Does Your Epic 4G Touch Have Signal Loss?

I think you missed a category:

No...but my signal is weaker than other phones.

Yes, data all the time.

Voice - No.

Voice is good... no problems.

I do have issues with my 3G data connection timing out from time to time. It hasn't been a major issue for me, yet. But, it is frustrating at times.

Unplugged lives in a fantasy world where he believes signal bars are useless. He's posted this in other threads. He doesn't believe the bars indicate the signal strength in decibels, for some reason. Its very strange and completely untrue.

My answer to this poll was "yes, its worse and affects my usage." Interestingly, both cell strength AND Wifi strength are far less than my htc evo 4g and htc hero were. Today I got a call and I could not hear the other end while he could hear me just fine. I haven't seen this issue in years. Does not bode well for this phone.

I thought it was common knowledge that bars don't correspond to signal strength across phones. I know very little about phones and know this much.

I'm on my third Epic Touch and they all exhibit bad reception. I live in an area that doesn't have the greatest of reception my house. That said I never really have a problem with drop calls, unable to make a call, and no data with my Htc Evo 4G and Moto Photon. My Epic Touch keeps getting the roaming indicator and drops call ( especially when I move around when talking). The kicker is that I can't stay connected wifi. I need the wifi as the 3g signal in my house is poor.

The phone does sometime suddenly disconnects data even when you are in a strong signal area. Although the 3g or 4g indicator still shows a connection no data can actually be transmitted. The way to get it going again is to switch to an alternative connection and switch back or you can always reboot.

Whether or not signal bars accurately represent signal strength is debatable, but I'm positive that when my phone is noticeably warm in my pocket it is most definitely at 1 bar or less. This phone certainly struggles some to find/hold a signal.

This phones data reception is pretty bad. Seems as though Samsung tried to save battery life (which seems to get worse over time) by making the radios weak. My first charge was awesome, every since then it's been downhill. Wifi on without signal drinks battery like kool-aid.

Sprint cannot be blamed for this low of a level of reception.

I have two days left before my return period is up, I am teetering. I know this can be fixed through an update, but at what cost? Battery life? No-way, can't deal with any worse. And furthermore I'm not too confident in Samsungs update priorities.

heavychevy said:

This phones data reception is pretty bad. Seems as though Samsung tried to save battery life (which seems to get worse over time) by making the radios weak. My first charge was awesome, every since then it's been downhill. Wifi on without signal drinks battery like kool-aid.

Sprint cannot be blamed for this low of a level of reception.

I have two days left before my return period is up, I am teetering. I know this can be fixed through an update, but at what cost? Battery life? No-way, can't deal with any worse. And furthermore I'm not too confident in Samsungs update priorities.

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I had the same problem. Battery was great at first and as time went by it started getting worse as for the signal issues the sprint tech tested the radios at the store the call radio passed but the data radio failed. I returned mine on the 13th day because the phone was constantly roaming and because of this problem they waived the restocking fee. I ended up exchanging it for a photon which I think is very underrated. May not be as smooth as the epic but it's still a good phone. Heard Samsung and sprint are working on a fix but don't know when it will be released. I needed my phone to be a phone first so as much as I wanted to keep the epic I had to return it.

tenyc424 said:

I had the same problem. Battery was great at first and as time went by it started getting worse as for the signal issues the sprint tech tested the radios at the store the call radio passed but the data radio failed. I returned mine on the 13th day because the phone was constantly roaming and because of this problem they waived the restocking fee. I ended up exchanging it for a photon which I think is very underrated. May not be as smooth as the epic but it's still a good phone. Heard Samsung and sprint are working on a fix but don't know when it will be released. I needed my phone to be a phone first so as much as I wanted to keep the epic I had to return it.

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Wow, I could be in your shoes, only I have a perfectly fine EVO 3D (other than light leak) that was much more friendly to work with. I decided to dedicate a week to the EPIC and have grown attached to it, but I'm afraid I will be returning it. I surf the web A LOT, and the data on this phone is a buzz kill, as is the battery life and darkness of movies on NETFLIX.

What a frustrating issue!

We had a lot of signal issues reported with the Evo 3D at launch (and widely reported as a phone characteristic) but using Open Signal Maps (free in the Market) and comparing notes, we zeroed in on the problem being restricted to some lemons. I had one (and my GPS was very poor) - armed with the information that my phone was constantly tower hopping, courtesy of the Open Signal Maps, I had my local Sprint authorized repair center perform an RF test on my handset. Turns out I had a lemon - they replaced it, and I've been good to go ever since. (Can't fix the reputation problem that gave the 3D, but it is what it is.)

I sure hope it's something like that that you cats can get fixed rather something defective to the design itself.

Lemons happen, but I sure wish that ALL of these handset makers would step up their game in QA. I think they think it's cheaper to take returns and swaps than it is to get them right going out the door - just my opinion tho.

I have been experiencing data loss on a an everyday basis and my phone has been reloaded and even replaced and the issues still exists.

