Nexus S, signal strength in Winnipeg

[Tarv]

I've had this phone for about 20 days now and It isn't working for me.  I can no longer use my phone in my basement, and numerous places around the city I have trouble getting decent signal.  Can anyone offer feedback that has this phone in Winnipeg?

In my basement in South St VItal my signal strenth is anywhere from -105 to -90 dbm.  Upstaris I get up to -80 dbm.  Outside I've seen it as high as -70 dbm.

I'm missing calls all the time and have trouble placing calls.  As I came from another provider (MTS on their CDMA network), I don't know if this is the network or the phone causing me problems.

I would have returned the phone before the 15 day guarantee, but I was well over the 30 minute talk time within a few days.  To be honest I wanted to make it work as nobody can't beat Fido's plan with my usage.

 ***Edited to add labels***

[Tarv]

Too bad nobody could reply. I'm currently trying to find a used Nexus S before I send this off for repair. I hope the next Nexus S works so I don't have to find another phone.

I will keep this updated.

[pszkraba]

I have a Nexus S in Winnipeg and I've never had a reception problem, but I don't have a data plan (have wifi everywhere I go) and use 2G only to save on battery life.

[FidoStephane · Accepted solution]

Hey there Tarv, 

The issue could be with your SIM card. Make sure you have a 3G SIM and not a 2G.

A good test to probe the issue, is to place your SIM into another 3G phone to see if the issue persists. If it does, the SIM is clearly defective.

hope that helps,

[Tarv]

New sim card so I hope they would give the proper one.  I'm definately connecting to UMTS, HSDPA 3G network with this phone.

[hedgesburn]

Hey there, don't know if you ever found a resolve to this - but I think I might have an idea...i'm going to be posting another thread to see if anyone can confirm.  I just bougth and Droid 2 Global and unlocked it to use on fido.  Right away I noticed that my signal strength dropped and I thought...**bleep** I got a defective phone.

then I was playing with settings and it gave me the option of GSM only (better battery life), UMTS only (better performance), or automatic.  So I read a bit more, seems like rogers/fido is slowly launching a UMTS network, but I gather its not full strength quite yet.  From what I read, UMTS is still new, it can run alongside GSM but uses code division instead of time division..ok a bit to techy maybe...

Anyway, when I switch to GSM only, I get full signal strength.  When I switch to UMTS only, the signal is much weaker, however my download speeds are way way faster, like 2-3x or more faster.  So maybe your phone is also UMTS capable, and your phone is accessing the rogers/fido UMTS network which is not full strength quite.  I'm gonna post a new thread with this question, maybe someone in the know in confirm.