Three UK network instability with Fairphone

Help Fairphone 1
1

Has anyone else experienced poor network stability with Three UK? The issue I have is as follows:

In certain locations signal with my FP1 (on Three UK network) is very temperamental. When I pick up the phone it will often have 3 or 4 bars of signal but as soon as I try to do anything this drops to no signal. It seems that the phone is changing between two network antennas, never fully establishing a full connection before giving up. If I take a call in such a location, it will usually be dropped after 10 seconds or so. One of the locations where I experience the
temperamental signal is my workplace.

I have just tried the sim card in another android phone and there are no problems. At work, with the Motorola Defy I get consistently 3 bars of 3G and a download/upload speed of 1.5/0.56 Mbps with a ping of 87. Therefore, the issue is specific to the Fairphone FP1. I recently got a new sim card from my network operator, Three UK, but this has made no difference.

Note that in many locations there is no problem with the performance - it seems to struggle in weak signal areas.

One last thing to highlight is that I have had this issue since buying the phone. I later cracked the screen and replaced it myself. When doing this, I noticed that a screw was missing from the original build (the black screw in the middle of the wifi daughter board - https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/xSxRL2PnPVDfB5aE). Is there any way this could affect the phone signal?

2

@anon43238275 - did you have problems with signal before you replaced the screen?

I’ve also moved this to the Fairphone Help! category to see if the community can offer some help on this.

3

Yes I did. I can’t work out whether it is just that the Fairphone doesn’t
cope well with low signal strength.

4

I’m on 3 on the UK too. I have noticed a particular problem with signal strength when indoors. I’ll will have to keep an eye on this…

5

Suggestion: set your network to WCDMA (=3G) only. If set to GSM/WCDMA automatic, my phone sometimes jump between the nets (causing the symptom you describe), even when a strong 3G signal is present.
Of course you may need to adjust settings when in an area with weak 3G coverage.

6

@kgha - thanks for your suggestion. I have tried this and I get possibly slightly better stability but still not great. I can’t help thinking that because the phone can find the stronger connection, it is a software issue rather than hardware issue that causes it to jump between antennas.

7

Missing screw at my FP1U too.

I’ve written FP Support, no answer as yet.

8

@EvaS after discussing with Fairphone support it was confirmed that the
extra screw isn’t required. I guess that the iFixIt team thought the scree
was missing and added it in. This is why the screw in their photo is
different.

1 Like
9

Oh, thankyou, it’s ok, now I know it :slight_smile:

10

No answer from support as yet …