"David" wrote in message ...
I used to have crappy coverage (non-existant at home) until I switched
to Verizon (800 mHz CDMA G3). It works flawlessly.

You can switch providers and keep your existing number. It's called
''porting''. Radio Shack are the experts.

Porting is old news by now. But I would not trust what a Radio Shack
rep says. Time after time I discovered that I knew more about a
product than the RS sales clerk.

--
John Richards

"David" wrote in message
...
I used to have crappy coverage (non-existant at home) until I switched
to Verizon (800 mHz CDMA G3). It works flawlessly.

You can switch providers and keep your existing number. It's called
''porting''. Radio Shack are the experts.

I'm aware of the porting issue. And, Verizon is known around here for having
great coverage in rural areas, which Sprint does not.

This leaves me with evaluating the audio quality of the phones themselves
(not the network, but the individual phone models).

Doug Kanter wrote:

I use SprintPCS with a 4 year old Motorola StarTac ST7867. Just moved to a
new house and I can barely get a signal unless I stand in the middle of the
yard. That's problematic in winter. After grilling a couple of customer
service reps on the phone, I stopped into the Sprint store today and came
away with some questions I need answered before I terminate my service and
try another provider

1) The salesman was the first Sprint employee I've found who was actually
able to show me the actual location of antennas. There's one a mile from my
home, and 2 others within 5 miles, with no obstructions of any kind. No
hills, no tall buildings, just trees and homes. He says this explains
nothing because he signal is highly directional. True or false?

Resoundly True. Cell sites use directional antennae... in fact in an
area where buildout is mature, they sort of have to. Cell sites, even
those that operate on CDMA as Sprint does, are sectorized to reduce
interference with neighboring cells on different pilot signals.


2) His next suggestion was (of course) to try a newer phone because mine
uses "older technology" which might not be able to pick up such a great
signal. Likely or not?

Actually, very likely. The 7867 is a 5 year old design at least, and
the network has changed quite a bit since then. The carriers have
worked to squeeze more capacity out of the network, and in CDMA that
means a generally higher signal to noise ratio (in CDMA, all other
conversations happening on the same channel are "noise" to your
particular handset), and thus greater tolerance requirements for a
higher noise floor. This has forced chipmakers (mainly Qualcomm) to
come up with better, more sensitive RF stages for newer handsets.

The result is your old phone will still work with the present network,
but not as well as it did four years ago even in the best of
circumstances. If you put a current-model Sanyo side by side with your
StarTAC, the Sanyo will probably receive a better signal nearly all of
the time.

3) Here's the tricky part: I'm not totally adverse to a newer phone, even
though I have absolutely NO need for color, email, songs, games, digital
pictures, or any other crap. I just need a friggin' phone. But, I've made an
observation over the past few years while listening to the sound quality
when people call me from THEIR phones. It seems that some manufacturers have
gone WAY off the deep end when designing their noise cancelling
arrangements. In many instances, background noise causes the phone to also
kill or scramble the voice of the user. This, of course, makes the phone
useless. I make quite a few calls from my boat in high winds, and people
tell me that as long as I'm manually dealing with the wind somehow (turning
away, etc), the phone sounds like a normal phone as opposed to some sort of
special effects in a B-movie.

Yeah, a casualty of the need to squeeze capacity is sound quality.
Vocoder ("VOice enCODER") bitrates have gone down, and that means your
StarTAC which uses a 13kbps vocoder will sound better than the
8kpbs/variable-rate vocoder on today's phones. However, some phone
manufacturers are still better than others. A lot of people (including
myself) swear by the Sanyo models. Samsungs aren't all that great, and
the jury is still out on LG.

Of course nothing, not even a StarTAC, beats the sound quality on the
original Qualcom QCP-2700s that Sprint first started out with back in
1996. I had one and could swear that phone sounded as good, and
sometimes even better, than a landline. It was small and light, and it
was solidly built... if you smashed the 2700 against a brick, my bet
would be that the phone would win and the brick would lose.

Sadly, none of that is true with current phones from any wireless
carrier these days.

Before jumping ship, I would give the Sanyo 4920 a try. It's the
descendant of the 4900, which Sprint users have been raving about for a
while as being the best phone (of current models, anyway) for call
quality and for holding a signal.

--
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.

