Help Vibrant reception issues?

[Blown 89]

Sorry if this is a repost, I could have sworn I posted this last night.

Is anyone else having reception issues with the Galaxy S? I'm on my second Vibrant in less than a week. Right now I have one bar and 111 dBm and 1 asu with the vast majority of the time sitting at 0 dBm and 0 asu. This is sitting on the table without me touching it. Is this a problem with the Galaxy?

I'm starting to wonder if this is a hardware problem and I need to take it back. What's everyone's take on this? Is this a common problem or did I get bad hardware.

 

[noonehereyet]

Sorry if this is a repost, I could have sworn I posted this last night.

Is anyone else having reception issues with the Galaxy S? I'm on my second Vibrant in less than a week. Right now I have one bar and 111 dBm and 1 asu with the vast majority of the time sitting at 0 dBm and 0 asu. This is sitting on the table without me touching it. Is this a problem with the Galaxy?

I'm starting to wonder if this is a hardware problem and I need to take it back. What's everyone's take on this? Is this a common problem or did I get bad hardware.

It sounds like you either have terrible reception with TMO in your area or you have a defective phone.... being this is your second phone I would say its most likely your coverage area from TMO because I have had mine since the 20th and never had any issues, dropped calls or signal loss...

 

[SamsungVibrant]

Sorry if this is a repost, I could have sworn I posted this last night.

Is anyone else having reception issues with the Galaxy S? I'm on my second Vibrant in less than a week. Right now I have one bar and 111 dBm and 1 asu with the vast majority of the time sitting at 0 dBm and 0 asu. This is sitting on the table without me touching it. Is this a problem with the Galaxy?

I'm starting to wonder if this is a hardware problem and I need to take it back. What's everyone's take on this? Is this a common problem or did I get bad hardware.

Since owning my phone, I have never had a dropped call even though my signal bar shows zero.

The only issue I have with this phone is its preference for edge over 3g. Seems to have trouble picking up 3g signals even though all my other phones are picking it up, instead it prefers edge. I've locked my phone onto 3G only, which was a problem since it appears to have reception issues picking up 3G, so then I get zero data, zero phone calls.
I placed it back onto gsm/wcdma auto.

So as far as phone calls and dropped calls, not a problem. As far as a side by side edge vs 3g signal with other phones, yes the vibrant preferes edge on my phone for some reason.

 

[Blown 89]

Yeah, I've noticed it having problems connecting to3G, I haven't had the phone long enough to really assess the call strength. I can sit and watch the signal jump around from three bars to no bars and back up all day long. Often times it dips down to edge. My download speeds on speedtest confirm the variance.

 

[truoc444]

I don't have 3g in my area, but as i have traveled in the last couple of weeks I haven't seen any problems with it switching. For 4 days last week it was my only internet connection and I ran it hard as a tethered 3g modem with no issues. Even while tethered i never missed or dropped a call. I guess my vote would have to be the service level in your area.

 

[copter105]

I got a problem with 3G also. My older Touch Pro was locked onto 3G/H all the time but the Vibrant really prefers Edge. There are multiple place that I go where I used to have 3G on my old phone and now sadly only Edge on the Vibrant. The signal meter goes up and down and shows no bars while I can make a call though. Kind of annoying.

 

[GTOJim]

I also have the same trouble. Tech support claims I live within 3/4 mile of a 3G cell site. Here at home it's always showing E with zero to one bar. I'm told I should have great reception as I'm in the center of 4 cell towers.

They had me try a new Sim card, it didn't help. An engineer will be checking the 3G site by tomorrow.
Hope they can fix this problem.

Speed tests often have zero download zero upload speed.

 

[robo21]

It sounds like you either have terrible reception with TMO in your area or you have a defective phone.... being this is your second phone I would say its most likely your coverage area from TMO because I have had mine since the 20th and never had any issues, dropped calls or signal loss...

Agreed, I too have had my Vibrant since the 20th of July and no reception issues whatsoever. As a matter of fact, where my old Samsung phone used to drop calls the Vibrant does not. I get 3G at home even with 1 bar .

 

[llblwskydrgn]

I've had my phone for a weekend+ and even though my phone usually shows me zero to two bars when I look at it, I haven't had a dropped call or very poor call quality yet.
Is their signal bar inaccurate or is my perception of call quality off?

 

[kbohip]

I've had my phone for a weekend+ and even though my phone usually shows me zero to two bars when I look at it, I haven't had a dropped call or very poor call quality yet.
Is their signal bar inaccurate or is my perception of call quality off?

