I HATE my cell phone service. The fact that I live in rural Vermont doesn’t help any, I’m sure, but they’re just awful. There are only two companies that even claim to provide coverage in our area, and we don’t get a signal from either one at my house. I also don’t get coverage at work. Other than that, it’s great, except for the pockets of no coverage scattered around the area, meaning that I drop something like 90% of my calls. And for this, I pay over $100 a month for the family.
I’m disagree that the quality of voice communication sucks these days and the general sentiment that modern phones suck as phones. Some phones suck, plenty others don’t.
This is true, but it’s not really fair to blame phones in general because someone has made a poor choice with their phone or carrier. Do you blame all modern cars as being worthless and praise the cars of the 70s for their reliability when your friend fails to show up because his cheap unreliable car breaks down?
My point is that the anger at modern phones over this phenomenon is misdirected when it should be pointed at the poorly manufactured phones and the poor carriers and the people who choose to use those devices while still expecting the quality and reliability of the better options.
Unfortunately, that’s just part of the trade off. I pay more to have Verizon than I could with a TracFone or Spring or a number of other carriers despite that I really don’t use my phone all that much (I used 56 minutes last month, which is actually high for me), but part of that cost comes with the expectation that I will have good coverage when I do need to use it. If it’s all you can afford and the coverage sucks, that’s unfortunate, but that’s the trade off.
But, basically, yeah, you just have to live with it. The reason it costs less is because they cut corners where other providers don’t. Sometimes those corners don’t matter to you, because maybe they cut coverage in an area that you don’t need coverage in, but sometimes they do when you don’t have coverage in your area or you keep dropping calls. For instance, if someone was complaining about the speed of their internet at home is terrible and revealed they were using a low-end DSL or dial-up, even if it’s all they can afford or it’s all that’s available in their area, it just doesn’t make sense to say that the internet sucks or that we’re letting them do it to us. Yes, that situation sucks too, especially since so many sites are designed assuming high speed internet.
But really, it comes across to me that you feel like you deserve the same level of service while paying less money for it. I just can’t agree with that.
Sure, but these people are not using Phred’s Phantastic Phone Service & Grill, they’re using major carriers and top of the line phones. I get better service with my cheap TracFone.
So what phones and carriers would you recommend?
THANK YOU! I’m glad I’m not the only person who experiences all this. Or, I should say: “I’m g ad I’m ot the only erson who exp es all is.”
Up until recently I’ve never had my own cell phone, but if I used my wife’s or borrowed one for a work trip or something, I experienced most of the issues listed above. It’s just harder to understand conversation over a cell phone. I think heavy users just get used to it.
I also have Verizon in Northern Virginia. When buying my phone I specifically asked for the one with the clearest sound. I didn’t want to pay for data or internetphone or videophone or text or anything else, just a clear “pin-drop” sound. Ha ha. Might of well have asked for a phone that reaches out and fondles you. If anyone calls me on it, the first thing I do is have them call my land line. At least then I can have a normal conversation.
True, with Verizon I’ve never had a call dropped. Never. So kudos on connections. My phone doesn’t have data, so I have no opinion on that. But voice understandibility? Bad as every other cell phone, every other location I’ve tried. The technology or capability just plain out sucks.
The emperor has no clothes, no matter how many people tell me how wonderful the garment is.
YES! THIS is my beef! Ugh. :mad:
On my AT&T Galaxy S3 running Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich (I totally agree the naming of these things is horrendous) I can use hard buttons to answer and hangup calls. Go to the Phone (like to make a call), Menu -> Call Settings -> Call answering/ending. Then there is the option to answer a call with the “home key” hard button on the bottom of the phone, and to hang up with the “power key” which is the hard button on the side of the phone that turns off the screen.
I don’t care for the answering by sliding one way or the other to reject or answer a call. I’d much prefer a couple of large buttons on the touchscreen for answer, reject, etc. Hanging up is pretty easy with one large button on the touchscreen to hangup. There are other buttons on that screen, like to bring up the keypad, but the hangup button is large and obvious.
This phone also supports “motion” based behavior. Supposedly I can bring up a contact, and then put the phone to my ear and it will automatically call. I can also mute a call by putting the phone face down. I’ve never tried these things as it seems terribly gimmicky, so I’ve got it disabled.
