I am getting terrible, unacceptable reception on voice calls. They come in loud and clear. But the person on the other end has trouble hearing me, and the phone has to work hard to hold the call (draining the battery very fast and heating up quickly).
Idling, my Droid shows four bars and 3G, which turns out to mean four bars of 3G (1900 MHz). But whenever I make a voice call, which on Verizon turns off the data, that drops down to one or zero bars, the reception for the voice calls. Note that here in Chicago Verizon has the two frequencies separate, using 800MHz on voice, 1900MHz on 3G data. So it's a problem the phone has on the 800MHz channels used for voice calls here. (Most of Verizon, except SE Wisconsin, Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Louisiana and east/south Florida, has the same or similar setup -- in those few places I've mentioned everything is on 1900MHz, so my problem won't apply in those areas)
Checking the signal strength in the phone settings menu reveals a similar story on voice calls -- I'm typically between -90 and -104dBm at home, as opposed to -77 to -85dBm on my Motorola z6c and my old Samsung A310 (smaller negative numbers are better of course than big ones). Those -90 to -104 numbers on the Droid are what you'd normally expect in a fringe rural area, not the middle of a major city. Checking the numbers in the phone's program menus reveals a similar story -- Ec/Io numbers of anywhere from 50 to 100 on the 800MHz channel (usually 424 for me), but often zero on the 3G channel (it should be as close to zero as possible).
So something is seriously scrambled with the phone on voice calling. This is my second Droid and the first one had exactly the same problem.
Does anyone else see the same kinds of symptoms, such as:
1. Four bars suddenly drop to one or zero when on a call?
2. Phone heats up very quickly on a call?
3. In the Settings > About Phone > Status menu, Signal strength shows worse than -90 (e.g. -96, -100, -105)?
4. The person you're calling asks you to repeat yourself.
Like I say, no trouble at all on 3G data. But I can't have a phone that works like this on voice. Are they all messed up like this? Is this problem addressed in forthcoming software updates?
UPDATE: no trouble so far with echoing either.
Idling, my Droid shows four bars and 3G, which turns out to mean four bars of 3G (1900 MHz). But whenever I make a voice call, which on Verizon turns off the data, that drops down to one or zero bars, the reception for the voice calls. Note that here in Chicago Verizon has the two frequencies separate, using 800MHz on voice, 1900MHz on 3G data. So it's a problem the phone has on the 800MHz channels used for voice calls here. (Most of Verizon, except SE Wisconsin, Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Louisiana and east/south Florida, has the same or similar setup -- in those few places I've mentioned everything is on 1900MHz, so my problem won't apply in those areas)
Checking the signal strength in the phone settings menu reveals a similar story on voice calls -- I'm typically between -90 and -104dBm at home, as opposed to -77 to -85dBm on my Motorola z6c and my old Samsung A310 (smaller negative numbers are better of course than big ones). Those -90 to -104 numbers on the Droid are what you'd normally expect in a fringe rural area, not the middle of a major city. Checking the numbers in the phone's program menus reveals a similar story -- Ec/Io numbers of anywhere from 50 to 100 on the 800MHz channel (usually 424 for me), but often zero on the 3G channel (it should be as close to zero as possible).
So something is seriously scrambled with the phone on voice calling. This is my second Droid and the first one had exactly the same problem.
Does anyone else see the same kinds of symptoms, such as:
1. Four bars suddenly drop to one or zero when on a call?
2. Phone heats up very quickly on a call?
3. In the Settings > About Phone > Status menu, Signal strength shows worse than -90 (e.g. -96, -100, -105)?
4. The person you're calling asks you to repeat yourself.
Like I say, no trouble at all on 3G data. But I can't have a phone that works like this on voice. Are they all messed up like this? Is this problem addressed in forthcoming software updates?
UPDATE: no trouble so far with echoing either.
