14 replies to this topic

[dave106]

this is first phone ive had with 3g. when i first got it, it would have 3g in a box at the top but after a few days its turned back to g. does it automatically change between g and 3g when your in the right coverage areas or is there something i might have to do in settings or registry? cos in areas when it was 3g before, its now only g and i havent seen the 3g for days. Or could it be orange maybe, testing out 3g in my area or something and now theyve turned it off or deactivated my connection at their end??

[jimbouk]

Check in phone settings, band, to make sure your device is on AUTO or UMTS. That will select 3g if its available.

However if you set it to UMTS and there is no 3g signal, it will not handover to GSM - so Auto is best.

[Neil5459]

dave106, on Mar 3 2007, 17:41, said:

this is first phone ive had with 3g. when i first got it, it would have 3g in a box at the top but after a few days its turned back to g. does it automatically change between g and 3g when your in the right coverage areas or is there something i might have to do in settings or registry? cos in areas when it was 3g before, its now only g and i havent seen the 3g for days. Or could it be orange maybe, testing out 3g in my area or something and now theyve turned it off or deactivated my connection at their end??

As Jimbouk says, make sure in Phone/Menu/Options/band you have both boxes set to Auto.

The phone will then switch from GPRS ('G') to 3G as the signal availability dictates. If you are in a consistently marginal 3G region, then it sometimes be better to switch the band to GSM, because constantly searching for and switching to/from 3G uses quite a bit of battery power.

The Orange network has been experiencing problems in some areas since Friday- we had no GPRS/3G at all on Friday, or on Saturday morning, though it was back yesterday afternoon. Customer Services acknowledged there was a problem. I still can't get a signal at home, on either of my Orange phones- we are in a marginal reception area for all operators but usually get 1-2 bars with Orange, but NADA at present. Possibly you may be seeing the effects of a low power transmitter, so can't get 3G.

On a separate point- has anyone actually logged their 3G data tranfer rate? When I could access 3G on Thursday (the 1st day I had my M700   ) the most I could get was 75mbps, which is way under the advertised data rate;  even then, it often dropped to the more usual GPRS rate of about 25mbps. Was I unlucky, or do Orange cap mobile 3G tranfer rates? O2 used to cap at 100mbps for all but their 3G datacards, but I was able to get them to lift the cap, and eventually got up to 335mbps on my XDA Exec.

[dave106]

ahh its come back on now. well at least its good to know it wasn't something i might of messed with & that its orange having the problems.

[Wozbacca]

Neil5459, on Mar 4 2007, 11:19, said:

On a separate point- has anyone actually logged their 3G data tranfer rate? When I could access 3G on Thursday (the 1st day I had my M700   ) the most I could get was 75mbps, which is way under the advertised data rate;  even then, it often dropped to the more usual GPRS rate of about 25mbps. Was I unlucky, or do Orange cap mobile 3G tranfer rates? O2 used to cap at 100mbps for all but their 3G datacards, but I was able to get them to lift the cap, and eventually got up to 335mbps on my XDA Exec.

75mbps?? surely you mean kbps

or are you talking about the download limit?

[Neil5459]

I'd blame a slip of the pen, but I seem to have put mbps in all my speed quotes!

Of course, I mean kbps. Wouldn't 300mbps be great!

Actually, since that post, I've been trying out Orange's 3G speeds at various locations. At a town near home (rural) I can get up to 300kbps for sustained data transfer. At home (GPRS only) I can only max at 25kbps, and in Central London- City and London Bridge- I can only get a max of 75kbps. Sometimes in London I can't get any data transfer at all, particularly around 5.30 to 6pm.

This suggests that the network, and phone are capable of normal 3G transfer speeds, but that network congestion in busy areas caps the available speed.

Edited by Neil5459, 21 March 2007 - 02:00 PM.

[Confucious]

Hi Neil, how do you actually check your speeds?

[Neil5459]

It's not an absolute science, and there are a number of 'confounding factors', but it is possible to estimate.

I use SpB GPRS Monitor as a check on how much of my 25MB per month I'm using. In the taskbar popup is a 'snapshot' transfer speed reading. Much of the time, this shows a low figure, simply because there is no actual data transfer going on- waiting for servers, handshaking etc, but once a sustained transfer is taking place, the reading is passably accurate. It is a snapshot, at the time the status window is opened, so to get successive readings you need to close, then reopen the pop-up. To obtain a sustained transfer, I open a small file download, and once the progress bar has settled down, I take the reading 2 or 3 times, then cancel the download.

[Confucious]

Thanks for the reply, that seams reasonable but as I don't have a GPRS monitor (I'm on T with unlimited data so don't care about my usage) I can't replicate your test to see what i'm getting.

[yrreP]

mbps?!?

Surely you mean kbps??

[Confucious]

yrreP, on Mar 21 2007, 14:32, said:

mbps?!?

Surely you mean kbps??

Isn't this repeating what was said in the 5th post in this thread? Which he has already appologised for? Or are you trying to make him beg for forgiveness (In which case I support you fully) lol

[Neil5459]

OK- forgiveness begged for!

I must not mix up my acronyms
I must not mix up my acronyms
I must not mix up my acronyms
I must not mix up my acronyms

[Confucious]

OK, as you asked so nicely, I'll forgive you. not sure if yrreP will tho

[yrreP]

Haha, oops, sorry



I found it so entertaining i got in a fluster and felt obliged to post something...

I don't even think i read the rest of the post

o;

[robertchinneck]

Confucious, on Mar 21 2007, 15:21, said:

Thanks for the reply, that seams reasonable but as I don't have a GPRS monitor (I'm on T with unlimited data so don't care about my usage) I can't replicate your test to see what i'm getting.

Hi there,

Go to http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ and use the speed test there. It's pretty detailed and gives your speed rating against various speed benchmarks.

If your phone does not let you access this page (I think frames and/or scripts can cause problems) then visit the page from a home PC using your phone as a usb modem (I know the T-Mobile CD has a driver for this as I use my Vario as my only internet connection).

It's a good way to see what speeds a 3G phone and provider can dish out.

Rob.