who here uses tmobile?

[RavenSword]

Ive been testing my T-Mobile pretty paid plan and had some questions to others who use tmobile:

1. How do I know if my signal is working properly? Im just curious how to tell if bad reception is due to T-Mobile or something not set right on my phone.

2. What's considered a good signal strength number? I don't know what the different decimels mean in my about phone signal viewer

3. On average how do you find the service? Good? Acceptable? Terrible?

I know now I don't get the best signal at my college with tmobile, but that's not a deal breaker because there's WiFi there

I love the pricing and unlimited data with my T-Mobile prepaid, I just hope service is to my liking.

 

[jdbii]

I can give you partial feedback.

I've had Tmo for a month. I think all the defualt settings should make it work fine. If you haven't tinkered with any of the APN settings, or whatever the other mobile or networks settings are, and you are having problems with service, then my best guess would be that you are in an area with poor Tmo coverage. I think urban areas are fine for Tmo, but people seem to complain about Tmo not being so great in less poplulated places.

I don't know what you mean by "different decimels," and I am not all that knowledgeable myself about these things,but if you are talking about the symbols next to the bars in the top right, then think E is edge or 2G, then 3G for 3G, and H for hspa. I live in an urban area and mine hovers between 3G and H. I think I normally get around 5 mbps download.

I would rate the service as "acceptable." Nobody ever complains about poor call quality, and I can hear others fine, and I've never had a dropped call. My real pet peeve with Tmo (and this could be the same for any carrier) is that a get terrible service indoors. It is just simply atroicous. Sometimes I can be standing next to a window and have "no service" and I just stick my arm out the window 1 foot and I get 4 bars hspa. I don't get any service in my home unless I stand next to a window.

 

[Jerry Hildenbrand]

Ive been testing my T-Mobile pretty paid plan and had some questions to others who use tmobile:

1. How do I know if my signal is working properly? Im just curious how to tell if bad reception is due to T-Mobile or something not set right on my phone.

Find someone else using T-Mobile in the same place you are, and see what their signal is like is the best way.

2. What's considered a good signal strength number? I don't know what the different decimels mean in my about phone signal viewer

Higher numbers = worse signal. Good is when it's fast enough for the things you need it to do

3. On average how do you find the service? Good? Acceptable? Terrible?

Acceptable. I use T-Mobile because where I live, and more importantly where I spend my time away from home, they offer the best and fastest service of any carrier. But I know that a whole hell of a lot of folks will say the exact opposite, because T-Mobile's network footprint is a lot weaker than the competition.

I know now I don't get the best signal at my college with tmobile, but that's not a deal breaker because there's WiFi there

I love the pricing and unlimited data with my T-Mobile prepaid, I just hope service is to my liking.

Exactly. If the service is worth the price, use it and enjoy the money you save.

 

[zxcv106106]

Ive been testing my T-Mobile pretty paid plan and had some questions to others who use tmobile:

1. How do I know if my signal is working properly? Im just curious how to tell if bad reception is due to T-Mobile or something not set right on my phone.

2. What's considered a good signal strength number? I don't know what the different decimels mean in my about phone signal viewer

3. On average how do you find the service? Good? Acceptable? Terrible?

I know now I don't get the best signal at my college with tmobile, but that's not a deal breaker because there's WiFi there

I love the pricing and unlimited data with my T-Mobile prepaid, I just hope service is to my liking.

If you have a sudden drop of lose connection in a general good reception area, or drop call, etc. I will think it's the phone hardware problem.

 

[greydarrah]

I use tmo and it's a great provider for me in my area. Just got to their site and check out the coverage map for your area. I've found it to be pretty accurate. Prepay for 1 month (don't sign up for auto refill) and if it proves not to work so well for you in your area, just switch to someone else. That my favorite thing about this unlocked phone.

