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GN: REAL WORLD Performance/Reception

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ergalthema

Well-Known Member
Could anyone describe their experience using a GN where they used their previous phone and if they have more dropped calls or no service?

I've seen so many comparisons of numbers like signal bars and radio dBm. I'd just like to hear about people's experience actually using the phone.

EDIT: No speed numbers, please.
 
No dropped calls. The 4G thing does not affect voice calls at all.

We had a major outage last night, nationwide.

I've barely had a moment's problem. It surfs fine, downloads apps, etc. If I'm getting any 4G at all, it tends to be blazing compared to any device from the past.

Verizon is going to fix everybody's wagon by making it show more bars. Because it functions fine.

(For the people who have a non-functioning brick, they need to just take it back. Nobody can live with that)
 
Right now, I've got a very tiny bit of one bar showing for 4G. Ran a speed test and got 5.6 Mbps down, 555kbps up.
 
I returned my GN this morning. Reactivated my X. did tests all the way home from work. NO Data. The X streamed totally fine on same stretch. In fact my Droid did too. And before that, my Omnia did too. Voice was not an issue, only data. But then, that's what I bought it over a flip phone for. It was a gorgeous phone in every other regard though.
 
Prior to the Nexus I had an HTC Rezound (4G phone) for a test drive and prior to that I had a Samsung Fascinate (3G Phone).

My house is not in the best part of town for data. Quality signal surrounds my neighborhood, but for some reason it does not really get to most of the houses.

There are two very big dead spots where I live. One is the intersection right by my daughter's school and the other is the Target near my house. The intersection is a notorious dead spot for every carrier and I don't know anyone that can keep a call while driving through it. My daughter's school, being right next to that intersection has also been a problem. The Target is like a black hole for cell phone signal and I don't know of anyone that can get signal inside it (this has been my experience with most Target stores).

The Rezound: While I had it the Rezound was getting pretty good signal in just about every place I went. It would lose 4G at my daughter's school, but would usually keep 3G. It would drop down to 1 bar in the bad intersection, but wouldn't lose signal completely. At Target I could walk through the front doors and get about 10 feet into the building before the call would drop. At home I was typically getting a pretty weak 4G signal and my speeds topped out at about 6 Mbps. 3G at my house is a joke and I could only get about 124 Kbps. I never dropped calls at home.

The Fascinate: This phone gave me plenty of reception problems. Total loss of signal at that really bad intersection and dropping 3G at my daughter's school. At Target I could not get within 15 feet of the building or all signal was lost. As my house is really bad with 3G I was only able to get max speed of about 78 Kbps most of the time. Plenty of times I was only able to get 24 Kbps. I still never dropped calls at home.

The Nexus 1: Let me start by saying that my first Nexus was returned due to an issue with the microphone. It would cut out mid phone call and people on the other end where left asking, "Are you there?" It didn't have any major signal issues other than dropping down to 3G in many areas that the Rezound would hold 4G.

The Nexus 2: My new Nexus is keeping signal much better than my prior phones. Like the Rezound it will still hold a signal in the bad intersection, but is holding 4G at my daughter's school. Target is still a wasteland, but I can get through the front doors and still be on a call. I am also able to hold a better signal at home and I'm getting speeds around 18 Mbps in the house. 3G is still not that great, but it is a little better and in most rooms I am at least getting 1 Mbps.

Overall the signal can get weak on 4G, but 4G is data and a poor signal will only cause you to lose so much. The reception as a phone has been very good as an actual phone. I'm not dropping any calls, even in the prior dead spots (with the exception of target obviously).
 
I haven't dropped a single call yet.

I get 3/4 or 4/4 bars in my apartment. I just ran speed test and got 26.39 Mbps down, and 9.62 Mbps up.
 
I currently have both the Rezound and Galaxy Nexus....trying to decide which one to keep. This is my third G Nexus in which I have tried to alleviate my poor data connections. Sadly, I think in my situation it is a lost cause.

