[AUG 4] *12 Radios Available* Updated Touch Pro CDMA Radio Archive Thread

[strra]

Originally Posted by djalbanian

Which sprint radio would be considered the best? currenty im running 1.11.00F. I see the R is posted never seen it before, thanks of the input.

you have to test them for your specific area.... it's more of a regional thing

[psycho_maniac]

everytime somebody asks which radio works best god kills a kitten

[strra]

Originally Posted by psycho_maniac

everytime somebody asks which radio works best god kills a kitten

(sorry, off topic... on with the show!)

[s4audi]

Has anybody found a good radio that works good in the Northern VA area?? If not then time to play with the radios.. lol

[MACE]

At risk of sounding like an elitist prick, which honestly, I don't intend to be, but I'm honestly not sure how to say this without sounding at least a little rude:
Please bear with me, and try to understand the message I am trying to convey, as no offense is intended.

If you really have little to no clue about how radio systems work, or how to test them, *please* do everyone a favor, and don't post your random imaginings as to how well a specific radio rom works. It is just misleading, and leads to *more* confusion for those who don't really understand any more than you do.

Now, I don't expect everyone to be an expert on IP radio systems or anything, but if you are judging signal, reliability, or really just about *anything* based solely on the signal strength bars displayed on your handset, then you really should not be making recommendations to anyone.

Even Sprint CS will tell you how nearly meaningless those bars can be, especially if you have no idea how they are actually generated. (They normally don't measure actual signal quality, or sadly even signal strength, but are instead based on an algorithm derived from the amount of amplification needed by the handset)

Likewise, online speed tests are really not a decent measure of even *wired* broadband, and are certainly not a measure of radio reliability. Even under the best circumstances they can only be a guideline, but in reality, there are so many outside factors involved, that they are fairly meaningless as far as determining how one radio performs compared to another without doing 1000s of tests with each radio over a period of time, averaging the results, and comparing them to each other, and even then, you really cant be sure that things such as seasonal usage drift, or network load due to a hot new device were not to blame for any differences, unless you do your tests on every radio you are testing every single day using multiple devices, or reflashing repeatedly.
__________________________________________________ ______________

If you don't really understand the mechanics involved in radio performance testing, what you *can* do that *WILL* help quite a bit, is just use your device normally, in as many different places as possible, and report how well in general the radio you are using seems to perform compared to what you are used to. Reliability, heat generation, battery drain, and so on.

For those that would like to be educated in testing processes, I can try to write up a guide, when I get a chance, if Strra wants to put a link to it in the first post. However, the majority of my current wireless experience comes from when I helped manage and maintain the WiFi network sites of a local hotspot ISP so, it would probably be better if there is someone available that is an expert on *mobile* wireless networks, and EVDO data systems in particular to do it.

In the meantime, I'll see if I can find a post I saw somewhere that had some easy guidelines, and re post it here.

[obamaftw08]

Originally Posted by MACE

At risk of sounding like an elitist prick, which honestly, I don't intend to be, but I'm honestly not sure how to say this without sounding at least a little rude:
Please bear with me, and try to understand the message I am trying to convey, as no offense is intended.

If you really have little to no clue about how radio systems work, or how to test them, *please* do everyone a favor, and don't post your random imaginings as to how well a specific radio rom works. It is just misleading, and leads to *more* confusion for those who don't really understand any more than you do.

Now, I don't expect everyone to be an expert on IP radio systems or anything, but if you are judging signal, reliability, or really just about *anything* based solely on the signal strength bars displayed on your handset, then you really should not be making recommendations to anyone.

Even Sprint CS will tell you how nearly meaningless those bars can be, especially if you have no idea how they are actually generated. (They normally don't measure actual signal quality, or sadly even signal strength, but are instead based on an algorithm derived from the amount of amplification needed by the handset)

Likewise, online speed tests are really not a decent measure of even *wired* broadband, and are certainly not a measure of radio reliability. Even under the best circumstances they can only be a guideline, but in reality, there are so many outside factors involved, that they are fairly meaningless as far as determining how one radio performs compared to another without doing 1000s of tests with each radio over a period of time, averaging the results, and comparing them to each other, and even then, you really cant be sure that things such as seasonal usage drift, or network load due to a hot new device were not to blame for any differences, unless you do your tests on every radio you are testing every single day using multiple devices, or reflashing repeatedly.
__________________________________________________ ______________

If you don't really understand the mechanics involved in radio performance testing, what you *can* do that *WILL* help quite a bit, is just use your device normally, in as many different places as possible, and report how well in general the radio you are using seems to perform compared to what you are used to. Reliability, heat generation, battery drain, and so on.