 

[RavenSword]

Well, the mall test is going surprisingly well. I say that because I'm getting 7MB speeds in here and good signal. I don't think I got that with att

 

[chubb]

I was with T-Mobile from 2005-2010, then Verizon, now back to T-Mobile for the last two months. Compared to Verizon, T-Mobile building penetration is not quite as good, my speeds are slower, but haven't has a dropped call. Verizon has LTE all through out my area, I was averging about 6 mbps down and 1.5 up. With T-Mobile at home I get about 1-2 down and 1 up, HSPA 15, sadly no 21 or 42 . I see Edge at lot when I leave the city, but its around 500 kbps down, so it's not terrible. But going from paying $200 a month with Verizon for 3 lines to $55 with Tmobile and $70 for one line of AT&T is well worth it to me. The $75 a month savings ($900 a year) is worth the slower speeds I get, but get way better battery life with HSPA+ than I was getting on my Galaxy Nexus with LTE. If you get good service in the places you travel it is well worth it.

 

[RavenSword]

I was with T-Mobile from 2005-2010, then Verizon, now back to T-Mobile for the last two months. Compared to Verizon, T-Mobile building penetration is not quite as good, my speeds are slower, but haven't has a dropped call. Verizon has LTE all through out my area, I was averging about 6 mbps down and 1.5 up. With T-Mobile at home I get about 1-2 down and 1 up, HSPA 15, sadly no 21 or 42 . I see Edge at lot when I leave the city, but its around 500 kbps down, so it's not terrible. But going from paying $200 a month with Verizon for 3 lines to $55 with Tmobile and $70 for one line of AT&T is well worth it to me. The $75 a month savings ($900 a year) is worth the slower speeds I get, but get way better battery life with HSPA+ than I was getting on my Galaxy Nexus with LTE. If you get good service in the places you travel it is well worth it.

What is considered good service, though?

It's not realistic for me to think the coverage will be good everywhere I go.

So far I get decent reception in the house, good reception ate mall I frequent, and e same level of service I get at my work that I got with ATT (which is non existent. Actually, no one at my job gets reception there, even on verizon )

I honestly don't travel a ton. So I'm just going to the places I frequent and see how good reception is at those places.

 

[chubb]

What is considered good service, though?

It's not realistic for me to think the coverage will be good everywhere I go.

So far I get decent reception in the house, good reception ate mall I frequent, and e same level of service I get at my work that I got with ATT (which is non existent. Actually, no one at my job gets reception there, even on verizon )

I honestly don't travel a ton. So I'm just going to the places I frequent and see how good reception is at those places.

To me acceptable service is having voice and text coverage, since after all these are phones. And since when I am on Edge I usually get around 500 kbps down the data is acceptable, not great not terrible. If I didn't have voice or text coverage at the least at home, work and the travel to and from, and out and about I wouldn't stay. I had Verizon LTE everywhere and realized since I don't stream music, or use GPS all the time, data speeds and coverage on the way to and from work were kinda meaningless to me. At work I have wifi and HSPA, same at home. Thats where I am 90% of the time so it works for me.

 

[IAmSixNine]

As other people have mentioned good services will be dependent on the user and location.
My good service requirements will be way different then my parents who use voice ONLY.

I also switched from Sprint to TMO a few months ago. I am not only saving money every month but for me the service has increased. I have the same coverage for my needs but with way better data speeds.
With any network location is so very important. If the network is meeting your needs for your device and daily usage then go for it..
Ive am pleased i made the switch.

 

[JamesTBurns]

Has anyone heard that prepaid T-Mobile get degraded service compared to postpaid? A T-Mobile rep told me this yesterday and I'm trying to vet this claim. If "degraded" service is between 5-10 mbs, I could care less. He explained all of the tech-speak behind it in detail, but it kind of lingered in my memory as something that might be said to try to get someone to sign a contract...

 

[minnemike]

Has anyone heard that prepaid T-Mobile get degraded service compared to postpaid? A T-Mobile rep told me this yesterday and I'm trying to vet this claim. If "degraded" service is between 5-10 mbs, I could care less. He explained all of the tech-speak behind it in detail, but it kind of lingered in my memory as something that might be said to try to get someone to sign a contract...

Well, for sure you don't get roaming - as for the rest, you'll just have to test it yourself and find some folks using both in the same area. Hell, just get a month of prepaid and sit right there next to the tmo guy and test it compared to his.

I have the post paid biz value plan and love it. I just hit 3mbps upload speed for the first time today sitting inside a movie theater of all places. I can get as high as 20mbps down too when near a tower.

 

[JamesTBurns]

Well, for sure you don't get roaming - as for the rest, you'll just have to test it yourself and find some folks using both in the same area. Hell, just get a month of prepaid and sit right there next to the tmo guy and test it compared to his.

