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i760 vs. i850 vs. i560

bkw212007

Jul 26, 2006, 1:24 PM
Hello all...I'm going to buy one of the above phones to upgrade from my i530. I don't care if it has a camera or not and screen size really doesn't matter to me either. (Just having a color screen at all would be nice!) I thought I would see if there is anyone who has used either of these phones and noticed any difference in reception, since the only real difference is that the i850 has a camera. If there is a difference, I'm going to get the one that's better. I bought an i730 not long ago to replace my i530. Well, I had reception problems with that i730 from day one, and recently, the PTT button stopped working. That phone is a real piece... So, I'm back on my i530, which I love, but it's just time for an upgrade. If anyone knows ...
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nextel18

Jul 26, 2006, 1:42 PM
You said this post twice, but I bet it was by accident. Nonetheless, those phones are all bad so I would stay away from them. It seems like the RF on them aren’t as good as some of the other ones. I am not sure why, but Motorola likes to play with Nextel’s emotions and money. I suggest the i870, because I have it personally as well as others, but more importantly is that the RF performance is quite good.
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bkw212007

Jul 27, 2006, 11:48 AM
Yes, the second post was accidental. Well, the i870 isn't for me, as I don't need the MP3 and such. How does the RF performance on the i850 compare to the i530? I have never had a problem with my i530.
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nextel18

Jul 27, 2006, 12:15 PM
When I had both of those phones the I530 outperforms, but with that said, both of them were horrible. Actually, the i730 performs better then the i530, when I tested both and that was a big surprise.
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bkw212007

Aug 3, 2006, 12:21 AM
Yes, I had an i730 for awhile and I noticed that it picked up a little better than the i530. The thing was, the i730 chopped and dropped calls much more even with a good signal, and the signal was like a yoyo. Then the PTT button quit working on it and instead of trying to have it repaired, since I got it cheap off eBay anyhow, I just squeezed it in a vice, in frustration...and it's now the thinnest iDEN phone ever made... 🙂 . I love Nextel, but that i730 was just no good. I loved the phone itself when it did work, but just too many problems with it. Anyways, which flip phones have performed best in terms of RF for you?
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nextel18

Aug 8, 2006, 10:01 AM
Blame Motorola for the problems that you are facing with your phones not Nextel.

The phones that have been good RF for me? Hmm. I would say recently the i870.
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SprintBGN

Aug 12, 2006, 10:35 PM
all of those phones are crap...the i560/760/850 triplets have major flip issues, and the 870 isnt that far behind....i work in an authorized repair store and the 850, 560, and the 870 are in my store 24/7
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nextel18

Aug 15, 2006, 8:08 AM
I would disagree with you on the i870, but with the others, I would agree.

The I870 is actually a great phone and that is based on internal statistics both from sales and from repair stores with inquires.
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bkw212007

Aug 16, 2006, 12:10 AM
Well, I just bought a new i850 and I love it. It seems to pick up a little better than my i530, which I never had any problems with. Plus, there is a new Nextel tower going up nearby. I'm in a rural area here, and signal isn't always the best, so that will be really nice. Anyways, I will agree with SprintBGN in that my flip feels kind of cheap and makes a creaking noise when I push on it, but my i530 and i730 somewhat did that as well, and besides that, I love the phone and its features. Also, the pictures on Nextel.com don't do it any justice. It is really a cool, slick looking phone, and I like that it is smaller than the i530. Seems pretty durable, as it has already dropped onto concrete and it just fine.
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nextel18

Aug 16, 2006, 8:47 PM
Very interesting;

Do you know what your TX status is?
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bkw212007

Aug 17, 2006, 10:54 PM
I get a full four bars at the house here. Right now the signal strength is -86. Is that what you're looking for out of the TX Status? Because honestly, I don't know what the rest of the numbers mean, except for the code at top-right, which is the current tower.

By the way, you probably already know, but I discovered that under GPS-->Location in Trace Mode, the latitude and longitude of the current tower are given. You can take that, type it in Google Maps, and tell exactly where the tower is...pretty cool!
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nextel18

Aug 18, 2006, 8:00 AM
Well “bars” actually mean nothing or very little and the most important thing that I or any other technical person looks at is what is located on that TX status menu.