I do use hands free 90% of the time, so maybe that’s it.
Still… ARRRHHHHHAAAAAAHHHH!!! SMASH PUPPIES EYESES IN!
You know what I miss? The sheer cathartic joy of ending a call by SLAMMING the goddamn phone into its cradle.
It depends on the area. IME, as corroborated by divemaster, I’ve always had fantastic service with Verizon and I’ve had personally poor experiences with Sprint, both with my work phone, and my dad having them as a carrier. Apparently, T-Mobile is even worse but AT&T is a bit better. However, I’ve also heard that Sprint is great in some areas where Verizon can be kind of spotty. And, of course, there are some areas, like the rural Vermont person upthread, that has spotty coverage from everyone.
I don’t know about other carriers, but at least Verizon has an interactive map that shows where their coverage is and they have complete coverage where I live, where I work, and completely in between, but I can see there’s some spottiness not all that far away and I imagine that spottiness probably has some coverage by another carrier, but it’s not really worth cross referencing to see.
All I can really suggest is that you need to research the coverage by different providers in your area. You can’t just go with the cheapest plan or the one that says they have 97% coverage, because that 3% could be right where you live.
I think this is sort of a research issue. The salespeople at the verizon store near hear seemed to just want to get me to buy whatever the latest and greatest is, but I had spent a little bit of time before I went looking at the phones online, their capabilities and how much they would cost, and I specifically read up on reviews, if they had crappy reception, sound quality, battery life, or any of that, I moved on. I don’t have any problem with understanding people on my phone.
The word for Whale cock is “dork.”
Yeah, it’s just not the same:
“I said good day, sir!” <press> ah shit, it didn’t… are we still connected? <press><swipe><press> ah, there it goes.
I do get bad sound quality quite often, but pretty much every time it’s due to one of the following: either the other person can’t wait for me to go to a place with no ambient noise (open plan offices are hated in the US but much-beloved in many other countries) or they keep talking to the phone from the back of their neck.
Amazing how easily you can tell that the arsehole on the other end is in the act of parking. And yes, anybody who makes a call that can mean a year-long contract and makes it while parking / manoeuvering in heavy traffic / waiting to get someone at the airport is a stupid asshole. Actually, the assholes of most Dopers are smarter.
And another thing…the newest phones are so small that if you put them up to your ear, the microphone is so far from your mouth that it picks up severe ambient noise. This just makes it that much more confusing to listen to.
QFT. I usually use the landline when I’m at home, but I can’t understand what the other person is saying, because the other person is usually on one of those tiny phones.
Also, just because you HAVE the capacity to make calls while driving, or in a restaurant, or wherever, doesn’t make it a good idea. Even if you are capable of talking and driving at the same time. If it’s important enough to say, then it’s important enough to pull over. Don’t just yap, SAY something.
What a moronic rant. OP, you know they still have land lines, right? You might as well pit airliners for not having shuffleboard courts.
Do you ever make any non-trolly contributions?
IDK if this is true for all. My old LG Chocolate was tiny, 2/3 the size of an i-phone, and it had excellent background noise cancellation.
But I still agree with the OP. My i-phone and galaxy 3 each have been progressively larger than the Chocolate. The galaxy dwarfs the LG and is so large to be a bit awkward in the hand. And yet both have much worse noise cancellation. I suspect that smart phones have forgone some quality in noise cancellation circuitry in order to pack in the all the other circuitry. So yes, as the focus has shifted from the devices primary function being a phone to being an email, internet, sms, and “app” client the phone functionality has taken a bit of a backseat.
Here is a comparison pick of the Galaxy 3 and i-phone.
There’s an app for that.
A while back, my wife went through a stretch of inadvertantly hitting the mute button with her cheek on the touchscreen whilst conversing using her iPhone.
On one such occasion, I remarked about the poor design causing this to keep recurring (being a non-touchscreen BB user), to which she replied
“Yeah, this phone is great for everything except talking.” :smack:
Do that with an iPhone, and you’ll have an iShattered. It takes a real Western Electric or AT&T phone to survive such treatment.
And then there’s the ultimate - being so pissed off that you yank the phone so hard that you pull the wire out of the wall.