"Isaiah Beard" wrote in message
...
Doug Kanter wrote:

I use SprintPCS with a 4 year old Motorola StarTac ST7867. Just moved to
a
new house and I can barely get a signal unless I stand in the middle of
the
yard. That's problematic in winter. After grilling a couple of customer
service reps on the phone, I stopped into the Sprint store today and
came
away with some questions I need answered before I terminate my service
and
try another provider

1) The salesman was the first Sprint employee I've found who was
actually
able to show me the actual location of antennas. There's one a mile from
my
home, and 2 others within 5 miles, with no obstructions of any kind. No
hills, no tall buildings, just trees and homes. He says this explains
nothing because he signal is highly directional. True or false?

Resoundly True. Cell sites use directional antennae... in fact in an
area where buildout is mature, they sort of have to. Cell sites, even
those that operate on CDMA as Sprint does, are sectorized to reduce
interference with neighboring cells on different pilot signals.


2) His next suggestion was (of course) to try a newer phone because mine
uses "older technology" which might not be able to pick up such a great
signal. Likely or not?

Actually, very likely. The 7867 is a 5 year old design at least, and
the network has changed quite a bit since then. The carriers have
worked to squeeze more capacity out of the network, and in CDMA that
means a generally higher signal to noise ratio (in CDMA, all other
conversations happening on the same channel are "noise" to your
particular handset), and thus greater tolerance requirements for a
higher noise floor. This has forced chipmakers (mainly Qualcomm) to
come up with better, more sensitive RF stages for newer handsets.

The result is your old phone will still work with the present network,
but not as well as it did four years ago even in the best of
circumstances. If you put a current-model Sanyo side by side with your
StarTAC, the Sanyo will probably receive a better signal nearly all of
the time.

3) Here's the tricky part: I'm not totally adverse to a newer phone,
even
though I have absolutely NO need for color, email, songs, games, digital
pictures, or any other crap. I just need a friggin' phone. But, I've
made an
observation over the past few years while listening to the sound quality
when people call me from THEIR phones. It seems that some manufacturers
have
gone WAY off the deep end when designing their noise cancelling
arrangements. In many instances, background noise causes the phone to
also
kill or scramble the voice of the user. This, of course, makes the phone
useless. I make quite a few calls from my boat in high winds, and people
tell me that as long as I'm manually dealing with the wind somehow
(turning
away, etc), the phone sounds like a normal phone as opposed to some sort
of
special effects in a B-movie.

Yeah, a casualty of the need to squeeze capacity is sound quality.
Vocoder ("VOice enCODER") bitrates have gone down, and that means your
StarTAC which uses a 13kbps vocoder will sound better than the
8kpbs/variable-rate vocoder on today's phones. However, some phone
manufacturers are still better than others. A lot of people (including
myself) swear by the Sanyo models. Samsungs aren't all that great, and
the jury is still out on LG.

Of course nothing, not even a StarTAC, beats the sound quality on the
original Qualcom QCP-2700s that Sprint first started out with back in
1996. I had one and could swear that phone sounded as good, and
sometimes even better, than a landline. It was small and light, and it
was solidly built... if you smashed the 2700 against a brick, my bet
would be that the phone would win and the brick would lose.

Sadly, none of that is true with current phones from any wireless
carrier these days.

Before jumping ship, I would give the Sanyo 4920 a try. It's the
descendant of the 4900, which Sprint users have been raving about for a
while as being the best phone (of current models, anyway) for call
quality and for holding a signal.

--
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.


Thanks, Isaiah, for the specific phone model tips. The guy at the Sprint
store pointed out a Sanyo. Years ago, I was in the car audio business,
selling AND installing what I sold. Sanyos were hideous. Absolutely
atrocious. We used to warn customers 10 times to keep the knobs & faceplate
very clean for the first week because they'd be back to exchange the units
for something real. 9 out of 10 people came back.

So, my stomach turned when he mentioned Sanyo, but my experience goes back
15 years. I'll take another look.

In alt.cellular-phone-tech matt weber wrote:

: As for improved sensitivity with new technology? BS. Receiver
: technology has changed remarkably little in the past 40 years. The RF
: performance of the handset is mostly related to the antenna design in

I agree. I have a 5 year old Kyocera 2-mode cellphone and it works
much more reliably in a fringe area vs. my new Audiovox flip phone.
My GF also has an old Audiovox and it works superior to the newer ones.

In their efforts to make the phones compact and add features, they really
don't seem to be paying attention to signal quality.
b.

