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Cellphones Really Are Not As Good As They Were 10 Years Ago At Making Calls (telegraph.co.uk)
whoever57 writes: If you ever thought that your cellphone does not make calls as well as the cellphone you had 10 years ago, you may be right. The UK's Ofcom (roughly equivalent to the FCC) tested cellphones and found that many needed a much higher signal than the standards recommend in order to send and receive data. This applied to 2G, 3G and 4G connections. Confirmation bias has me nodding along; Google Fi has been dropping a huge percentage of my calls lately, and I've been unfairly reminiscing about the good old days with a heavy Nokia 5100 series phone.
It's not really a mystery. Phones used to have external antennas, and now they're not only internal but the phones themselves have mostly metal cases (because it feels so much more "premium") with a tiny plastic window for the antenna because that metal blocks the radio waves. This is textbook "form over function" design.
Living in Houston, TX with Verizon as my provider; I've never had a dropped call while talking (hands free) and driving for over an hour in and around the city. Perhaps it's just the increase in cell tower coverage and technology, but not having dropped calls is a massive, HUGE improvement over what it was 10 years ago!
Life is not for the lazy.
Ten years ago data was almost unheard of in cell phones. It was basically limited to SMS. People simply used their phones less.
Now EVERYONE has a phone and they're constantly in-use. Congestion is probably the bigger factor.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
2G, 3G, and 4G refer only to the datastream portion of the cellular system. Voice calls that do not use VoIP us the voice channel, which is completely independent of "G."
Admittedly though, more and more carriers are switching the voice systems off and using VoIP instead, so yeah we all know that cellular data sucks, and VoIP also sucks, so when you combine sucky with sucky you get an extra hot steaming pile of fail.
Antenna's serve a purpose. When they switched to having the phone act as an antenna, that's when things went to shit.
Google Fi has been dropping a huge percentage of my calls lately, and I've been unfairly reminiscing about the good old days with a heavy Nokia 5100 series phone.
You're holding it wrong
I get signal everywhere but in my house. So if signal isn't as good, meh.
There's a spot in my house where the signal is pretty weak, but I found over the last ten years that each new iPhone I bought was less likely than its predecessor to drop out or lose a call when I walked through that place. With my current phone, I can see the signal strength drop to one bar, but the connection generally remains up.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It works perfectly. And I don't need to browse the web while I'm at the restaurant, I don't use social media, I already have a navigation system in my car, so I have no need for a smartphone.
I remember pre-digital networks when we still got static over the line. then, you could make calls in absolutely HORRIBLE circumstances as long as you were good at making guesses through the static as to what the other person was saying. I remember my last phone that gave me a choice between the two modes, and it was the last best phone I used in that regard. That was practically a different era, nearly a decade ago :P
Great success!
You mean making calls, like talking with voice?
Cellphones are not really designed for that nowadays.
Cellphones are like a cheap Chinese made swiss-army knife clone. Designed to do many things, marginally "ok".
-A marginally acceptable "camera"
-A marginally acceptable "flashlight"
-A good GPS
-A marginally acceptable web-broswer/computer
-A marginally acceptable voice communication function
-A marginally acceptable text device.
-A marginally acceptable video player
-A Marginally acceptably battery life
Put all these tradeoffs together, and you get a device that's just barely "good enough" to do any of these things, but really fails at it's once-core function, to "make and receive voice calls".
They are personal computers. Yeah, they can connect to a cell tower, but essentially that's the only difference between a stock laptop and smart phone nowadays besides formfactor. Might as well call laptops phones too.
You do not have to buy a silly smartphone.
You can just get a strong decent old phone, like the famous Nokia 3310, replace the battery by a new shiny one in top condition, and you can have many years of good calls.
I find that usability has declined greatly since my Desire Z. I truly wish I had the means to design my own smartphone. It would look a lot like a Nokia Communicator 9500...
The best part about our modern cellphone infrastructure is that nobody expects to have a realtime voice conversation anymore. It isn't really a wonder that our phones suck at being phones, nobody seems to actually want that.