My thoughts are that the representation you see here, both polling, and posting is a representation of those who really try to understand their phones.

You guys are on the forefront of rooting, performance, comparisons, etc. You notice these types of things while the normal user just moves along thinking nothing of it other than just.......WOW this is a really impressive phone. They don't pay to much attention to detail in performance or specs. They are sold on marketing and gadgetry alone.

I believe you refer to them as SHEEPLE. Haha. You know, the Apple mentality folks. They exist in the Android world as well.

Justdooit_Utah said:

My thoughts are that the representation you see here, both polling, and posting is a representation of those who really try to understand their phones.

You guys are on the forefront of rooting, performance, comparisons, etc. You notice these types of things while the normal user just moves along thinking nothing of it other than just.......WOW this is a really impressive phone. They don't pay to much attention to detail in performance or specs. They are sold on marketing and gadgetry alone.

I believe you refer to them as SHEEPLE. Haha. You know, the Apple mentality folks. They exist in the Android world as well.

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Yeah, you couldn't be more wrong if you tried.

THe kind of data issues being discussed here would absolutely be noticed by just about anyone because the entire reason they have these phones is to use DATA. Big screens aren't impressive in and of themselves. If large swaths of folks were constantly losing data or having this much difficulty, it would be a big deal. Now, does the average consumer pay attention to really silly nerd-centric arguments like pentile screens vs non-pentile? No, they don't. Because THAT stuff makes NO difference whatsoever.

The odds are this is a small issue affecting a really small number of handsets. The internet being what it is, those who have a problem are more likely to seek out and discuss the issue, thus in a forum it can look like a HUGE problem when nothing could be further from the truth.

I think you don't understand the concept of "sheeple." It's more a case of "folks who USE their phones, not obsess over them."

Good to see a poll to try to help understand how widespread the problem is. Seems like it may be fairly common given the numbers posted... I'm sure it's not completely scientific but I'd guess it's still fairly representative.

This is the first Galaxy S II phone with a CDMA radio that I'm aware of so it's not completely unsurprising that their might be issues with the radio.

The big question is how will Samung and Sprint respond to the issue? I tend to like Samsung hardware but I do have concerns about their post-release support based on the Galaxy S series GPS issues that never seemed to really be fixed.

Glad mine doesn't have these issues. I can't imagine going back to the garbage Evo 3d. I get great reception now, where the 3d would just heat up like an oven and drain the battery. Ill never buy HTC again.

I picked up an E4GT yesterday... I live AND work in fringe areas where dBm runs in the high -90s. I teeter around -95-97 at home and around -101 at work.

I've had a number of smart phones in the last 18 months or so: Droid Incredible, LG Optimus S, Droid ERIS, Motorola Droid X, Evo 4G, EVO 3D, and now an Epic 4G touch.

I experience "signal loss" for most of the day today at work on my Epic 4G Touch. I finally gave up making a call and rebooted. I got a signal for a bit but not enough to hang onto a call. This phone's radio is not up to par with my Evo 3D. It's significantly weaker at home and at work. The 3D was about the same as my Evo 4G and second incredible. The Motorola Droid X kicked all of my phones in the nads. Motorola (a radio company) makes great radios. Imagine that.

I will say that I'm thrilled with the phone at every level minus the terrible radio. Hopefully a "patch" will come along and improve things, but with all of my smartphones I've experienced no noticeable improvement when an update was pushed to supposedly improve radio performance. I have a hard time believing a phone would ship in a certain state when the developers could have tweaked the software for a major improvement. Improvements are probably going to be tiny and tiny isn't going to fix it I don't think.

Perhaps Samsung really did "cut" the radio's power when it is struggling so that it would save battery. My Evo 3D drains quickly in fringe areas but at least would hang onto a signal to make a call...

I'll give it a few days but if I continue to have serious voice/data calling issues, I'll have to give up on this beauty of a device as I really would like to use the voice and data features, lol.

rdillz said:

Glad mine doesn't have these issues. I can't imagine going back to the garbage Evo 3d. I get great reception now, where the 3d would just heat up like an oven and drain the battery. Ill never buy HTC again.

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Methinks you had a bad 3D. I had one with serious radio/battery issues as well. Latest one is a champ.

Justdooit_Utah said:

My thoughts are that the representation you see here, both polling, and posting is a representation of those who really try to understand their phones.

You guys are on the forefront of rooting, performance, comparisons, etc. You notice these types of things while the normal user just moves along thinking nothing of it other than just.......WOW this is a really impressive phone. They don't pay to much attention to detail in performance or specs. They are sold on marketing and gadgetry alone.

I believe you refer to them as SHEEPLE. Haha. You know, the Apple mentality folks. They exist in the Android world as well.

Click to expand...

Actually sheeple should be construed as either:

A) iphone user
B) The American general populace who is more worried about what's on TV than how their government is running the country or I suppose in some cases they are one in the same

yes, absolutely, and it interferes with the use of the phone