I have the post paid biz value plan and love it. I just hit 3mbps upload speed for the first time today sitting inside a movie theater of all places. I can get as high as 20mbps down too when near a tower.

I bought a SIM with 2GB of data there yesterday. I'm getting near 2mbps down in my apartment, which is great for where I live. I'll take it to San Diego on Monday and test it out all over town there. I've gotten 12-15 down pretty consistently with TMO prepaid in Los Angeles before. If what he meant was that postpaid customers were getting the primo HSPA 21/42 service, and prepaid were getting the leftovers, I'll take it at those speeds, it looks like its faster than AT&T's contract LTE across the board in Los Angeles.

 

[runtmms]

I also made the switch from Sprint to T-Mobile (via Solavei.) My service has only improved.

One thing to note, you do get data roaming with Solavei (2g) which you don't with prepaid directly from T-Mobile. You also get 4GB unthrottled data.

Sent from my Nexus 4 on Solavei

 

[N4Newbie]

Well, for sure you don't get roaming...

This is incorrect. With T-Mobile's pay as you go plans ("Monthly4G"), you DON'T get data roaming, however you DO get voice roaming.

StraightTalk, on the other hand, does NEITHER data nor VOICE roaming.

 

[minnemike]

This is incorrect. With T-Mobile's pay as you go plans ("Monthly4G"), you DON'T get data roaming, however you DO get voice roaming.

StraightTalk, on the other hand, does NEITHER data nor VOICE roaming.

Yeah - I thought that would be assumed that you get voice roaming with most everyone. No voice roaming with ST? That sucks.

 

[Tall Mike 2145]

I would second what Jerry Hildenbrand above.

I get excellent reception everywhere I go, with so far one exception, and that is a Walmart that's north of me and isn't usually one I would go to anyhow.

Last weekend when I went down to FGCU in Estero, I discovered signal reception was kind of mediocre there, and pretty well non-existent inside of buildings. This tells me two things:

1. There aren't any (or many) nearby towers; and
2. FGCU evidently doesn't have any signal boosters in the buildings

Considering Edison State College, which is still mostly just a 2 year community college, has signal repeaters for the various carriers in its buildings, I find this pretty inexcusable on FGCU's part. However, they do have WiFi all over the place, and so only time will tell if that will be adequate for my needs. It may also be that I'll take online classes from them, thereby obviating the need to physically go all the way down there twice (or more?) a week.

I would complain that T-Mobile only has like one or two towers in the entire county, and just one or two more than that in all of S.W. Florida, but I've learned there's some kind of moratorium which prevents ANYONE from building more towers in Florida, so I can hardly fault T-Mo for the stupidity of my state government. Who knows; maybe I'll see if I can put my hands on a ST AT&T micro SIM card, and use them if it gets bad enough. I'd still be saving plenty of money over spending $80/mo with Sprint, and that makes me very happy.

 

[giograves]

I rely HEAVILY on Google maps navigation on my current Nexus S on Sprint.

I want to make a move with to the N4 on TMO prepaid, but not sure if this could bite me in the azz with the no roaming and the spotty tmo data service in the "sticks".

Any thoughts?

 

[gone down south]

I rely HEAVILY on Google maps navigation on my current Nexus S on Sprint.

I want to make a move with to the N4 on TMO prepaid, but not sure if this could bite me in the azz with the no roaming and the spotty tmo data service in the "sticks".

Any thoughts?

There's no generic answer to that, it's 100pct specific to the locations you spend the most time in.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums

 

[CoMoNexus]

I rely HEAVILY on Google maps navigation on my current Nexus S on Sprint.

I want to make a move with to the N4 on TMO prepaid, but not sure if this could bite me in the azz with the no roaming and the spotty tmo data service in the "sticks".

I wouldn't recommend making the switch. I recently switched from Sprint to TMO prepaid. I spend most of time in large towns and cities, where TMO speeds blow away Sprint, which rarely gave me more than 130 kbps. But when on interstates and in small towns, I've found that TMO service drops off a cliff. I'm lucky to get a signal, and when I do, it's GPRS. The other day I drove 15 minutes on I-70 and arrived at my destination before Google Navigation had finished downloading directions.