[chbot] Cellphone reception

[Volker Kuhlmann]

On Sat 17 Jan 2015 22:41:17 NZDT +1300, Mike Smith wrote:

> Does anybody have experience with cellphone reception in rural areas?

A little bit. Always a good question to ask *before* buying a phone.

> Are some phones have better reception than others,

Oh heck yes! Plenty of $1xxx dumbphones have hit the market, including
from major players like Samsung, that are nifty little pocket computers
doing everything except slicing bread. Just don't bother trying to use
them for a phone call... because it's just a piece of electronic phone
junk before you've even unpacked it. In between getting all the sexy
stuff to market a good RF design (you'd think that'd be top for a phone,
wouldn't you?) just didn't make it onto the important features list.

Look at test reports from Consumer etc that include signal sensitivity
in their tests and have a somewhat acceptable test method for it. Forget
about online reviews unless it says it's bad, then it's probably ot
hyped up. These tests are difficult to come by because they are
expensive, and nobody is able to keep up with phone models. Hearsay is
usually of no value.

> find much on Google, have been told the the Iphone is better because
> it has dual antennas

Dual antennas is still no good if some smartie puts them underneath a
marketroidal space-grade titanium bla bla metal cover for the thinnest
phone ever...

> Does anybody use external antennas or anything?

Never seen it, there would have to be a connector for it and it's then a
construction that would never get approval for meeting any radio
regulations. So, no.

If you do any testing yourself you'd have to take the sim card out of
the first phone and put it into the second one, hoping the phone doesn't
interfere with carrier selection. If you can't ensure to get the same
carrier between phone you can't get any useful result about their
relative sensitivity. You'd probably want some app to tell you some
signal strength number instead of relying on bars, which is far too
course. With a dual-sim phone you can test different cards at the same
time, my 2degrees and vodafone cards frequently give different bars, as
you'd expect.

HTH,

Volker

-- 
Volker Kuhlmann
http://volker.top.geek.nz/	Please do not CC list postings to me.