Isaiah Beard wrote:

Doug Kanter wrote:

I use SprintPCS with a 4 year old Motorola StarTac ST7867. Just moved to a
new house and I can barely get a signal unless I stand in the middle of the
yard. That's problematic in winter. After grilling a couple of customer
service reps on the phone, I stopped into the Sprint store today and came
away with some questions I need answered before I terminate my service and
try another provider

1) The salesman was the first Sprint employee I've found who was actually
able to show me the actual location of antennas. There's one a mile from my
home, and 2 others within 5 miles, with no obstructions of any kind. No
hills, no tall buildings, just trees and homes. He says this explains
nothing because he signal is highly directional. True or false?

Resoundly True. Cell sites use directional antennae... in fact in an
area where buildout is mature, they sort of have to. Cell sites, even
those that operate on CDMA as Sprint does, are sectorized to reduce
interference with neighboring cells on different pilot signals.

2) His next suggestion was (of course) to try a newer phone because mine
uses "older technology" which might not be able to pick up such a great
signal. Likely or not?

Actually, very likely. The 7867 is a 5 year old design at least, and
the network has changed quite a bit since then. The carriers have
worked to squeeze more capacity out of the network, and in CDMA that
means a generally higher signal to noise ratio (in CDMA, all other
conversations happening on the same channel are "noise" to your
particular handset), and thus greater tolerance requirements for a
higher noise floor. This has forced chipmakers (mainly Qualcomm) to
come up with better, more sensitive RF stages for newer handsets.

The result is your old phone will still work with the present network,
but not as well as it did four years ago even in the best of
circumstances. If you put a current-model Sanyo side by side with your
StarTAC, the Sanyo will probably receive a better signal nearly all of
the time.

3) Here's the tricky part: I'm not totally adverse to a newer phone, even
though I have absolutely NO need for color, email, songs, games, digital
pictures, or any other crap. I just need a friggin' phone. But, I've made an
observation over the past few years while listening to the sound quality
when people call me from THEIR phones. It seems that some manufacturers have
gone WAY off the deep end when designing their noise cancelling
arrangements. In many instances, background noise causes the phone to also
kill or scramble the voice of the user. This, of course, makes the phone
useless. I make quite a few calls from my boat in high winds, and people
tell me that as long as I'm manually dealing with the wind somehow (turning
away, etc), the phone sounds like a normal phone as opposed to some sort of
special effects in a B-movie.

Yeah, a casualty of the need to squeeze capacity is sound quality.
Vocoder ("VOice enCODER") bitrates have gone down, and that means your
StarTAC which uses a 13kbps vocoder will sound better than the
8kpbs/variable-rate vocoder on today's phones. However, some phone
manufacturers are still better than others. A lot of people (including
myself) swear by the Sanyo models. Samsungs aren't all that great, and
the jury is still out on LG.

Of course nothing, not even a StarTAC, beats the sound quality on the
original Qualcom QCP-2700s that Sprint first started out with back in
1996. I had one and could swear that phone sounded as good, and
sometimes even better, than a landline. It was small and light, and it
was solidly built... if you smashed the 2700 against a brick, my bet
would be that the phone would win and the brick would lose.

Sadly, none of that is true with current phones from any wireless
carrier these days.

My wife JUST switched to a new phone at the beginning of this summer.
she WAS using one of the old Qcp-2700's. The only reason she switched
phones was (1) the difficulty removing the battery (having to use that
nifty specialty screwdriver), and (2) She couldn't find any new
batteries for it .

Connecting two antennas back-to-back makes a passive bi-directional
repeater. It's a cheap solution useful where the field strength from each
transmitter is high at the antenna which is pointing at it and there is an
obstruction between the transmitter and receiver. I used this technique
successfully on a 13 mile bi-directional analog video microwave link, with a
1/2 mile dogleg from the top of the hill down into a valley. The hilltop
site was unpowered and accessible only with ATV but was a lot cheaper than
putting up a 300 ft tower.

It should work with cellular telephony as you suggest. The trick is to
capture enough energy from each transmitter to overcome the transmission
line losses and lay down sufficient signal strength at both receivers. If
you can't make it with antenna gain, then you'll have to go with an active
repeater.

Tom

----- Original Message -----
From: "dxAce"
Newsgroups:
alt.cellular.sprintpcs,alt.cellular-phone-tech,rec.radio.shortwave
Sent: Monday, October 11, 2004 17:28
Subject: Cell Phone Questions - Signal Problems & Audio Quality




Doug Kanter wrote:

"dxAce" wrote in message
...


