Hey all, I'm kind of venting here and at the same time hoping for some sort of direction because I'm absolutely fed up with my S6.
I upgraded roughly a month and a half ago from an S4. My phone usage was below normal for the first week or two as I was busy with a variety of projects. As my usage increased I started noticing what I would consider a pretty significant issue with reception. Texts coming in late, voicemail without any missed calls showing on the phone, and more importantly very erratic mobile data reception. I commute 100km each way to work so having good mobile data coverage is pretty important to me to help pass the time. Initially I thought maybe network issues were to blames so after a month of use I finally got fed up and called SaskTel, my service provider. They started a case file and we went through the usual spiel: no known network problems, possible network congestion, no known S6 issues, is my phone software up to date, yadda, yadda. Pretty unproductive for the most part but it has provoked me to do a bit more research and pay even closer attention to the details and try a few different things.
Initially I had attempted changing my network settings from LTE/WCDMA/GSM to WCDMA/GSM and then WCDMA only. No noticeable change. Then I purchased a SIM card adapter and put my SIM into my old S4. In five days of usage I didn't have a single issue that was out of the norm (there are two weak spots on my commute to work that can result in slow to no data some days). So now it is narrowed down to a phone issue. When I put the SIM back in to the S6 and started it up it notified me that there was a new software update. I held out hope that maybe this would be the fix, but in my observation it changed the problem slightly but there is no overall improvement. Pre-update when I noticed a possible issue I'd run a speed test and always get a "Network Communication Issues" message. It was either normal speeds or nothing at all. Post-update it now still gives me the same message frequently, but now I can also end up with very poor speed test results. Usually with speeds of less than .4 Mbps. Occasionally I will have a normal download speed and a poor upload speed (.1-.3 Mbps). I can be sitting in the same spot for an hour and have data speeds that are wildly erratic, I can have no service one minute and then be up to 10 Mbps download (norm is usually 5-6 is a good coverage area), and then back to no or poor speeds five minutes later. There are days when commuting to or from work that I experience reasonable coverage/speeds and there are days when I have nothing for almost the entire trip. I've also been checking the signal strength in relation to my speeds, and I can't even make heads or tails of it. Signal strength is normally in the -85 to -95dBm. 50% of the time when I lose service it still shows a normal signal strength, the other 50% is shows -110dBm which seems to be where the phone bottoms out. One other observation I've made is that in the "status" display the phone is constantly bouncing between HSUPA and HSPA+.
For what it is worth, on a normal day I will experience no/slow coverage roughly 5-15 times a day. Heavier usage it can be upwards of 20. Typically the full loss of coverage will last 1-3 minutes, occasionally as much as 5. Factoring in the periods of slow service between the loss in coverage, there are times when my mobile data is essentially useless for 10-15 minutes.
Through all this I decided to reach out on a provincial based forum to see if anyone else was experiencing the same. I had one individual who seemed to know the smartphone market very well tell me that the antennae in the S6 is nowhere near as good as the S4, and of current offerings only Sony really is comparable to the S4. Even if the antennae is not as good as the S4, I want to strongly believe that my phone is just a dud. At this point I don't I don't know how easy SaskTel is going to be to work with (plan on talking to them this week), but depending what my options are I'm not sure if I should push for a new S6 and hope it's better or throw in the towel on Samsung and give the Sony Z3 a try since it was my second choice anyway.
I upgraded roughly a month and a half ago from an S4. My phone usage was below normal for the first week or two as I was busy with a variety of projects. As my usage increased I started noticing what I would consider a pretty significant issue with reception. Texts coming in late, voicemail without any missed calls showing on the phone, and more importantly very erratic mobile data reception. I commute 100km each way to work so having good mobile data coverage is pretty important to me to help pass the time. Initially I thought maybe network issues were to blames so after a month of use I finally got fed up and called SaskTel, my service provider. They started a case file and we went through the usual spiel: no known network problems, possible network congestion, no known S6 issues, is my phone software up to date, yadda, yadda. Pretty unproductive for the most part but it has provoked me to do a bit more research and pay even closer attention to the details and try a few different things.
Initially I had attempted changing my network settings from LTE/WCDMA/GSM to WCDMA/GSM and then WCDMA only. No noticeable change. Then I purchased a SIM card adapter and put my SIM into my old S4. In five days of usage I didn't have a single issue that was out of the norm (there are two weak spots on my commute to work that can result in slow to no data some days). So now it is narrowed down to a phone issue. When I put the SIM back in to the S6 and started it up it notified me that there was a new software update. I held out hope that maybe this would be the fix, but in my observation it changed the problem slightly but there is no overall improvement. Pre-update when I noticed a possible issue I'd run a speed test and always get a "Network Communication Issues" message. It was either normal speeds or nothing at all. Post-update it now still gives me the same message frequently, but now I can also end up with very poor speed test results. Usually with speeds of less than .4 Mbps. Occasionally I will have a normal download speed and a poor upload speed (.1-.3 Mbps). I can be sitting in the same spot for an hour and have data speeds that are wildly erratic, I can have no service one minute and then be up to 10 Mbps download (norm is usually 5-6 is a good coverage area), and then back to no or poor speeds five minutes later. There are days when commuting to or from work that I experience reasonable coverage/speeds and there are days when I have nothing for almost the entire trip. I've also been checking the signal strength in relation to my speeds, and I can't even make heads or tails of it. Signal strength is normally in the -85 to -95dBm. 50% of the time when I lose service it still shows a normal signal strength, the other 50% is shows -110dBm which seems to be where the phone bottoms out. One other observation I've made is that in the "status" display the phone is constantly bouncing between HSUPA and HSPA+.
For what it is worth, on a normal day I will experience no/slow coverage roughly 5-15 times a day. Heavier usage it can be upwards of 20. Typically the full loss of coverage will last 1-3 minutes, occasionally as much as 5. Factoring in the periods of slow service between the loss in coverage, there are times when my mobile data is essentially useless for 10-15 minutes.
Through all this I decided to reach out on a provincial based forum to see if anyone else was experiencing the same. I had one individual who seemed to know the smartphone market very well tell me that the antennae in the S6 is nowhere near as good as the S4, and of current offerings only Sony really is comparable to the S4. Even if the antennae is not as good as the S4, I want to strongly believe that my phone is just a dud. At this point I don't I don't know how easy SaskTel is going to be to work with (plan on talking to them this week), but depending what my options are I'm not sure if I should push for a new S6 and hope it's better or throw in the towel on Samsung and give the Sony Z3 a try since it was my second choice anyway.
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