"Motorola Radios are the best"

[scallawag]

This is in no way a critique of the Turbo and its radios.

For as long as I've had an Android device, I've always heard that Motorola radios are the best. Is this still the case or have the other OEM's stepped up their game? I'm coming from the HTC Droid DNA, and I get the exact same data speeds from my Turbo from a few places around town where I have historically tested my phones' speeds. Right or wrong, I expected the Turbo to be better than the DNA, which was really good in its own right. So, are Motorola Radios still the best? For those of you coming from LG, Samsung, etc, are you seeing improved radio performance? Thanks for your thoughts.

Coming from a Droid Maxx that had excellent radios to the Turbo was a huge disappointment. I live in a fringe area the same fringe area that the Maxx was good in the turbo can not hold on to a call. Every call I get drops on the Turbo but the Maxx does good. I must say for me the Turbo has dropped Motos rep as good radios to bad radios. Sorry to say the same is true on GPS. I use GPS each day with My Tracks and the Droid Maxx is just head and shoulders above the Turbo. The king is the Samsung Note 4 it has the best Phone GPS WiFi radios going...This is not a Samsung thing as the S5 was not as good as my Droid Maxx but the Note 4 is better then any phone I have had and I try all the phones that interest my. Examples Lg G2 and G3, S5, Turbo, Note 4, M8, Moto Droid Maxx and iPhones.

 

[Eclipse2K]

Coming from a Droid Maxx that had excellent radios to the Turbo was a huge disappointment. I live in a fringe area the same fringe area that the Maxx was good in the turbo can not hold on to a call. Every call I get drops on the Turbo but the Maxx does good. I must say for me the Turbo has dropped Motos rep as good radios to bad radios. Sorry to say the same is true on GPS. I use GPS each day with My Tracks and the Droid Maxx is just head and shoulders above the Turbo. The king is the Samsung Note 4 it has the best Phone GPS WiFi radios going...This is not a Samsung thing as the S5 was not as good as my Droid Maxx but the Note 4 is better then any phone I have had and I try all the phones that interest my. Examples Lg G2 and G3, S5, Turbo, Note 4, M8, Moto Droid Maxx and iPhones.

Strange, my friends Verizon Note 4 does worse than my Turbo when side by side. Its not a huge difference but its noticeable. I did have a bad experience with the S5 though.

Sent from my Motorola Droid Turbo

 

[scallawag]

Looking at anything other than -dBm is useless.

I will say that the Samsung S5 is much better than the Galaxy Nexus they made a few years ago.

Moto will always reign supreme.

To me looking at -dBm is useless. I live in a fringe area so I just use the phone. The one that does not drop calls wins. The best phones for not dropping calls for me in my area are the Verizon Droid Maxx and Note 4 on Verizon with Note 4 being the best. Turbo drops every call. Turbo has been a huge disappointment for me.

 

[scallawag]

It might be the area you are in. I am in a very fringe area. Glad your Turbo is good for you and wish mine was good for me. I guess thats why you often see YMMV. BTW I liked my Droid Maxx so much I bought a second as back up.
I wonder if it could be the back? I bought the 64GB with Ballistic back?

 

[Eclipse2K]

It might be the area you are in. I am in a very fringe area. Glad your Turbo is good for you and wish mine was good for me. I guess thats why you often see YMMV. BTW I liked my Droid Maxx so much I bought a second as back up.
I wonder if it could be the back? I bought the 64GB with Ballistic back?

I have the 64 GB BN also. Just odd that one Turbo has better signal than a Note 4 and your experience differs. Gotta love technology!

Sent from my Motorola Droid Turbo

 

[Symthic]

Its cellular radio is great, but its Wi-Fi radio is downright atrocious.

 

[wolf_walker]

Its cellular radio is great, but its Wi-Fi radio is downright atrocious.

this

 

[Eclipse2K]

this

WiFi is the same as my Note 3 and S5. Same speeds and reliability. I may just not notice it but I've never had slow-down or drops.

