I’ve noticed that posts on Next G are watched by many, I work in the industry and thought I’d post some Next G information. As per all posts this is just my opinion, I don’t work for Telstra or a competitor but mobile voice and data is the focus of my work. I just finished this post and realised that its very long winded but I hope some of you find it informative. I don’t often post but read often.
1. If comparing like for like with Next G and CDMA you must have similar set ups, a Next G phone on the dash compared to your CDMA phone hooked up to a car kit and external antenna will not give you a favourable Next G result. It’s like comparing two 4x4’s but blocking the air intake on one and coming to the conclusion that one is absolutely crap.
2. Much to Telstra’s delight (I’m sure) a few CDMA phones do display 1 or 2 bars of received signal strength in areas where you can NOT make a call. Next G phones do not do this. In order to compare technologies you actually have to be in active mode, i.e. making a call to get a true comparison. Most of you can’t afford this but if you could you would find the two networks to be very close in coverage. How many of you have received a text on your CDMA phone to tell you that you had a new voicemail and came to the conclusion that you must have just dropped out of service at the time the call came through, the reality is that quite a few CDMA phones (not all) can not sustain a call a 1 or 2 bars of signal strength. This gives you a false sense of security perhaps but the reality is that it is not a TRUE reflection on useable coverage. This is a phone manufacturers error and not Telstra’s.
3. If you expect your phone to work in a marginal coverage area then you need a phone that has a Blue Tick, if you make a statement about poor Next G coverage and you are not using one of these phones then it’s a useless statement as the receiver sensitivity on all other phones is not great giving you reduced coverage. The only two phones with a blue tick for marginal coverage are (at the moment) the LG550 and the Samsung A412. If you don’t have one of these phones then a statement about the lack of coverage is worthless, sorry but that’s the truth. I’m let to believe that a lot more phones with the blue tick will be on the market soon but I don’t know for sure.
4. Battery life, a lot of people are complaining about the short battery life on their phone, this can be true but we have found that a lot of phones are set with all features on, i.e. back screen light set to max time, screensavers etc, blue tooth turned on etc. If you have time, go through your phones settings with the manual and turn off what you don’t need, this, we have found, makes a huge difference to battery life.
5. Quite a few people, in our experience have Next G phones not working on the Next G network, 2 main reasons, the phone settings are not set to allow the phone to work on the Next G (some came out of the box that way), the second reason being some people bought Next G phones and did not upgrade their SIM Card to a USIM meaning the SIM will not allow the phone to work on the Next G network.
6. The Nokia 6120 will not get a blue tick because it does not have the ability to have direct coupling to an external antenna. When the cradle for the car kit arrives it will be a transformer couple car kit (if at all) reducing its marginal performance in fringe areas while vehicle mounted. As a stand alone phone without a car kit its probably one of the best if not the best phone on the market with regards to receiver sensitivity. But the lack of direct coupled car kits will be a limiting factor for some.
7. A phone without the camera and video recording facilities is available in Next G for those of you that work in sensitive area such as the military or in areas of R&D, it’s a ZTE phone, the model I believe is 153.
8. A lot of people are looking for a replacement for the Nokia CDMA phone the 6385 model with the pull up ariel, I am told ZTE are bringing out a Next G phone with a pull up ariel in October, this may be the phone most of you might want to wait for. It’s a candy bar style phone and will have a direct couple car kit available. I’m told the model number for the phone is the ZTE F165.
9. A lot of you bag Telstra and what it does and I agree that they are not cheap to use but where is the alternative? I want to see another operator forced to equal Telstra’s network, lets see what prices they can then offer after having to spend the money to deploy a network over such a huge area. None have taken up the challenge and it’s a shame, competition is healthy. So while Telstra bashing is popular just remember that there is no one else to complain about.
Having now said all that I will post this and you can release the hounds to attack me. Apologies for typos etc.
Cheers, Grumpy