over, does anyone have any ideas.......?
did you try forcing it to wcdma only ? were you able to keep the signal?
did it, works great, thanks

Desire POOR RECEPTION

I have had my new Desire for 2 days now. It is the telstra version (australia) (which also has the non working GPS).
I am using my postpaid telstra sim in it which was previously in my blackberry 9700 which is NEXTG capable.
I have found the reception to be noticeably poorer. My BB would show full 5 bars and would never drop a call or have any issues with calls breaking up and being unable to hear the other person. The actual 'bars' was about 2 out of 4 for the android. it is 5/5 for the BB. The android signal strength meter shows anywhere from -90 dBm to -105 dBm in the same spot. My BB9700 shows -70 dBm !!! in the same spot with the same sim!!! -70 is as good as it gets.
for example today, i had trouble maintaining a conversation for more than a few minutes without it breaking up and having to repeat myself a few times. This happened at least on 2 separate phone calls with the desire. Granted, it never cut the connection completely.
i got sick of it because i was on call and had to be able to be contactable 100% so I swapped the sim in to the BB and continued on my conversation – 30 minute conversation without a hint of an issue.
I have always found the BB to be the ultimate in the phone department – but i was seduced by the pretty screen and graphics of the Desire and also the integration with google apps – which i use a lot of.
I also note that people have been complainng about the nexus one over in the US of A regarding the reception quality too. I bet it is the same thing.
The call quality is quite good though. The speakerphone is crap though.
The other bits of the phone are great – screen, speed, apps, and everything else everyone said was good... though i havent heard anyone complaining about the reception
Just want to know if anyone else is having similar experiences and if it is just me. Can ppl with phones that can show signal strength objectively (i.e. dBm measurements) look into a comparison? and also state what network you are on?
Im now thinking it is too unreliable to use as my primary phone... which is too bad. I hope it is a matter of a software update or somesuch to fix this. The price one pays to be an early adopter.
I suspect this applies to your Desire?
bloody hell... same thing happened when i tried what that dude did... pick up the damn thing and the signal goes to hell
devastating.... this is sad.
It's because the antenna is at the bottom, and you're most likely covering it with your hand when you pick it up.
It's quite worrying this sort of hardware design flaw wasn't spotted by HTC. I too can confirm it happens on mind has well....at least I know how to hold it now!
This thing really is a nexus one+sense huh? It even copies the 3g coverage issue.
I just tried that and found the same problem...that is really a big problem.
hi, even if that shown in the video partially occurs to me as well I can't say I'm noticing any difference with my old handset (touch hd)
I have currently got an O2 simcard in my desire with GPRS reception only.
I do not have that issue, will try with my orange 3g sim as well.
Has anyone a work around or advice for this?
Held tight in the palm I lose bars, held to the head I don't - enough of a different grip when actually using for a call. Cupped in the fingers rather than the palm, no loss.
I have the sim free desire bought from UK, and I'm using the optus prepaid sim. There is no problem for me at all.
Maybe update the radio would fix the issue, but it seems no radio update atm.
Sent from my HTC Desire using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk
HTC Desire Bad reception Solved!!
Hi All,
I recently bought a second hand HTC Desire and had the same thing: Bad Reception.
I tried EVERYTHING, Rom's, Radio's, Task-killers, etc. but I found the reason was something completely different!
Now my Desire has FULL 4 bars reception: What did I do?
Remove the battery cover, take out the battery, unscrew the two small Torx screws at the bottom left and right.
These two screws hold the antenna cover which is actually the antenna itself!!
You will find two spring-loaded contacts at the left of the phone on the circuitboard: these are the antenna contacts. Pry them up al little bit and clean them with some alcohol.
Now clean the two grey contact surfaces in the antenne. Do not use any scratching tool, but use a small pencil eraser!! The surface will stay a bit grey, but this is normal.
Now you are done!
Put the antenna back in place (bottom first) and put the 2 screws back.
Boot your phone and you will have good (4 bar) reception like before.
If you want to check?
Before you do anything "dial" *#*#4636#*#* , choose "Phone Information" and look at the signal strength.
The lower the number of dBm the better the signal.
Same as: the higher the ASU the better the signal.
Do the same after cleaning and you will see the result.
Succes to you all!
Extra: The antenna is at the bottom of the phone, poor design choice, we all know.
However:before -when holding the phone- the Signal Strength went from -103 dBm tot -119 dBm and then to 0, meaning losing the connection completely.
Now, the reception at the same location when holding the phone goes from -79 dBm to -85 dBm still holding 4 bars and having good reception.
My guess is that with all the Desire's these contacts corrode over time, so cleaning does help to get the phone back in it's original condition..
Satbeginner said:
Hi All,
I recently bought a second hand HTC Desire and had the same thing: Bad Reception.
I tried EVERYTHING, Rom's, Radio's, Task-killers, etc. but I found the reason was something completely different!
Now my Desire has FULL 4 bars reception: What did I do?
Remove the battery cover, take out the battery, unscrew the two small Torx screws at the bottom left and right.
These two screws hold the antenna cover which is actually the antenna itself!!
You will find two spring-loaded contacts at the left of the phone on the circuitboard: these are the antenna contacts. Pry them up al little bit and clean them with some alcohol.
Now clean the two grey contact surfaces in the antenne. Do not use any scratching tool, but use a small pencil eraser!! The surface will stay a bit grey, but this is normal.
Now you are done!
Put the antenna back in place (bottom first) and put the 2 screws back.
Boot your phone and you will have good (4 bar) reception like before.
If you want to check?
Before you do anything "dial" *#*#4636#*#* , choose "Phone Information" and look at the signal strength.
The lower the number of dBm the better the signal.
Same as: the higher the ASU the better the signal.
Do the same after cleaning and you will see the result.
Succes to you all!
Extra: The antenna is at the bottom of the phone, poor design choice, we all know.
However:before -when holding the phone- the Signal Strength went from -103 dBm tot -119 dBm and then to 0, meaning losing the connection completely.
Now, the reception at the same location when holding the phone goes from -79 dBm to -85 dBm still holding 4 bars and having good reception.
My guess is that with all the Desire's these contacts corrode over time, so cleaning does help to get the phone back in it's original condition..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did the same thing when I was struggling with poor GPS - opened the phone and bent all contacts a little bit. Confirm that my (or my wife's more accurately) Desire now has outstanding GPS, 2G and 3G signal. This screenshot shows the two contacts mentioned by Satbeginner.
It is worth mentioning though - if your phone is still under warranty and has never been opened this procedure will void your warranty - you have to break a seal on one of the two screws to remove the antenna.

