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.

Comments

Usage was lower then too

[TWX]

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.

Unpair phones from services.. seriously

[brxndxn]

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

Re:Antennas

[nightfire-unique]

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.

I'm with you against the whole form-over-function bullshit that's swept the mobile device world in the last 10 years, but I wouldn't necessarily call out internal antennas as the problem.

For one, frequencies are higher permitting smaller antennas. Voice channels are digital, and compressed, meaning lower data rates. And, quite frankly, if you can support data at megabit levels (which you can even at like -100dBm), you can support 44khz/16bit voice, let alone the unbelievable low bandwidth codecs we use.

I think it has more to do with the simple fact that people don't use voice as often, and manufacturers are putting their development effort elsewhere. This leads to problems like incorrect microphone placement, non-functioning noise cancellation, radio firmware bugs, poor process priority management, etc.

In the old days, I'd choose a phone based on how well it made calls. Now, it's literally the last thing I check, if I even check at all. Screen quality, data rates, processor performance, storage and RAM, internal sensor array and battery life are all far more important to me, and I suspect this is true for many, if not most. Even if it's not true, I think it's what manufacturer market research suggests, and so we are where we are.