I do a lot of work out in the boonies where cell phone coverage is spotty, and my Samsung flip phone continues to get service where my coworker's iPhones and Androids do not. The only problem I have now is that I can't find replacement batteries for it, and the one it has holds very little charge (BTW, very little for this phone means I have to charge it more than once a week - I used to be able to go 10-12 days when the battery was fresh).
The only way I know of to keep a competitive environment where cellular carriers cannot fuck with user experiences and device makers get a fair shake is to prevent cellular services companies from providing the phones. It's anecdotal (because I don't know of any app that will allow me to prove this), but I am certain TMobile drops data connections of my phone detects wifi signals nearby - even if Wifi is off. It basically forces me to use a wifi signal even though I'm perfectly happy using the cellular data signal that I pay for. It happens in good coverage areas. If devices were decoupled from cellular service providers, the device makers would have much more incentive to show the user that the device is not causing the issue. And, the services would have much more incentive to show which devices play well with their networks. Since cell phone services control the device, they can install the worlds worst battery-hogging software that just annoys the user - and prevent the user from removing it.
So, to sum it up:
- cellular service companies are evil, make too much money, and don't spend enough money upgrading their networks
- cellular device companies need to grow a backbone and prevent cellular services from screwing up the user experience
- cellular service companies should not be able to control every aspect of the cellular device
- cellular services AT&T and Verizon are especially evil
--- We need more Ron Paul!
My ancient Nokia 6680 still works better for calls, texting and other basic functions than any modern smartphone I've encountered so far. And it's a smartphone too, with some really cool apps!
Speak for yourself, instead of assuming you know what everyone in the world is thinking.
When I was shopping for a phone I remember wishing they had specifications like they have for amateur radio gear. Stuff like antenna pattern, antenna gain, maybe some effective radiated power, then some specs on the receiver for sensitivity, selectivity, and spurious and image rejection ratio. But even this article was too chicken to release any data.
Cellphones were dramatically better at calls back in the analog days. I have an audiovox phone that the audio was 900X better than the most expensive cellphone today and even in fringe areas you could still make that call through the static as human brains are good at filtering signals and pulling speech out.
Granted I dont miss the 2 hour talk time and having to charge the damn thing 3 times a day, nor that it made even a Galaxy Tablet look small. Oh and YES I did have a smartphone before all of you as well, I also carried a Nokia 9000. That was back in 1996. that damn thing had to be on a charger constantly.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
10 years ago (in the US), I got my first cell-phone - a simple feature-phone. No data plan. SMS/texts were $0.20/each. It was a LG flip-phone on a Verizon family contract (I will NEVER buy another LG phone.) These days, I carry around an iPhone4 on an AT&T monthly family plan..
I'm hardly a first adopter of phones.
That said, even I've noticed the changes in the cell-phone networks. And the most used feature of my phone is the calendar & alarms. Actual real-time communication with a smart-phone seems to be an afterthought.
This. I really do not like "talking" on my phone and seldom do. I don't care if it can make a call or not as long as I have connectivity for SMS and internet.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Sometimes words mean things. In this case "telephone" means "computer". I don't know why they still insist on calling them phones. I don't think I ever see a younger person actually using one as a phone. Lots of people with bad posture and neck problems abound in our future.
Apple tried this a few years ago with the iPhone 4. It didn't work out so well. Simply holding the phone in the "wrong way" made it drop the connection.
[Cut back to Fry, who is relaxing, when his head shakes and we hear a bell ringing. A telephone icon is shown on the eyePhone screen.]
Fry: What's happening to me? Is it puberty?
Bender: It's a phone call, dingus.
Fry: These eyePhones are phones, too?
Bender: Duh!
I don't call my microwave a refrigerator. Why would you call a computer a phone?
They are simply glorified walkie-talkies! Largely they depend on line of sight to a tower and if you do not have that you may as well be using two cans and a string. That is why carriers are being forced to install hot spots to make up for crappy performance that is inherently typical of consumer mobile communications.
Sad but true.
Fail.
And yet everyone still calls them phones, and they seem to still include telephony function.
I am certain TMobile drops data connections of my phone detects wifi signals nearby
Actually, this might be more a function of the same antenna being used for cellular, bluetooth, and wifi signals.