Well, give me your numbers and I will try to help you understand and frankly there are some data in there I do not understand either.

Also remember, those numbers change every mile-second.

I already knew about that you can input the tower and put it in Google but I have a better system where I actually know, especially in this area, of where the cell towers are co-coordinated with the data given because I have a tower database.

(I also know about others nationwide if I input the data but I cannot give the results and obviously, you and others know why)
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bkw212007

Aug 22, 2006, 12:05 AM
Sorry, I missed this. Well, I'll just type the numbers in order:

Under TX Status...

28.2 02 3A3-10
-00db -87 0
+29 +0 0

Hopefully that helps.
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nextel18

Aug 23, 2006, 8:38 AM
Not bad...

28.2 is signal quality.

-87 is signal strength

3A3-10 is the tower

(the signal quality and strength might be the other way around. I forgot actually which one is which)
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bkw212007

Aug 23, 2006, 3:24 PM
The -87 is strength, and it increases as you get farther from a tower, with -127 being the cutoff point for having service. I do know that much and that 3A3-10 is the tower, but I was clueless on the remaining numbers. Anyways, it can only get better...I'm 11 miles from that 3A3-10 tower and still getting a great signal. Of course, it's kind of a unique situation, since the tower is at a high elevation and so am I, and the area in between lays lower. That probably helps some. The new antenna going up is only 4-5 miles away, but not nearly as tall. This will just be an antenna stuck on an extended light pole at a football field, versus what I'm getting now, a full size tower. I don't know if it will improve my coverage or not...what do...
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nextel18

Aug 23, 2006, 4:22 PM
Yea, I always get confused which one is signal strength and signal quality but that is not a big deal because those numbers technical people would know anyway.

I am actually surprised that you are getting that number, obviously it changes every mili-second and same with signal quality, and you are 11 miles away because quite frankly, the FCC limits towers to go only 1-5 miles away.

High elevation obviously is key and also how much the spectrum is being held/used on that tower, but to transmit over 11 miles is quite unlikely.

Anything closer to you will be improving your coverage, but the problem is, since it will be a small one, how much spectrum would it hold because that is the key here.

The also situation where I don’t thin...
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cellphonesaretools

Aug 24, 2006, 8:36 AM
Can anyone tell me why the signal strength bounces aroeund so much in some places? I'm 1.5 miles from the closest tower, within three miles of a couple more. Standing in one place in my house, or even out in the yard, the signal bounces up and down drastically, from four bars to one to zero to four to two to zero to one to zero to four, etc. Watching Tx and Rx status shows the signal strength and signal quality numbers bouncing around exactly the same manner as the signal strength bars do (bouncing -75 to -105). Calm air, no clouds or lightning storms, nothing but still dry air. Time of day doesn't matter. Same behavior with both i560 and i55sr handsets. A Nextel network engineer once told me that a bad T1 line to a tower can cause signal to...
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bkw212007

Aug 26, 2006, 11:29 PM
I have noticed the exact same thing. It does it in town in places where the nearest tower is only a few blocks away. It will drop from four bars to zero and voice quality will deteriorate badly. I've even dropped a call once when it has happened due to "No Service". This lasts about 5-10 seconds, and then it shoots right back up to four bars again. It's only occasional, but still, it shouldn't happen, and I have absolutely no idea why it does.
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nextel18

Sep 22, 2006, 10:22 AM
Well many things can cause such a move in the strength and quality of the signal. Anything from the air, to storms, to any t1 down, capacity problems, your body, in building or in car, etc.
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cellphonesaretools

Sep 24, 2006, 6:52 AM
My post on 08-24 clearly ruled out everything you mentioned except T1 problems or network capacity. Both of which are indicators that Nextel is either (A) over capacity and the network is just plain saturated, or (B) they aren't maintaining their network the way they used to, or both.
Either way, Nextel is losing credibility and customers faster than you can say "Verizon". Sprint never had any credibility, so no loss there; it's just the Nextel users that have been screwed.
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nextel18

Sep 27, 2006, 9:53 AM
Well, even if there is clear air there could still be some problems that could arise. I did forget to mention that interference could happen with buildings and other equipment out there. Remember, Nextel is going through the consensus plan (FCC re-banding plan) and as you know that takes a lot of capacity and spectrum from the system in which they have to take the necessary steps to re-band it, re-tune it, give some back to the FCC in order to get some back and then put it back on the network.

