[skyjackal]

Coverage for me isn't an issue and EDGE works just fine. However, I'm not seeing any difference in battery life on EDGE vs 3G/EDGE, whether I'm on 247, 266 or 282. I think the best battery life I had was on 185. Bummer.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[CJMajesty]

My Bold switches between 3G and 4G. By doing so, its conserving human life on earth...

Going 2G would be suicide, even concidered an abomination, just to conserve battery life.

4G Hunh?????? WoW!

[r.santa1]

I noticed that today.

I can't take the call failed anymore.
3g white background noise kills me.
3g voice sucks.

I want my tour on vzw. Bye bye att.

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[chinh8310]

if your not happy, port. not everybody coverage is top notch, it is ALWAYS a work in progress.

and really it isnt entirely a network issue. you can have a bad sim that wont get reception, or it can be the phone itself *gasp!* ****ty software or bad build quality wont get u the reception you want.

yea the 3g>2g handoff isnt that great in some areas but for me its perfect. if your having a problem, instead of complaining about it, REPORT IT!

att has a system to track incidents such as drop calls, called failed. call it in and have them record it on their network incident tracker. this will help improve the network, not sitting and complaining. does it work? yes it does! ive reported incidents before and IT has actually driven out to where i reported CALLED me and said where did it happen.

that $18 upgrade fee so many complain about and want wavied cuz they are a loyal customer, guess where that dollar goes to? imporving the network.

yes i work for ATT.. but i use to work at VZW and they had the same exact thing internally

[ninja please]

depends on where you live and what carrier has the best coverage. if you jump into a contract with a carrier and get bad coverage, shoulda done your homework.

for the record I've never had a single dropped call with at&t/cingular that I can remember.

[Jonneh]

Not at all, the point of the original post was that I shouldn't be happy "dumbing down" my phone because of my carriers crappy service. If the hardware was designed to run 3G and I pay my carrier good money for 3G, then the 3G should work properly!

AGREED.

Battery Life? Wtf, I don't give a s*h*i*t about that, I charge my Bold every night and even then I also have it plugged in throughout the day at random times. It's not battery life, it's the friggin' dropped calls!

Why do you think so many users are having to practically hack their Bold's (by which I mean e-screen codes) in order to "dumb it down" to make it actually usable 100% of the time rather than 80, 70, some maybe 50% of the time?

And it's downright utterly ridiculous that AT&T users are having to do this.
Granted, I know we should be complaining to AT&T, not on a public forum about Blackberry's, but still. Haha.

Anyway, THAT is why this new "feature" is great, even though it's something we really shouldn't even have to use as much as we do.

[Blacklatino]

I'm not that concerned about it. Besides, if you end up in an area with 3G issues, it will switch to 2G. But, I can see the benefit for those concerned about battery life or electing to have the "choice". Personally, I would like for at&t to continue /complete their service upgrade. Yeah, I read the articles about the cost. Not my problem. Besides, I contribute once a month when I pay my bill for three phones. JMO

[digitalb0y]

I agree with BlackLatino. It's pretty hard to feel sorry for AT&T financially with all the gauging they do.

But, to the OP: the OS has nothing to do with the ability to switch between EDGE and 3G. You could already do that using OS 4.6 when it came from RIM, but AT&T bafflingly disabled it. Upgrading to OS 5 does not bring the feature back. You have to take a backdoor route and either disable 2G or 3G from the engineering screens, or remove the AT&T branding from your phone, which involves a process that voids your warranty and could harm your phone if not done with absolute care.

The worst part is that even in areas with decent 3G coverage, your device may occasionally switch to EDGE if 3G signal availability drops a bit. This would be absolutely fine, except that AT&T has the phone set to latch onto any 3G signal it can find, no matter how weak. So you could have terrible coverage in certain areas with your phone stuck on 3G even if there's a stronger EDGE signal available at the time. To make matters worse, the hand-off from EDGE back up to 3G is dodgy at best, and frequently will cause you to drop your call.

There are similar issues cause by other carriers as well. Check out the way Verizon cripples GPS functionality for 3rd party software developers. The truly sad part isn't that a new OS is coming and the network isn't prepared, it's that mobile devices are truly amazing these days and none of them work to their true potential due to limitations that carriers build into their service when they support devices like the Bold.

This is why I so enthusiastically watch Android forums. The G1 is a pretty huge let down, but the patents Google registered when Android was being conceptualized are truly interesting. They patented a design for a phone that can switch networks to the strongest signal it can find on any frequency it supports, the idea being to force carriers to compete with each other with reasonable pay-as-you-go plans. In a scenario like that, the carrier offering the best service at the best price is the one that gets your business for as long as they are able to deliver the strongest signal to your phone. I have no idea where this idea went and stopped holding my breath for a Google phone that beats the BlackBerry, but I still can't wait to see how business changes for the major carriers as the technology behind devices continues to evolve at a much more rapid pace than the technology behind the networks. The carriers shouldn't be able to maintain their stranglehold if they continue to offer inadequate plans to support cutting-edge devices.

[jeaton]

When i first managed to get the Bold I could not even use it. I had to stay with my 8800 because China Mobile has little to no 3G service what so ever! I finally got this ability a few versions ago and now I can fully use my Bold. I leave it on automatic and if I travel to Shanghai or any other place like that it kicks over to 3G..

[Dogmann]

Hi all,


Well as many have pointed out it really is no longer the OS but your carrier that seems to be at fault here. My Bold has always been set to 3G only and excluding .192 the very first firmware it came with it has never had a problem getting a great signal. As for dropped or failed calls what are they? I've never experienced this on my Bold ever. If your Network sucks blame it not your devcie!

Marc

[LittleRedDot]

Yeah but the title of the post is "the saddest thing about the bold and the new os".

There's nothing sad about the phone or it's firmware when it comes to your network coverage. Either you went with the wrong carrier, or you chose to live/work in an area that has crappy coverage. Either way the only thing that can be blamed is your choices.

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[MGV]

...Move to Canada :P