Hi fellow fairphoners,
I’m having a bit of a problem with my FP2: Even if it shows decent reception (half signal strength), e.g. inside a building, my phone sometimes has problems starting a call. In calls, the called person sometimes doesn’t hear me or only hears me interruptedly, while I can hear them perfectly all them time.
The weirdest thing happened in a friends house - I could start a call outside the house, and it would work fine. As soon as I walked inside, the call would still continue, and I could hear the called person fine, but he wouldn’t hear me at all.
So to me it seems like my phone is somehow not creating a strong enough signal to get through to the nearest base station.
Has anybody else experienced this? Any known workarounds? Didn’t find any mentions of the exactly same problem here yet (No signal, bad data connection seems related but not exactly the same).
I couldn’t tell exactly when these problems started, but it might be since my switch to Open OS or the last update to it.
I’m using FP2 Open OS 16.12.0 (security patch level 5th december 2016), I’m based in Austria with carrier drei (I’ve heard reports from friends with reception problems with this carrier, but they were more about general weak reception, not about having signal and not being able to place a call).
I also had a similar problem. For me, I first experienced it when I tried to call inside the new house we just bought. At some places, I had no reception at all, other places made it possible to get a call and hear somebody (not clear, but I could hear them), but to talk myself, I had to go outside.
Not really something to look forward to, not being able to call inside your own house
So I contacted support. I already had some other unsolved problems before, and all these together were too much. I did send the phone back to FP two days ago, they will probably have to replace it
I had similar problems at my location. We are already at the boundary of what Vodafone UK called “official coverage” and I am not sure if I can attribute these problems to Vodafone or the FP2. However I am interested to hear other peoples experiences, because in my case the problem appeared more or less suddenly and I am not sure if one of the FP OpenOS updates has caused the problem.
I am basically using two “workarounds”:
Yesterday I installed a “Vodafone Sure Signal”. That is a device that creates a so called “femtocell” - a small local 3G mobile cell in your house. It uses an internet connection to relay the calls to the provider, so you need a decent internet connection. The “sure signal” works fine so far and has the advantage that you can register other (Vodafone) users - in my case my wifes phone - as well. Other providers are selling similar devices under different names, but be careful about buying equipment from unknown sources over the internet: These devices are radio transmitters, so they have to comply with the regulations of your country, otherwise you are violating the law. Its best to talk to your provider about this.
It sometimes helps to “nudge” your phone to use a 2G instead of a 3G or 4G connection. But bear in mind that this will give you creeping slow data. 2G (and partly 4G) have better building penetration because of the lower radio frequencies in use. You can go to Settings / Wireless & networks / …more / Mobile networks / preferred network type and set it to “2G only”. Another option is the “Network” app on F-Droid that is basically a shortcut to more advanced network settings on your phone. This app is great if you want to tweak your phones network settings, but you need to know what you do otherwise you can accidentally disconnect yourself by choosing the wrong options (still no reason for panicking, because you can always revert to your old settings).
Just to clarify, my house is in the middle of the city. So I guess it’s not a problem of the signal… Besides, my sim seemed to work in an other phone. Even my old FP1 seems to have a signal in most of the rooms.