Antennas, the reason? Cellphone communications have always been expensive. At the beginning of the mobile phone era, the subscribers fee had to cover the cost of the new infrastructure etc... Then, 15 years later, while the number of subscribers exploded, the monthly cost to use a cellphone is still high. Sure, there were some technological improvements, but did the carriers largely upgrade their infrastructure to cope with all that traffic? Or did they make sure to keep the milk cow alive?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The Nokia 5100 from 2003 wasn't heavy. Check the specs at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's 104 grams.
Comparison:
2007 iPhone: 135 g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
2011 Samsung Galaxy S2 116 g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
2011 iPhone 4S 140 g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
2015 Samsung Galaxy S6 138 g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
2015 iPhone 6S 143 g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Phones got bigger and heavier, which is not a surprise also considering all the new stuff that got packed inside vs the feature phones era.
Earnest question. Nearly everyone I know uses Skype, Facetime, and/or messaging for all their communication. Sure we still have to use cellular occasionally but it's not the norm.
I live within a few miles of a major southeastern college that specializes in Football: Clemson University [sic]. On home game days, I basically cannot use my cell phone at all. The entire network grinds to a halt despite them trucking in extra microsites for the stadium. There are still 80,000 additional people in town where the cellular infrastructure is designed to handle the 20,000 regular residents.
1. Complexity creeping everywhere
2. Governments requiring surveillance functions from network operators
3. Governments requiring surveillance functions in handsets
4. Governments using "offline" half-legal surveillance / eavesdropping in-place
5. Network operators overselling capacity
6. Multiband radios (700/900/1800/1900/2100MHz) + multiple radios close together (GSM/CDMA + wifi + BT + NFC)
7. Multiple devices close together (~2 phones, tablet, laptop, IOT devices)
8. Multiple cheap low quality radio/cell devices in use upping the noise floor
Well, since one of the more popular phone lines is the iPhone, and since the late Steve Jobs helpfully pointed out that most of the users are holding it wrong, is this much of a surprise?
My phone application sits in a folder on the second screen of my iPhone, next to 'TimeHop'. It is one of the least important functions that my 'phone' has. It may be worse at making calls than older phones used to be, but I make an order of magnitude fewer calls than I used to as well. If I spend more than a couple hours total on the phone a YEAR, I'd be surprised.
Phoning someplace is my last resort. If I've got to phone somewhere and there's no other choice, I'll actually consider whether or not I want to shop there/use that service.
Good riddance.
As usual. It should be:
Basic Cellphones Better at Making Calls than Smartphones.
The external was a simple coil/linear antennae. The new antennae's in phones use a design that is "Fractal" in nature. This "Fractal" nature for antennae's leading to a much larger signal gain over traditional antennae was discovered by a German Boy Scout working on his Ham radio license. He experimented with different designs, and found a clear signal gain the more he made the antenna fractal in nature (he didn't immediately understand that it was fractal, but, he had the data plotted against various designs that were basically loops of more and more internal opposing bends (think more and more pointed star instead of circle). When this data/finding was analyzed and he began working with experts in the field, and himself learned more about fractals, he ended up with a patent on the concept. That is why "All of the Sudden" phones went from having external antennae to internal. The internal is a "Fractal" antennae that can be much, much, much more compact while have much better gain etc.
How about 8 years ago. Everyone that tries my old phone says it sounds better than their new phone :)
Starting to get old now...the battery only lasts 4 days now.
About four or five years ago, I heard a review of celphones on NPR. They went on for 10 min about K3wl features of a half a dozen or dozen new phones, then, to wrap up, asked the question of "how about voice quality?".
The response was that one was more-or-less ok, one mediocre, and the rest terrible.
Then there's the 50% of you with your bloody mobiles... 15 years ago, I used to get aggravated by idiots in Chicago with the LATESTK3WL tiny phone... that they'd entertain half an el car (with all the noise) with their "private conversation". It's the same now, as you idiots hold the phone at chest level, or waist level, and yell at it/
And give me a break - it's over a century and a quarter since the telephone was invented, and we still have about the same audio quality as phone made in, say, the 1940s... except on cellphones, where it's *worse*.
mark, who uses his flip phone to make, y'know,
phone calls to *talk* to people"
I wonder if any of this is bugs hacks added to the radio firmware for the security agencies (and/or other malware purveyors)? B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Considering all those action movies that used flip phones from 1998-2008--they never dropped a call in those dire situations!