I don't have any issues with 4G for the most part, but where I live and travel it is 90% a 3G only area. While I can watch youtube videos, internet videos, etc with zero problems on my Rezound...I am constantly buffering on the Nexus. I cannot get through an entire video without continuous buffering. Sometimes my Nexus will drop 3G all together for several minutes. This morning when there was the outage, my Rezound kept 3G the entire time. I did not receive a data signal on the Nexus until service was fully restored.

That is my 2 cents worth. I am not here to persuade or dissuade. Just thought I would share my experience. Good luck!!
 
I had the HTC Eris for 2 years before I bought the Nexus. The Eris never had poor call quality. There is one dead zone near my house, the Eris would sometimes loss ALL data in that area. Other than that area, the Eris never lost 3G.

I 've had the Nexus for one week now. I only get 1 or 2 bars of 4G, but the down/up speeds are fast. So I can care less about the number of bars. I've also noticed that I lose 4G occasionally,and even lost ALL data more times in the one week of owning the Nexus then the 2 years of my Eris. The sound qualityof phones calls on the Nexus is also hit or miss. I occasionally get a chirping or popping sound during calls.

If there isnt a fix before the return deadline, I may have to return it. I really dont want to, cuz I love the phone other than those issues. I need a smart phone that I can use as a phone and has data when I need it.
 
Real world: works great!

I've had 2 other LTE phones on VZW (assuming you are talking VZW here and not that fluttering GSM crap). The Charge and the Bionic. flipping the SGN into 3G mode, exactly the same signal strength as the others. That's a given, since the SGN reports a different signal (4G) compared to those others (3G).

Calls are near-motorola-quality, too! If moto was a 10, I'd give this a 9.

I'd give my Bionic a 9 also, and my Charge about a 7.

Overall this phone is performing very well today. If an update is coming out, I would expect exceptional!

edit: woops, I have some comparison numbers, you said no numbers, lol. No dropped calls, just an excellent experience. I've also owned a lot of other phones in the past on VZW that were droids and a bunch on other carriers. Go give it a test drive at your local store, they should be activated where you can make and receive calls, too! Spend at least 1/2 hour with the demo and think about what you want to test before you go!
 
Voice I can't speak to. 4 calls all of probably < 30 seconds. No issues with those.

Data is a whole different story. I was navigating on a trip from Washington Crossing, PA to Scranton, PA today and we were in some pretty remote parts of NE PA. My phone dropped out at least 4 or 5 times. Every time I lost signal, I quickly looked at my wife's iPhone 4 (also on verizon) and it usually had 2-3 bars. At one point, I had ZERO service and she had 3 bars. And no, I didn't just look at bars. Her data connection was intact. Mine, on the other hand, just said "check your internet connection" or "connection problem" etc.

The best I saw was 3 bars, briefly, the whole time I was looking at the phone (which was most of the way). My wife's iPhone had 4-5 bars 90% of the time and 3 about 9% of the time. I think I saw it go to 1 bar maybe twice, very briefly.

Who knows if this is a hardware problem or correctable, I don't know honestly. All I know is that the radio does not perform well. When the signal is very strong, it works fine. As soon as I go indoors or the signal gets low, it's borderline worthless.
 
I've had no problems with voice or data. I've only used it in areas with 4G coverage so far, and am typically getting 6Mbps down and 3Mbps up. This is my first 4G phone so I have nothing to compare it to, but I've been pleased with the data speeds.

I'm getting good reception even in the basement of my brick house, where I'd struggle to get any coverage with my OG Droid.
 
I have not dropped a call and compared to my Droid 3 I think the call quality is either very close or the same. As for 3g and 4g, I will say this, in places where I used to barley get a signal in 3g with my D3, the nexus gets a great signal with the appearance of 1 bar or no bars and is faster overall in 3g. The faster 4g speed I have got is 45 mbps, but regularly get 5-8 mbps. I am extremely happy with the phone!
 
Ok, ignoring dBm/asu and bars entirely. Here's real world performance inside vs. outside in a 4G coverage area.

