HTC

[alecgreen]

Just got my new HTC Legend and it's quite an impressive phone with 2 noticable down sides, 1 being the battery life is pretty poor and the other is that more often than not I get a fairly poor signal compared to my other phone on the same network.

I think this is due to the antenna connection if i take the bottom off and put it back on again the signal instantly improves but eventually after a while drops off again. Anyone else got the same problem? This iffy connection may also be helping to kill off the battery as the phones will need to transmit on max power level due to poor signal.

cheers Al

[Jebelious]

it could be faulty, i have an iPhone and the legend and the signal on the legend is considerably better. regarding battery i agree it does last only 24 hours but it will last the day even with calls etc

[Telford240]

Just got my new HTC Legend and it's quite an impressive phone with 2 noticable down sides, 1 being the battery life is pretty poor and the other is that more often than not I get a fairly poor signal compared to my other phone on the same network.

I think this is due to the antenna connection if i take the bottom off and put it back on again the signal instantly improves but eventually after a while drops off again. Anyone else got the same problem? This iffy connection may also be helping to kill off the battery as the phones will need to transmit on max power level due to poor signal.

cheers Al

Mine is dropping all the time too

[Holly]

Hi guys,

If you feel there is a physical problem with the phone then you can take it in store and get one of guys to have a look at it. Alternatively you can send the phone for repair and our engineers will test the separate components of the handset for faults.

Before you resort to this, if your SIM is over 5 years old then I recommend ordering a new one as sometimes poor signal is caused by the SIM being ancient.

Also to update the network you can perform a manual roam:

Press the MENU key
Touch Settings
Touch Wireless & networks
Scroll to and touch Mobile networks
Touch Network operators
Touch Search networks
Touch the network you want to use

You need to roam onto another provider for a couple of minutes and then revert back to Vodafone to refresh the network.

If this does not improve signal then definitely get the phone looked at as the Legend should not be dropping calls.

Any questions about this then let me know.

Thanks

Holly
eForum Team

[alecgreen]

Mine is dropping all the time too

With mine, when the signal is low. If you remove the bottom cover (which contains the antenna) and put it back on the signal goes back to full strength. Is yours the same?

[Telford240]

With mine, when the signal is low. If you remove the bottom cover (which contains the antenna) and put it back on the signal goes back to full strength. Is yours the same?

Yeah mine does that too

[alecgreen]

Yeah mine does that too

hmm, might have to go back then. What a pain. Did you get yours recently? Maybe a duff batch?

[Telford240]

hmm, might have to go back then. What a pain. Did you get yours recently? Maybe a duff batch?

Got mine off amazon, bought as sim free, been dropping out all night with my voda sim i bought today

[nwc100]

If you go into the settings - about - battery - battery use - cell standby...... It will give you the time on and also time without signal, Mine is currently 40hrs on and 29% without signal....so thats 12hrs without a signal....

I dont ever remember any old phone I have had being without a signal ....I live in hertfordshire near to a big airport so not exactly out in the middle of no where!

What do your phones say??

Nick

[alecgreen]

If you go into the settings - about - battery - battery use - cell standby...... It will give you the time on and also time without signal, Mine is currently 40hrs on and 29% without signal....so thats 12hrs without a signal....

I dont ever remember any old phone I have had being without a signal ....I live in hertfordshire near to a big airport so not exactly out in the middle of no where!

What do your phones say??

Nick

Hey Nick, that's a very useful tip. I had a look but I have only just reset my phone about an hour ago so I don't have any meaning ful figures to post right now but...

about 10 minutes ago I did kind of try a variation of holly's instructions regarding roaming on another network (which I cannot do since I'm locked onto vodaphone). What I did was go to settings->wireless & netwok->mobile networks(options for roaming)->network mode then I set the phone to GSM Only and the problems seems to have gone away (only tried for 20 mins so may be a fluke)

I think there maybe something odd with the auto 2g/3g switching and the phone defaults to a 3g network (which I don't really get where i live) instead of the 2g network which i get an excellent signal with.