Sure. Modern cell phones have everything except the kitchen sink, but they also have to deal with modern corporate greed to get the costs down and get the profits up higher. Not only do most carriers refuse to upgrade their infrastructure but even US hardware manufacturers have off-shored everything. Shoddy counterfeit components from China make up the circuitry, they are assembled by hand from what most sane people would consider slave labor, and poor quality control by managers desperate to shove as many units out the door as they can in order to meet this months ridiculously high quota. And people in the US are actually surprised when the sound quality sucks? Come on. The things are only designed to get through a two year contract then fall apart and I know several people where their phones never make it through the first year, and not necessarily because they are careless with them.
Its only going to get worse, I have a three year old Motorola and my friend has a brand new Samsung, we both have Verizon as a carrier. Most of the time when he is "out of service" I still have two bars and can make calls or access the internet with no problems.
Confirmation bias has me nodding along;
I'm convinced that confirmation bias strongly affects human reactions, and this is just the evidence I needed to prove it.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Well, the technology already spoke for me. If phones are worse now at being "telephones" and better at literally everything else, it stands to reason that this is some sort of pattern.
If they're going to test it properly, they should take a phone from 10 years ago as-is and try to use it on today's networks.
Because chances are, as many have pointed out, a big problem is congestion and the cell phone companies screwing us, not the device itself.
3W Analog is Superior to 250mW Digital no matter how big the antenna is. Cheap is cheap. A 3W analog cell phone is just superior in every way.
Ten years ago, my phone dropped 50% of my calls within 3 minutes. Today I pay 25% as I did back then, and my phone only drops like 1% of calls.
10 Years ago, my phone only had it's antenna half the time as it was frequently getting broken in my pocket. Without one it was really insensitive!
This trend toward tiny, skinny phones with no external antenna, made to fit in the rear pocket of a male ad model's girlfriend jeans, has stripped cellular phones of their mechanical robustness, large potential gains in battery capacity, and last but not least, their core functionality. Cell phones today are vastly more fragile and failure prone than the phones of yesteryear, and to top it off, they can barely make calls indoors, and often experience trouble outdoors in my service area. If this were the boondocks I'd understand, but in a mid-size city with plenty of cell towers and limited congestion, the only explanation that makes sense involves the devices themselves.
Clamshell phones with external antennas, especially (and inexplicably) older models which can approach ten years of age, simply get better reception. They can place calls more reliably indoors and outdoors, and they can deal with obstructions that other, newer phones simply can not cope with. It didn't take this article to prove that, either. Speaking from personal experience, both a friend of mine and I used ancient Motorola value phones up until two years ago and last year respectively, while a family member made a switch another two years prior. All of us got flat touch screen phones. All of us experienced immediate and severe declines in service quality. I'm the last holdout who hasn't switched back to a flip phone with an external antenna, and I've considered reactivating my old clamshell now that I've found it. (All it needs is a new battery.) Bear in mind, all three of us were using value phones before... and we switched to value feature phones made recently. Ancient, outdated pieces of junk that were never high quality to begin with make better calls!
They really don't make 'em like they used to, and that's a huge problem for anyone who uses their cell phone as their primary means of contact.
The camera, the screen, the case materials, siri ... seems like everything except the telephone functions is what's people seem more concerned with, nowadays. So, if it isn't as much of a marketing advantage, why would mfrs pay as much attention to phone quality, when they could spend money and hype the features that sell the phones?
This is no surprise to those of us who have spent time in the networking industry. The root cause of this problem is that the core cellular technology has been completely de-valued in the eyes of customers.
If you look at the high tech industry from an economic POV, it is obvious that the benefits of all the investment at every layer of the protocol stack is accruing to the internet companies like Google, Amazon & Facebook. It takes years of planning, tremendous knowhow and massive investment to create a cellular standard, and creating wireless equipment is still extremely complex. You need to hire engineers with training in electrical engineering and communication theory. But since the end customer places no value to the technology (how much extra would you pay for a phone to use a cellular implementation that does not drop calls?), the companies that build such equipment have collapsed.
