Bad cellphone reception with my new Lumia 830

[Slomo11]

Hi there,

I have two phones: One old iPhone 4 and a new Nokia Lumia 830. For both phones I have the same provider.

Especially in rural areas I quite often have no reception at all with my Lumia, whereas my iPhone give me 3 (out of 5) bars.

Has anyone else noticed bad reception with the Lumia 830?

cheers,
S.

 

[Tellus82]

Hi there,

I have two phones: One old iPhone 4 and a new Nokia Lumia 830. For both phones I have the same provider.

Especially in rural areas I quite often have no reception at all with my Lumia, whereas my iPhone give me 3 (out of 5) bars.

Has anyone else noticed bad reception with the Lumia 830?

cheers,
S.

One question, by no reception at all do you mean that you cant make calls with it and you can with the iPhone? And more importantly are they using the same band at the time, ie is the 830 on the same 3g or 4g or 2g?

Only thing i know is that my 830 shows much fewer bars then any other phown i own, but at the same time has the best reception (i use mainly 800 & 900MHz bands). By best reception i mean keeps reception the best even though showing bad reception, as in this phone shows "true reception" with it's bars, also the "bar meter" reacts very slowly to changes in rception compared to others. As a more clear example, an older Android phone shows three bars while the 830 shows none to one under the same circumstance, the Android cant make or recieve calls without loosing connection, the 830 can. I checked the real dBm value at that spot and it shows around -106dBm, still many phones show this as half reception which is just BS. at -110dBm nearly all cell phones won't pick it up at all. Good reception (what full bars should be) is around -50dBm.

 

[Slomo11]

One question, by no reception at all do you mean that you cant make calls with it and you can with the iPhone? And more importantly are they using the same band at the time, ie is the 830 on the same 3g or 4g or 2g?

iPhone: 2g, 3 bars, can make calls
Lumia 830: 4g, 3g, 2g: always 0 bars, can't make calls (I first set it manually to max. 4g, then to max. 3g, then to 2g).

 

[Tellus82]

Sounds odd, is it the prototype 830 by any chance? If possible its maybe best to let them check your phone where you bought it/ compare to another 830.

 

[Slomo11]

Sounds odd, is it the prototype 830 by any chance? If possible its maybe best to let them check your phone where you bought it/ compare to another 830.

No, it's not a prototype. I bought it two weeks ago.

I did read some reports from other user also complaining about bad reception. E.g. one user said he has a 830, his wife a 630. When her 630 has 5 bars his 830 has only 2-3 bars.

Some users are hinting that the SAR-value gives an indication:
iPhone 4: 0.93
Lumia 630: 1.51
Lumia 830: only 0.46

 

[Tellus82]

It's still odd since I'm having the opposite experience here, my 830 gives better reception then a Sony, Samsung and an HTC and not by a small margin. I wonder if the 830 has worse reception on higher bands such as 2100MHz.
I know you can worsen the reception by holding the phone so you cover the bottom of it

 

[Slomo11]

I wonder if the 830 has worse reception on higher bands such as 2100MHz.

To me it seems the 830 has worse reception on all bands ;-)

I'll try to get a replacement unit and keep you updated ...

 

[alacrityvirtue]

I totally agree, my 830 reception is useless. Did you end up with a replacement? How did it go?

 

[mj0]

Has anyone else noticed bad reception with the Lumia 830?

Quite the contrary, both my 635's and 830's reception is spectacular, especially compared to the iPhone 5.
I'm guessing something's wrong with your device.

 

[Fred Wilson2]

Yeah, I agree, my reception is great also.


Fred

 

[mj0]

I remembered reading about this somewhere... Connect, a German professional journal specialized in all things telecommunication, does a standardized transmission & reception test on all their reviews. The 830 got 111/125 points in this category with 13/15 for 2G, 30/30 for 3G and 28/30 for 4G.

Details can be found here under "Messwerte" (bottom of the table).

 

[dysje]

Clearly something wrong with the 830. The iphone4 (with iphone5 in 2nd to last place) has some of the worst reception qualities in the history of 'smart'phones, ever, if an 830 loses to that, the device must be broken and should be returned.

 

[mans550]

Hi I am also having very poor call quality after 2 or 3 minutes of a conversation the person cannot hear me at all. I will be sending this for a replacement.

 

[Matthew Baugh]

I realize this response may be a little late (only relevant thread I could find at the moment), but my Lumia 830 is also having a frustrating reception problem, which I haven't had with any other Lumia on the same service - and I have tried setting changes to SIM, etc. When in a conversation, and with steady full signal bars, the person on the other end of the conversation suddenly cannot hear me at all. I can still hear them clearly, but they do not hear me. I find myself saying (often yelling), "yes, I'm here, do you hear me?" while the other side is saying, "hello, are you there, did you hang up, hello, hello..." I think I saw this issue in a (funny) commercial describing bad service, where one person suddenly hears complete silence as if they've said something really insulting or terrible. What the heck causes this particular thing? Any help is appreciated. Thanks!