Outside:
- 4G
- 6978 kbps / 467 kbps
- 5465 kbps / 455 kbps
- NO DATA (4G connection dropped for no apparent reason and won't re-acquire :rolleyes:)

Inside:
- 3G
- 745 kbps / 494 kbps
- 1132 kbps / 724 kbps
- 1391 kbps / 473 kbps

FWIW, the 4G results were with "3 bars" out of 4 (I know, I said I would ignore the bars, but it just goes to show they are pretty meaningless). I was really surprised how low the upstream speeds were. Could just be saturation here, but I doubt it at 9pm.
 
jkc120 said:
Ok, ignoring dBm/asu and bars entirely. Here's real world performance inside vs. outside in a 4G coverage area.

Outside:
- 4G
- 6978 kbps / 467 kbps
- 5465 kbps / 455 kbps
- NO DATA (4G connection dropped for no apparent reason and won't re-acquire :rolleyes:)

Inside:
- 3G
- 745 kbps / 494 kbps
- 1132 kbps / 724 kbps
- 1391 kbps / 473 kbps

FWIW, the 4G results were with "3 bars" out of 4 (I know, I said I would ignore the bars, but it just goes to show they are pretty meaningless). I was really surprised how low the upstream speeds were. Could just be saturation here, but I doubt it at 9pm.
Click to expand...

Anymore, I wonder what these speed tests really tell us. Point being, I ran speed tests on my Rezound and Nexus about ten minutes ago. 4 back to back. In each test, the Nexus outperformed the Rezound. However, turned right around and fired up youtube and sure enough the Rezound played videos without issue while the Nexus continually needed to buffer. To me, thats as real world as it gets.
 
I keep waiting for this GNEx to fail, but it hasnt yet. I come from a D2 and this is my first 4g phone, so I dont have much to compare to.

Data nor voice have failed yet in my dead zone basement. Calls have been very good through my plantronics voyager pro+ bluetooth.

As for data, mixed results, really. But mostly good. I just finished a 20 minute skype call to my 82 year old mom on her iPad2 while going 10 miles in my truck to pick up my daughter. Was on 4g and had no issues at all.

So far, I havent found a reason to be disappointed. And I have been skeptical of Sammy radios the whole time.
 
Haven't dropped one call and I've had the phone since 12/15.

On the EK 05/02 stock radio occasionally it would drop data in my basement, however above ground and out and about- not one issue. Now on the EK 06/04 radios which will supposedly be in the 4.0.3 update, it doesnt have a problem in the basement. I'm averaging 2m down on 3G and 15-25m on 4G.

Honestly some people must live in the boondocks, fibbing, or couldn't be satisfied with a free gold bar, they'd complain its too heavy. Coming from the OG Droid and the Bionic, this phone is everything I knew it would be.
 
I didn't read all responses but I came from the Thunderbolt and have been in a 4G market since before I got the Thunderbolt. Comparison between the two phones the Gnex is much better at connecting to 4G coming out of airplane mode and staying connected to 4G overall (for me at least) I haven't noticed any real difference in speed but I don't use the speedtest app often.

I have seen the news articles showing 2 LTE phones side by side with the weaker signal showing on the nexus so I can't deny that there are issues but I also think part of the issues may be when someone is coming to the nexus as their first LTE phone and they are expecting too much (which I did when I first got an LTE phone)

I am sure the radio updates will help this since the TB went thru the same thing and got better with each official update (some of the leaked ones weren't so good) and VZW has been very agressive in expanding their LTE network which will also help.
 
Yeahha said:
I am sure the radio updates will help this since the TB went thru the same thing and got better with each official update (some of the leaked ones weren't so good) and VZW has been very agressive in expanding their LTE network which will also help.
Click to expand...

It was pointed out in another thread that the TB issues were not a weak signal issue, but rather the 3G/4G handoff, which was improved over time.
 
I owned the Rezound for just shy of 5 weeks. Before that, I had the original Droid. I'm in the Baltimore/Washington metro area where LTE coverage according to the maps is pretty widespread.

I am seeing that at my workplace, the Rezound could hold the 4G signal and pulls speeds on the SpeedTest of around 6 Mbps down. My Galaxy Nexus in the same location fails to connect to the LTE network and drops down to 3G.