10 years ago, 3 of the top 5 telecomm companies in the world were based out of North America (Lucent, Nortel, Motorola). All these companies have been devastated, their carcasses consumed by European companies that themselves went under. So the telecomm arms of Alcatel, Lucent, Nokia & Siemens, Motorola are now (or will shortly be) one combined entity. Ericsson and Huawei, who enjoy extensive support from their respective governments, are #1 and #2 in the world. Ericcson equipment is still nominally decent, but Huawei's is absolutely terrible and 1/10th the price. But guess what... nobody cares.
10 years ago, telecomm equipment was supposed to provide 5 nines reliability. That means that the entire network had to stay up for all but 5 minutes a YEAR, and the downtime had to be scheduled. I have seen senior executives fired summarily due to their organizations failure to do their part to maintain these goals. It is relatively easy to make equipment that can make a few calls and then crash. Much more difficult to make stuff that stays up for years and keeps on ticking. All these experts who knew how to design such systems are mostly unemployed or working for insurance companies.
The demise of the traditional telecomms have been accompanied by the decline in health of core technology companies. Qualcomm, which used to be the Bell Labs of the 90s and 2000s, and who pioneered most of the 3G and 4G technologies that we take for granted these days is struggling and a shadow of its former self. They are facing brutal competition from MediaTek, the Huawei of the communication chip industry. MediaTek is Taiwanese knockoff who has pretty much stolen Qualcomm's IP, refuse to pay royalties and are protected by the Chinese government (a bizarre situation considering China's official political stance on Taiwan). Mediatek's chips are known in the industry to be at least 3 dB worse than Qualcomm's chips, and far less stable. If you have a non-Qualcomm chip in your phone, you are far more likely to experience call drops and overall airlink failures. (Disclaimer: I have never worked for Qualcomm and have no connection with the company, though I do own some Qualcomm stock. I have, however, spent years in the cellular networking industry). There was a time when no phone manufacturer would have even contemplated putting such an inferior chip into even their low end phones. Now, however, Mediatek's chips are available even in high-end products sold in western countries. They pretty much own the third world.
Most folks especially young people do not make voice calls these days. Data is far more tolerant to airlink errors, and web protocols are so overweight and clunky that the efficiencies provided by a more stable implementation are drowned out by the sheer bulk of HTTP. Furthermore, the customer has now been conditioned to experience a poor cellular experience when they use their apps.
The other major factor is the demise of the cellular industry is the ascent of Wifi. Most folks are on Wifi > 60% of their time anyway.
You are just using the wrong phone. It is common for me to be the only one with 3 bars on AT&T, while everyone else has 0 bars AT&T and 0 bars Verizon. But they are all Android and Apple junk. One place in particular I frequent often enough that I ask people if they can make a call for me, because I know they can't. It's amusing when I then pull my BB out and call w/o issue. And it even has a keyboard and FIPS certification! hahahha
The least important function on my smart phone is the ability to make phone calls.
I still have my first cell phone, and it runs just fine. I was bored one day, decided to unlock it and give it a whirl. It's really depressing how the call quality is far superior than my android. That, and the fact that it has snake that's actually fun to play on a phone.
Who knew?
And cell phones still have crappy voice quality compared to land lines.
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
Just make sure your phone uses WiFi...80% of your use will be within reach of a WiFi router....used Skype for 10 years this way before Microsoft messed it up for Linux users....Loved dropping my monthly from $150 per month to $9.00 per month. Bought new computers from ZaReason with the savings!
Yes I know WiFi uses an Antenna, it was a Back to the Futures reference, silly!
I do pine for my old Nokia. Battery lasts a week, great reception, clearer calls, AND.. I can successfully manage Call Waiting without dropping the other or both callers every single time (...thanks Droid2, Droid3, Droid4, iPhone5s, iPhone6) And I loved the old call management functions.. used to be I could use codes or menu functions to forward calls when I am unavailable, such as when I am in the mountains and intermittently in coverage. I could forward the calls to the landline in the condo. Now, that functionality does not exist whatsoever in the mobile, at least not on Motorola's version of Android.