Anyways, something for others to try? I am now not so convinced it's a hardware issue and I have a hunch that removing the antenna and putting it back on gets a signal for a while as the phone finds the 2g signal first before eventually switching over to the non existant 3g signal?

This is all theory at the moment, I'll let you know how i get on.

cheers

AL

[Trump]

Just got my new HTC Legend and it's quite an impressive phone with 2 noticable down sides, 1 being the battery life is pretty poor and the other is that more often than not I get a fairly poor signal compared to my other phone on the same network.

I think this is due to the antenna connection if i take the bottom off and put it back on again the signal instantly improves but eventually after a while drops off again. Anyone else got the same problem? This iffy connection may also be helping to kill off the battery as the phones will need to transmit on max power level due to poor signal.

cheers Al

With regards to your battery issue have you tried any of the battery saving apps such as Juice Defender to see if that improves the life at all?

[i.dudson]

My first time posting on this forum so forgive me if I transgress from the rules.
I am also finding problems holding a signal at home (Stretford G. Manchester, so not in the country) and I had no problems with my works Vodaphone but that was a couple of years ago.
I have tried various solutions on this forum and noticed that when I switched my conection from GSM/WCDMA auto to GSM only I have a full signal with no dropouts and so I'm leaving it on GSM only.
Unfortunatly I don't know the difference between the two systems (I would appreciate a link to an explination) but if WCDMA is used to connect to the internet I'll leave it off as I use home WiFi for downloads and intend only to use Internet via the network on odd occasions.
Sorry if this is too verbose but I'm having enough fun learning a new phone and a new Sat Nav system (CoPilot) at the same time.
P.S. I've given up on syncronising with my PC as is does not work and only slows my system.
Ian D

[alecgreen]

With regards to your battery issue have you tried any of the battery saving apps such as Juice Defender to see if that improves the life at all?

Yes, I've been using the htc power manager and the advanced app killer to prolong batt life.

More importantly after changing the phone settings to 2G Only it has not lost the network once today and the battery has lasted longer. So it seems there is a software bug to do with auto selection of 2G / 3G network.

Now prob is assuming this is a known bug (my software is quite old (software no 1.23.161.1) how do I get a sw update since this is a vodafone branded phone? Or maybe there is a work around other than manually switching between 2G and 3G networks...

[alecgreen]

My first time posting on this forum so forgive me if I transgress from the rules.
I am also finding problems holding a signal at home (Stretford G. Manchester, so not in the country) and I had no problems with my works Vodaphone but that was a couple of years ago.
I have tried various solutions on this forum and noticed that when I switched my conection from GSM/WCDMA auto to GSM only I have a full signal with no dropouts and so I'm leaving it on GSM only.
Unfortunatly I don't know the difference between the two systems (I would appreciate a link to an explination) but if WCDMA is used to connect to the internet I'll leave it off as I use home WiFi for downloads and intend only to use Internet via the network on odd occasions.
Sorry if this is too verbose but I'm having enough fun learning a new phone and a new Sat Nav system (CoPilot) at the same time.
P.S. I've given up on syncronising with my PC as is does not work and only slows my system.
Ian D

Basically (someone correct me if i'm wrong) a 3G network gives the best speed for data (higher bandwidth) over the network (i.e. when there's no wifi about). You can still use internet on 2G or EDGE but it's slower. The phone is meant to switch between the two but seems to struggle to switch back to GSM (2G) when the WCDMA (3G) signal is poor.

Al

[Vorserkeien]

Hi
I've also had similar issues, but this is the first time I've a topic about it online, so in some ways it's kind of comforting to know I'm not the only person with this problem (even if it's not helping solve it!). I switched to Vodafone from O2, whom I'd been with for years and only switched because I really liked the look & other things of the Legend (ok & Vodafone were offering a good contract deal). But the first thing I noticed was the really poor signal despite that I should get an excellent standard signal (3G is variable). I know it can get full signal, although usually it's 3 bars, but it kept dropping off & then regaining 1 or possibly 2 bars a minute or so later. It usually took walking round the house for a bit to get it back to 3-4.

