S5 Call quality observations

[Steven58]

I run my business off of my cellphone, so call quality is very important to me. My wife spends a lot of time on the phone, too, so it is important to her as well. The children? Not so much. So, I went to the VZW store to make test calls to my wife to get her reaction. I made five calls not telling her which phone was which until afterwards, and here are her reactions:

S5 Black: Call quality "funny." Later she said it was very metallic. I had read on some review sites that very thing. Interestingly enough, she could not hear ANY ambient noise and the store was loud and very busy.

M8: Call quality much better. There was some ambient noise. She liked this call quality.

iPhone 5s: This one surprised me. I thought apple would put out the best phone quality. Not so. My wife said it was at least as bad as the Galaxy S5. Shocker! She didn't like it at all.

Moto Droid Maxx: Good call quality. At least as good as the M8. No surprise there. Moto hardware, you know.

S5 White: I tried a different S5 thinking that the lousy call quality might have been the fault of the first handset. Not so. Not very good still.

Is this the rule with the S5? Is a call quality setting to improve it? I think I read about it somewhere? Thoughts?

 

[Rukbat]

The codec will change the call quality on a CDMA phone dramatically - if Verizon hasn't removed the ability to change it from the phone. (Usually, the better the voice quality, the more bandwidth the call takes up.)

 

[Steven58]

what does vzw have against samsung???

 

[BzB]

i rarely make calls without my bt earpiece (which happens to be a motorola) and so far i haven't received any complaints.

 

[Rukbat]

what does vzw have against samsung???

I don't see the connection you obviously do. VZW tells Samsung what to add and what to take away from their version of a phone. Sometimes they make a bad choice. The native codec in the Motorola StarTac 7868 was pretty bad in what was otherwise probably the best phone made up to that time, but when we changed codecs the voice quality went from 2 cans and a string to "is it live or is it a cellphone?" VZW was just trying to save bandwidth.

 

[Steven58]

I don't see the connection you obviously do. VZW tells Samsung what to add and what to take away from their version of a phone. Sometimes they make a bad choice. The native codec in the Motorola StarTac 7868 was pretty bad in what was otherwise probably the best phone made up to that time, but when we changed codecs the voice quality went from 2 cans and a string to "is it live or is it a cellphone?" VZW was just trying to save bandwidth.

Why does the HTC m8 sound better? Different requirements from VZW?

 

[Rukbat]

Different hardware. A different stiffness in the diaphragm of the mic can make a world of difference. If the mic is at the end of a "tunnel" (even if it's a 16" in diameter, a 1/4" long tunnel is still a tunnel), it can sound metallic or artificial, and that's a tiny change.

Verizon doesn't dictate internal placement of parts or the electronics of the phone, so different manufacturers will produce different-sounding phones. (Different build quality too - try throwing an Android phone 200 feet down a rain-soaked blacktop parking lot and see what survives. If you know JUST where to look, and the light hits it right, there's a little spot on the back of my 7868 that doesn't have the rough finish of the rest of the case. There's an area about 1/4" X 1/4" that's smoot - and that was the total damage after running through 2 puddles on its trip.)

But does the M8 give you everything the S5 does? (If it does, and the audio quality is noticeably better, Samsung didn't do its job right. It'll still sell - I've seen girls walk into a phone store and ask what phones they have in pink - that's their buying criterion, not whether the phone really works. Anything sells if you market it right)

 

[Steven58]

^^ wisdom

 

[Rukbat]

No, just an EE degree and decades of experience designing and repairing. I've made my share of mistakes, but I tried to learn from them. About the only think companies like Samsung seem to have learned is what Apple teaches by example - make a fanboi and you have a customer for life, no matter how bad your product is.

 

[Steven58]

Amen to that!