Cell phone home signal amplifer

I happen to live in an area where I seldom get a signal stronger than 60% outside my home. Within my home, I run between 10% and 30% signal. Due to this I tend to get a lot of dropped calls. I have reported this "valley" in my city as being in a weak signal area for AT&T. Most of it began with 3G. I have now resolved that I should purchase a signal amplifier with an omni antenna that can be installed in my attic that would have about a 35-40 foot cable running to the inside unit. As I understand it, that should closely resemble an outside signal.
Anyone have any suggestions on home cell phone amplifiers that will handle multiple calls simultaneously? It obviously is not totally an AT&T issue because I have several friends on differing networks that have the same problem in my house.
Any help would be appreciated.

[Q] Boost signal..?

I don't have internet at my apartment and I don't have plans of getting it anytime soon. I get a free Cricket Crosswave with my job so I haven't really planned on getting real internet service.. I have crap for data when it comes to Sprint. It's a shame that I have to use Wifi on my Sprint phone and hook it to my Cricket wifi just to have data.
Anyway, I know that if I call Sprint and complain they will send me their booster thing for free, but I have heard of people buying similar devices that don't require an internet connection to boost signal. Does anyone know of a solution?
answer
I think I can help you
I have tried to signal booster all it is really is a repeater you put a antenna up REALLY high or at least as high as the cable they give you let you and as long as you are in range of the base you should get better signal this works in theory. I am not so sure it works in real life good way to find out before you buy see if with in a mile or so of your house you can get the signal you are looking for if not then I am not really sure I would waste my time with it I mean you could as long as you can return it. These things are really truly made to just pick up a good outside signal and bring it inside places that well are shielded there not directional antennas or anything that would be able to be aimed (which would work better imo) how ever putting it up high in the air will tend to improve your ability to pick up signal in you are in a low area they are powered which means the SHOULD be able to boost low signal but again SHOULD is the key. Bottom line it didn't work for me and I have what is suppose to be good coverage in my area but.........I don't BTW here is what i tried take it or leave it up to you hope this helped I am not really good at this hope explaining things deal.
http://www.amazon.com/zBoost-YX-510...XZ1K/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1337891426&sr=8-2
i'll probably have to give this a try some time soon.. thanks!
Can also try mounting on an old SAT dish, it can provide a huge gain of signal if you have one lying around, just point it in different directions till you get max bars. Show your signal in dBm if you can for more accuracy. The dish points in the direction of 45 degrees off the plane of the dish.
Remove the black tape that is on top of the actual antenna and you'll be left with a gold copper ribbon which is your real antenna. This help a lot because the black tape is blocking the radio wave that your antenna is trying to receive.

Any good yagi antennas for boosting T-Mobile signal?

Curious if anyone here has used any yagi (or other style) antennas to pick up a T-Mobile signal in poor signal areas. Was trying to get my dad hooked up with high speed internet... he's very close to getting 35mbps (end of the driveway), but down the road, through the trees, little to no signal. He has a metal tower up (with wave or some crap, 3mpbs) so i was thinking i could mount a yagi antenna up there and point it towards the tower... just not sure exactly what to get, and how to interface with the phone (d851). Thanks for any help.
(i did climb up the tower with an extension cord and one of T-Mobiles "window" unit range extenders... got about 3 bars up there, but need a waterproof, more powerful solution, as the speeds were fairly low even with the increased signal, was just thinking yagi style could do the trick).

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