I've only had maybe 1 or 2 dropped calls with my Vibrant, not enough for me to worry about as I've never seen any cell phone not drop a call here or there. I really think the signal strength indicator on these phones are pretty inaccurate though. I was watching mine tonight as I was at home. It went from full bars to 1 to 0 and then back to full within 10 seconds.

Another thing to remember with these phones is that they work on a digital network. The voice quality will sound as good at 0 bars (assuming there is a signal at all) as it would with full bars. I used to spend hours trying to get my Directv dish to as perfect of a signal as possible but then after talking to a tech and learning the picture quality was as good at 60% as it was at 100% because of the digital transmission, I realized the 90% signal I was getting was good enough.

 

[breadmantom]

I have the signal issue, with the 3G signal going from 0 to 4 bars and back to 0 all the time. When it sits at 4 bars, I have great data speeds and very good voice calls. When it drops to 0, there is no data (errors accessing web) and voice calls hold but I can't hear the person at the other end until I get one bar back. This is with me standing still.

New Vibrant arriving later this week. Hope it fixes the problem.

 

[breadmantom]

BTW, signal is always good and steady on Edge. Data is slower than the 4 bars on 3G, but at least it is good and consistent.

 

[tominspring]

I live in an area that the T-Mobile map shows as best 3g coverage. My Vibrant constantly switches to EDGE. The 3g reception sits between 111db and 95db and 0 frequently. I do miss calls, I do get dropped calls. I do not experience this problem with other T-Mobile phones. Data is frequently extremely slow.

I tried a Verizon Fascinate yesterday. Same problem. Yet the Verizon BB sitting next to it was solid. Fascinate went back to VZW. My work phone is VZW, I never have any reception problems.

It seems there is a cellular radio design flaw with the Galaxy S phones.

just a side note: I liked the Vibrant better than the Fascinate. VZW really loaded it down with bloat and "Blinged" the phone. How do they sell a Google phone that is forced to use Bling for searches.

 

[m4r10]

I also have signal problems. I live in a "strong 3G coverage area" and it seems that every time I go indoors it keeps switching back and forth between 3G and edge. I'm new to T-Mobile so I don't know if this is what the data coverage is supposed to be like. I'm waiting to see if the froyo update does anything for this...if we ever get it this month.

 

[sabooher]

On 3G my Vibrant simply refuses to get a good signal, mostly indoors. I've tested it in multiple locations and in multiple regions (Dallas and Houston). I force it to 2G and it improves. So the store replaced it and the same problem exists. I can also easily reproduce the "signal death grip" but that doesn't really matter to me since I don't hold the phone that way. But just with the phone sitting on a table I watch the signal fluctuate terribly.

The best I can ever get is -81 dBm which isn't stellar but it's acceptable. Most of the time it jumps from -97 dBm to -115 dBm which is horrible for data. Just trying to use the Google Market on 3G I get consistent retry failures. Switch it back to 2G and it's much better. So I returned it under buyers remorse and will wait it out to see if things improve with this phone. I won't even get to Samsung disabling the three button recovery mode....that alone would get me to return the phone.

Case in point; my other Android phone is a Motorola XT720 which TMobile doesn't even "officially" support. It gets excellent HSPA compared to the Vibrant and I see it consistely hold "H" when I'm using the data service. I just wish that phone had the cpu/memory/screen that the Vibrant has because for whatever reason the wireless radio on it seems to outperform the Vibrant.

 

[HadouGhost]

thats weird. i have a solid 4 or 5 bars and 3g where ever i go.

hell, i even recieve calls when my phone shows zero bars and some how i can talk. sooo..i think its your coverage.

remember, the Vibrant is one of very few phones that Tmobile has that uses the new HSPA network which is supposed to have speeds close if not on par with 4g

 

[__McB__]

I hope someone figures this out as I too have this issue. I got a Vibrant to replace a MyTouch. Since getting the Vibrant my signal is at 1 bar most of the time. The bars do fluctuate constantly, but so did the mytouch.

The problem for me is that I get failed network connection messages very frequently. I also experience dropped calls. So after a week of this, I put my sim back in the mytouch and I have no signal issues whatsoever, even in the same locations where the Vibrant did have signal issues. Put it back in the Vibrant; 1 bar and data connection problems.

Also, when I'm having data connection issues it freezes up the phone. If I switch to Wifi, thus re-establishing my data connections, the phone flies again.

I really love the Vibrant, but my reception issues are definitely related to the phone. Searching the internet I see a lot of others with this issue which makes me feel it might be widespread. I really hope this gets solved otherwise I'll have to return the phone and go back to the mytouch.