My practical usage of the data here has been similar to my Droid.I can stream Pandora and browse the web and the experience feels the same. Sometimes my Droid would drop to 1X data or lose data completely. The Nexus actually seems to be outperforming my Droid here, but not the Rezound.

Out and about, on 3G and LTE, my data experience in terms of speed, feel, and connection have been very similar to my Droid. Same as for the Rezound. Speeds are similar, just that the Rezound reported more bars of course on LTE (see the AnandTech article).

I don't use the phone a whole lot, but send a lot of text messages. I have not had any issue with keeping cellular service. When I view Cell Standby in the battery stats, the time without signal is always 0% unless I had times where I toggled airplane mode. There is a particular place on my drive home that I always get voice echo when I make calls from that location. I haven't seen that yet on the Nexus, but I have only made a call once from that spot (I've only had the phone since Sunday). I used to think it was my Droid, but the Rezound did the exact same thing in that location multiple times.

I can only conclude, from my experiences, that the Rezound (and perhaps some other 4G phones), hold the LTE data signal better than the Galaxy Nexus in fringe areas. I have a friend who does testing at VZW (read: not a sales rep) and he said what they are seeing is the Rezound, Breakout, and Charge (post-gingerbread update) are holding the LTE signal the best, in that order.

I have seen the Galaxy Nexus drop data completely a few times, twice in poor signal areas, and once in a good signal area, which is alarming. The thing is, it's an obsession right now of constantly looking at the phone every where I go to see if my data has dropped. The reality is that, I never did this with my Droid much after those first couple of weeks of ownership, so I really can't say if what the Nexus is doing is any different than the Droid on 3G. Same with the Rezound. I didn't routinely just leave the Rezound on LTE (for battery reasons) nor did I obsessively check the data connection when I was on 3G. I can't really say that those didn't occasionally drop data any more than the Nexus has (which hasn't been much to be honest).
 
jkc120 said:
It was pointed out in another thread that the TB issues were not a weak signal issue, but rather the 3G/4G handoff, which was improved over time.
Click to expand...

It may have improved over time but I was on the most current radios on my TB when I got the nexus and the nexus will still outperform the TB by getting signal in more places and having connecting quicker.
 
who uses a phone to talk to people? but FWIW, my 4-5 calls of ~30 seconds each have been crystal clear and no drop calls.

4G goes to 3G once in a while (Live in Houston which has 4G everywhere). not counting the outage of yesterday of course. Other than that its been nice, I watch Netflix on the bus everyday this week without an issue.
 
I wish i could have said that mine has been able to hold on to a signal in a dead zone or low area. If it didn't, I wouldn't be disappointed. However, having to tell people that mine couldn't hold a data signal in a fully-covered 3G and 4G metro area is a different story and shouldn't happen with any phone. Especially when a dozen 4G and 3G phones right next to me at a verizon kiosk are running. Wish I could have kept that phone. Then again, I also wish Verizon would stop reporting that all they seem to think needs fixing is the signal indicator on the phone.
 
Ninjak said:
I wish i could have said that mine has been able to hold on to a signal in a dead zone or low area. If it didn't, I wouldn't be disappointed. However, having to tell people that mine couldn't hold a data signal in a fully-covered 3G and 4G metro area is a different story and shouldn't happen with any phone. Especially when a dozen 4G and 3G phones right next to me at a verizon kiosk are running. Wish I could have kept that phone. Then again, I also wish Verizon would stop reporting that all they seem to think needs fixing is the signal indicator on the phone.
Click to expand...
Did you try swapping out the phone for a different one before returning it? Some people are saying that a phone swap fixed that issue for them. I'm personally seeing no interruption of cellular service whatsover, but am seeing the phone drop to 4G or lose data completely in weak signal areas, for example at my work and my massage parlor. The Rezound could hold 4G just barely at my work while the Nexus drops to 3G, and at my massage parlor today where my Droid had weak 3G, the Nexus dropped data completely for a second and then came back.
 
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