For anyone else with this problem, I began to think it wasn't a problem with the phone, but I'm not sure now. When I noticed the signal problem, I took the phone back and got it replaced, but the same thing happened again. I also put my still-operational O2 sim card into the phone & although I'm not sure if the signal was as good as in my old phone, for the most part I had a good signal, & importantly it never lost signal once. I did keep that sim in there for most of an afternoon & evening.

Of course, just to torment me, my phone has had a very good signal for the past hour or so. But it did lose signal again after I'd swapped the sim cards back. So that hadn't fixed the problem. The suggestions given to me by Vodafone so far have been the same as above - manually selecting the mobile operator, and moving my Vodafone sim card to another vodafone phone to see if it's an error with that - which I can't do as no-one else in my family is on Vodafone (& it didn't work in my old phone - I tried).

Open to suggestions as to how to fix this problem. I don't regret buying the Legend. I think it's an amazing phone, but can't say the signal issues have made me really happy to have joined Vodafone.

[i.dudson]

Thanks for the quick response, the fog is clearing slowly.
I,m going to leave the phone on GSM (2G?) only and monitor the signal over the next couple of days. The worst place for the signal is next to the chair I normally sit in (sods law).
I can recall, some years ago, that mobile phones automatically boost the power in the handset when they receive a poor signal, but this could pertain to older (10 years+) systems. If this is still the case it could lead to excesive power drain and short power times. The legend certainly runs through its battery a lot quicker than my old Nokia N95 on o2 but then again it has so many more apps. I'm just getting into the habit of putting it on charge each evening and powering it from my cig lighter in the car when I'm using SatNav & bluetooth. For information I use the device control app and switch off WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS & syncro to conserve power and only switch on as I need them (what a great app).
Ive just noticed that I tend to hold the phone around the bottom and the signal drops off, returning to a higher level when I place the phone down (a habit from my N95- a slide phone). My hand must be masking the signal from the antenna whilst the rest of the phone is solid aluminium (I think another signal blocker but my physics is many years out of date).
Ian D

[Cosmo_Kramer]

My Legend definitely gets a slightly weaker signal than my Nokia N85 did. At home , my N85 nearly always had a full signal. My Legend jumps between 2 and 3 bars usually and ocassionally has a full signal. It also seems to jump between 3G , Edge and HSDPA much more , even if the phone is perfectly still. It's dropped one call on me in a month which isn't really a problem.

[alecgreen]

My Legend definitely gets a slightly weaker signal than my Nokia N85 did. At home , my N85 nearly always had a full signal. My Legend jumps between 2 and 3 bars usually and ocassionally has a full signal. It also seems to jump between 3G , Edge and HSDPA much more , even if the phone is perfectly still. It's dropped one call on me in a month which isn't really a problem.

Okay I've had a hunt around and it seems this bug is a general Android bug see here http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/de...Summary%20Stars

So as far as I can tell the only work around is to set the phone to 2G only and manually switch to 3G when using heavy data if you have a good 3G signal. I think there should be an app to manually switch between 2G only and 3G only.

What I can't understand is why this issue has been dragging on in Android for so long and why the operators haven't put more pressure on the Android community to fix this issue?

[Anonymous(anon)]

it's not across all handsets, mine's fine

Nice

[alecgreen]

Okay I've had a hunt around and it seems this bug is a general Android bug see here http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/de...Summary%20Stars

So as far as I can tell the only work around is to set the phone to 2G only and manually switch to 3G when using heavy data if you have a good 3G signal. I think there should be an app to manually switch between 2G only and 3G only.

What I can't understand is why this issue has been dragging on in Android for so long and why the operators haven't put more pressure on the Android community to fix this issue?

Actually I just noticed this bug report http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/de...Summary%20Stars (issue 1284) so it seems the community is looking at the issue but only has a medium severity and may just go with a widget to work around the issue? Pretty poor in my opinion.

I wonder what Vodafone's position is on this bug, surely they're going to be bombarded by people returning HTC Legends / desires etc and will loose lots of money and get a bad reputation in the market place?