It simply has to deal with the consensus plan.
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jrfdsf

Nov 4, 2006, 3:19 PM
Actually, Sprint is investing quite a bit of money in upgrading and boosting Nextel's network as well as maintaining it. The problems you've described are not unique to Nextel by any stretch of the imagination. When my wife had Cingular, they were in the process of merging with ATT and working through a system wide change-over themselves. We also experienced dropped calls, not getting through when there was full signal strength shown on the handset and "network busy" messages when trying to make calls. Cingular and ATT managed to work through this and now they have a much better network as a result. Every cell phone I've ever seen or used I've noticed the signal jumps around quite a bit, especially if you move the phone around or are in an a...
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cellphonesaretools

Nov 5, 2006, 2:21 AM
Well, I hope you're right about Sprint backpedalling and actually strengthening the Nextel iDEN system, for at least awhile, to stop Nextel defections .

But there is no doubt that my Nextel experience in southern California since the takeover by Sprint has been an overall degredation of signal, capacity and sound quality. As I've said before in other posts, we switched from ATT to Nextel almost 4 years ago because ATT could not make or hold about 60% of calls we placed/received, whereas Nextel worked like a champ. At first, with Nextel I had 3 or 4 dropped calls per year, but for the past year I get 3 or more dropped calls per week. The Nextel network engineers actually used to reply to my reports of network issues, now they just ignore t...
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nextel18

Nov 5, 2006, 5:56 AM
As I mentioned to him I will mention to you that during the consensus plan, we are starting to see a lot of problems capacity wise nationwide, but the good news is when it is completed, there wont be any types of these problems any more.

Sprint is still maintain the IDEN network and not degrading it. That is a very bad thing to do, as we can see with the problem Cingular is facing with that charge.

Unfortunately, engineers only care if there are 5-50+ problems instead of one or two because it costs money and time to go out to every single cell site etc. to see what the problems are. If you know people that is a different story but good luck if you do not.

In hospitals and some other areas they sometimes put signal blockers on top...
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bkw212007

Nov 5, 2006, 9:20 AM
Yes, Nextel phones are bad for interference. As someone was calling me, mine changed the track on a nearby CD player once... 🙂
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nextel18

Nov 6, 2006, 6:25 AM
See now if you lose a remote control, you could always use your Nextel phone. 🙂
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jrfdsf

Nov 5, 2006, 2:55 PM
This is the case. I don't know what's going on in S. California, but I know in my area, Cingular is having network problems as well. All wireless networks have problems and issues they must deal with, and usually they work through them. What has happened is Sprint in an effort to get everyone on the CDMA only bandwagon, has created a crisis for the IDEN network by overplaying problems that it does have to the max. All this is is corporate politics, trying to use a little psychology on the consumer by convincing them they're working hard to do the right thing and help them, when in reality, they are just finding a clever way to justify what they wanted to do all along. If Nextel were the best most reliable network out there and there wasn't e...
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bkw212007

Aug 26, 2006, 11:35 PM
It's all pretty weird. I've also been using another tower that to my northwest about 15 miles. It depends on the weather, I suppose, as to which one I pick up. The thing is that I don't think elevation comes into play with this tower. If you have a database, it's 40F-E3. Yes, cell towers aren't supposed to reach more than 5 miles...I never have known why...is it really just because the FCC limits it? If that's the case, that's dumb, because better range definitely means a better footprint. Of course it could be interference that causes them to limit it. At any rate, very interesting stuff.....
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cellphonesaretools

Aug 27, 2006, 7:58 AM
I've heard that one of the main reasons the "power setting" (i.e. signal range) of a given tower is how close it is to humans. The ones that are on the tops of buildings have to be lower power than the ones that sit on top of a remote mountain, just due to the limits of human exposure to radiated RF emission.

Maybe Nextel18 can shed some light on the signal strength jumping issue in the preceding posts...
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nextel18

Sep 22, 2006, 10:13 AM
It isn’t dumb that the FCC regulates the tower power because it lowers the radiation being sent out by the tower. The companies just need to make strategic decisions when it comes to putting towers X miles away.
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