For those that would like to be educated in testing processes, I can try to write up a guide, when I get a chance, if Strra wants to put a link to it in the first post. However, the majority of my current wireless experience comes from when I helped manage and maintain the WiFi network sites of a local hotspot ISP so, it would probably be better if there is someone available that is an expert on *mobile* wireless networks, and EVDO data systems in particular to do it.

In the meantime, I'll see if I can find a post I saw somewhere that had some easy guidelines, and re post it here.

You know, I can sum up everything you just said without needing a disclaimer about rudeness and/or being highly demeaning, in a much more refined form.

Hello fellow radio testers. I'm gonna try and put up a guide here soon to let you know about some other testing scenarios/guidelines in which I think would be helpful for everyone here to figure out what works best for each person individually. In the meantime let me find a link that will give everyone an idea of what I'm talking about.

See? Easy peesie. No thanks needed.

[psycho_maniac]

Originally Posted by obamaftw08

You know, I can sum up everything you just said without needing a disclaimer about rudeness and/or being highly demeaning, in a much more refined form.

if you had to answer the same type of questions i think you would be a little testy also

[havox22]

i want a guide & what radio do u use???

Originally Posted by MACE

to long to really quote

[obamaftw08]

Originally Posted by psycho_maniac

if you had to answer the same type of questions i think you would be a little testy also

Oh believe me, I've done my fair share of fielding numerous tech questions. However, if you're going to criticize a vast majority of the userbase here and not give much in return, at least do it with the understanding that if you're post isn't substantial in any way other than to be heard, you're not going to get a lot of applause.

[MACE]

I swear, sometimes the search function of these forums is so useless.

I've wasted way too much time looking for that guide I mentioned I had seen, I should have just taken the time to write my own
But now its almost 2:30 am here, and I was tired before I got started...

Here is one pertinent post I found however, which you can probably get by with until I can write a more comprehensive guide.

Originally Posted by snovvman

I don't know how many times this has been discussed, but I guess here it goes again.

The bars are not nearly accurate enough to make conclusions about signal quality.

Here is another twist, on my Diamond, in a relatively weak DO area but connected to an Airave (1x), the bars display the state of DO (therefore, few bars even though I'm connected to Airave with good 1x service. On my Touch Pro, on the other hand, the bars display the state of 1x (again, connected to Airave) even though the indicator shows "EV". That is to say, even though DO is weak and 1x is strong, the TP will show you "EV" while the bars are actually showing 1x signal strength. In simple terms, two phones, side-by-side, same coverage quality, one has many bars, the other nearly none.

In other words, the Diamond and Touch Pro shows you signal quality on the bars differently. Got that? Remember, there are both 1x and DO portions of the radio at play.

You MUST use ##DEBUG# (go to the dialer, enter ##33284#) to accurately determine signal strength. Set your Sample Rate to 1 second. If you want to see DO performance, choose Debug Info, then HDR. The bars do not report accurate information.

Also, the signal strengh can bounce A LOT, unless you have an Airave in the next room. You must take samples over time and average the results.

Next, I had both phones running Telus 1.04, and using the above method, side-by-side, they report very very close Rx Power and Rx Ec/Io figures (again, even though the bars are bouncing and don't agree). They are consistently within 1 to 2 points of each other both in 1x and HDR, dispite what the bars report.

I then flashed 1.11 on the Touch Pro and ran the field test again. Now, side-by-side, the Touch Pro ALWAYS show a 3-7 point weaker signal strengh when compared to 1.04. In HDR (DO), the performance is about the same. Mind you, this is when TP is showing full bars.

Although that 1.11 shows less quality connection compared to 1.04, I have not observed a degredation in battery life nor call quality. They seem very close to me in terms of performance. DO speed seems to slighly improve with 1.11.

Something very important to understand: the Rx signals are measured in decibel drop where the closer to zero, the better. -100dbm is bad!
Typically, with EVDO, you want to have less than -80dbm for decent throughput, with top end being reached somewhere below -70dbm and anything below that giving lower latency, and higher stability. In real world usage, -50dbm is about good as you are ever going to get, and in most cases, not bloody likely, lol. Although, I have actually been able to achieve -46 to -47 by standing at about a 30° angle from a tower, about 60 yrds away (because of the physical characteristics of typical radio towers, you will actually get *lower* signal strength directly underneath (or above, lol) due to the conical umbrella they broadcast, I got around -65-67 standing at the base of this particular tower, for example)
Also remember, even if you were to get say, -55dbm, which is pretty much incredible signal strength, (might as well plug your phone directly into the tower, ) your throughput can be limited by many other factors, such as the backhaul of the tower, and network load. So, while your phone might be able to communicate with the *tower* at 3.1mbit your network might not be able to provide that. Of course, if it doesn't, there is nothing really wrong with complaining to your provider about it, to give them a little prod to induce them to improve their infrastructure