John Richards wrote:

"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
There are solutions to your home location reception problem
(external
Yagi antenna hooked to an in-house repeater) but it's quite
expensive.

I've seen some setups that only use two yagi's, one in the home (or
business), and the other outside,
connected only by cable. No repeater involved.

dxAce
Michigan
USA



And this does what? Somehow redirects the cellular signal into the
home???

What would be your best guess??? ;-)

I have no idea whether it works or not.

dxAce
Michigan
USA

I have a Motorola 343 and it sounds very pleasant (for digital). Plus
it has this handy featu you don't have to unfold it. It's one of
the new ''one piece'' designs.

On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 18:32:42 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:


"David" wrote in message
.. .
I used to have crappy coverage (non-existant at home) until I switched
to Verizon (800 mHz CDMA G3). It works flawlessly.

You can switch providers and keep your existing number. It's called
''porting''. Radio Shack are the experts.

I'm aware of the porting issue. And, Verizon is known around here for having
great coverage in rural areas, which Sprint does not.

This leaves me with evaluating the audio quality of the phones themselves
(not the network, but the individual phone models).

Doug Kanter wrote:

Thanks, Isaiah, for the specific phone model tips. The guy at the Sprint
store pointed out a Sanyo. Years ago, I was in the car audio business,
selling AND installing what I sold. Sanyos were hideous. Absolutely
atrocious. We used to warn customers 10 times to keep the knobs & faceplate
very clean for the first week because they'd be back to exchange the units
for something real. 9 out of 10 people came back.

So, my stomach turned when he mentioned Sanyo, but my experience goes back
15 years. I'll take another look.

There seems to be an odd situation with asian electronics conglomerates,
where the quality of their consumer audio, video and appliance products
in NO way reflect the quality of their cell phones. Different divisions
within the same conglomerate apparently have different philosophies.

I agree with you that Sanyo A/V equipment is junk. However, their cell
phones are uncharacteristically excellent.

Conversely, I have a Samsung refrigerator in my kitchen and a Samsung 19
inch LCD display on my computer, and they are excellent products that I
have highly praised and recommended to other people. However Samsung's
cell phones, for lack of a better term, are total ****. Every Samsung
cell phone I've tried from 1999 all the way to the present are cheaply
constructed, have horrible audio quality, and couldn't hold calls even
when I was outside and in plain view of a Sprint cell tower.

The exception is NEC/Mitsubishi. All of their products have proven to
be mediocre.

--
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.

"Isaiah Beard" wrote in message
...
Doug Kanter wrote:

Thanks, Isaiah, for the specific phone model tips. The guy at the Sprint
store pointed out a Sanyo. Years ago, I was in the car audio business,
selling AND installing what I sold. Sanyos were hideous. Absolutely
atrocious. We used to warn customers 10 times to keep the knobs &
faceplate
very clean for the first week because they'd be back to exchange the
units
for something real. 9 out of 10 people came back.

So, my stomach turned when he mentioned Sanyo, but my experience goes
back
15 years. I'll take another look.

There seems to be an odd situation with asian electronics conglomerates,
where the quality of their consumer audio, video and appliance products
in NO way reflect the quality of their cell phones. Different divisions
within the same conglomerate apparently have different philosophies.

I agree with you that Sanyo A/V equipment is junk. However, their cell
phones are uncharacteristically excellent.

Conversely, I have a Samsung refrigerator in my kitchen and a Samsung 19
inch LCD display on my computer, and they are excellent products that I
have highly praised and recommended to other people. However Samsung's
cell phones, for lack of a better term, are total ****. Every Samsung
cell phone I've tried from 1999 all the way to the present are cheaply
constructed, have horrible audio quality, and couldn't hold calls even
when I was outside and in plain view of a Sprint cell tower.

The exception is NEC/Mitsubishi. All of their products have proven to
be mediocre.

If only Sanyo made a phone for Verizon, the runner-up in my quest for better
and/or new service.....

Talk about dumb, though: When I first got a cell phone, I signed a 1-year,
29.95 per month contract with Sprint. At the end of the contract, I did
nothing, they said nothing, and I just kept paying the bills for 2 more
years. I called the guy at the Sprint store this morning and mentioned the
Sanyo phone. He said that in order to get that phone, I'd have to upgrade to
39.95 per month. I asked how a monetary issue is connected to the particular
phone, and he sort of mumbled something about the purchase deal for the
phone. He's checking with his supervisor blah blah blah.