S6 Radios

[ronjcar]

Any reports of the S6 radios being a little bit better. Have not seen good connections with Verizon since I switched to Samsung from Motorola.

 

[ANewDay]

Doesn't Samsung use Qualcomm for their baseband/modem instead of their own in previous Galaxy phones? Most smartphones in the US are using Qualcomm. I don't get why Samsung is getting a bad rep when it's Qualcomm. I'm officially confused.

 

[EarlyMon]

You're confused because the food chain doesn't end with the modem.

Cell telephone handset -

Central processor controls and routes -

Phone app with analog/digital voice converter software (vocoder);

Radio firmware for the system;

Modems, such as the Qualcomm units, famously misidentified by dumb news blogs everywhere as "radios";

Radio transceivers - never discussed, but these are the key link between the modem and the antenna;

Antennas - once just stamped metal, now they're powered devices;

Kernel software modules added or modified by the phone maker to make all of the above pieces work.

If you're unable to pick up a weak signal or transmit very far, the two things in the food chain NOT responsible are the vocoders and the modems.

Any blame lies squarely on the phone manufacturer for not getting the other parts right.

Modems, regardless of who makes them have been misidentified as radios since they appeared in the first Qualcomm Snapdragon in 2010.

In reality, they're nothing more than an important signal converter - MODulating and DEModulating (MODEM) - for digital signals.

So -

Microphone/speakers - amplifiers - vocoders - processor - modem - radio transceivers - antennas.

Vocoder - software signal converter.
Modem - hardware signal converter.
(Insofar as they're not purely one or other but more leaning heavily one way or the other.)

They're just the plumbing fixtures or the joints. They're not the power.

Qualcomm does not supply the radio transceivers or antennas.

 

[EarlyMon]

I can delete it.

I hate being that guy.

 

[EarlyMon]

Please don't do that. I would hate being tarred and feathered by members of this forum

Lol I doubt that would ever happen.

 

[DroID RaGE]

I am curious to know as well... I was not all that happy with my S3 as far as the actual phone goes.

 

[EarlyMon]

For the technically curious, this is for the Edge, I'd be surprised if different for the S6 -

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+S6+Edge+Teardown/39158

Modem by Skyworks, radio transceiver by Samsung.

The S5 used an Avago modem and a Qualcomm radio transceiver. (So I was wrong about Qualcomm not making those - shows what I know!)

We'll need to hear the truth from you users but the parts alone suggest that this may perform differently than the S5.