Sent from my Motorola Droid Turbo

 

[wolf_walker]

WiFi is the same as my Note 3 and S5. Same speeds and reliability. I may just not notice it but I've never had slow-down or drops.

Sent from my Motorola Droid Turbo

Range is less than my s4 and Nexus 7 on 802.11g. Repeatedly so, bout 10dbm on average. No drops or speed problem, till it's out of range.

 

[Eclipse2K]

Re: "Motorola Radios are the best"

Range is less than my s4 and Nexus 7 on 802.11g. Repeatedly so, bout 10dbm on average. No drops or speed problem, till it's out of range.

Ah, I'm on AC so maybe that's why. 5Ghz messes up on the other end of my house but it did so on Note 3/S5. Its great on 2.4 for all 3 for me.

Sent from my Motorola Droid Turbo

 

[wolf_walker]

Re: "Motorola Radios are the best"

Yeah, the difference has been much less on 5ghz, gives me some hope it's a fixable problem.
I actually bought a new router/wifi AP as a workaround in the time being.
It's not crazy bad imo but my S4 side by side all over my house and property pretty well wiped the floor
with it. To the point where I couldn't stream youtube vids in my shop that I never considered "fringe"
reception area for the last year or more till I got the DT. Go figure....
Great phone, but they goofed the G radio somehow.

 

[vzwuser76]

I've had the opposite experience. Just before the I switched to the Turbo, I was talking on my Droid Maxx to my brother in a low signal area. It got bad enough that I dropped the call several times in that 10 mile distance. After switching to the Turbo, I held the call the entire drive through that area.

Also, in my home I've always needed a Network Extender to make calls (steel siding and roof). If the Network Extender went out, my Maxx was essentially useless. With my Turbo, I can make and receive calls without the NE. They're not super clear without the NE, but I haven't dropped a call yet with this phone.

And I also have a 64GB Ballistic Nylon.

 

[wolf_walker]

The cell/LTE radio seems fine far as I can tell. WiFi only problem I've seen with it.

I've had the opposite experience. Just before the I switched to the Turbo, I was talking on my Droid Maxx to my brother in a low signal area. It got bad enough that I dropped the call several times in that 10 mile distance. After switching to the Turbo, I held the call the entire drive through that area.

Also, in my home I've always needed a Network Extender to make calls (steel siding and roof). If the Network Extender went out, my Maxx was essentially useless. With my Turbo, I can make and receive calls without the NE. They're not super clear without the NE, but I haven't dropped a call yet with this phone.

And I also have a 64GB Ballistic Nylon.

 

[vzwuser76]

The cell/LTE radio seems fine far as I can tell. WiFi only problem I've seen with it.

And so far, my WiFi hasn't been any worse than my Droid Maxx was either. At least not a noticeable difference. I can use it anywhere I used my Maxx, and the speed seems the same as well. I must've gotten lucky.

 

[wolf_walker]

Or the max is inferior in that respect to the s4 and Nexus 7 as well. If you never had better you'd never notice. Or mine is especially bad. Who knows. Numbers don't lie, I have a great video of them side by side. Moto support said they could reproduce it but I never heard anything beyond. I just bought a stronger router.

 

[hannsoft]

Surprised to see all these poor WiFi reports. My Turbo absolutely smokes on WiFi here, both at 2.4 and 5.

Sent from my Droid Turbo using Tapatalk

 

[markymark]

Or the max is inferior in that respect to the s4 and Nexus 7 as well. If you never had better you'd never notice. Or mine is especially bad. Who knows. Numbers don't lie, I have a great video of them side by side. Moto support said they could reproduce it but I never heard anything beyond. I just bought a stronger router.

It's not just yours. When I tested the Turbo side by side against my RMHD in the Verizon store my results were similar. The Turbo was consistently 10 db weaker in wifi signal and couldn't even see networks that my RMHD could see and connect to. One of the reasons I passed on the Turbo.

 

[rghurtle]

I just switched my wifi to Cox and I thought it was interesting that my desktop and iPhone were both pulling 65 down but the best I get with my Turbo is 43. And that was after rebooting.