another cingular story, phone reception question

wow it is nice to find this forum, i have been looking for a new phone to try and replace my v551 (actually my third and 4th v551's)...

i switched from sprint to cingular in march of 2005, in order to get some better phones, sprint wasn't really offering much incentive to stay and at the time it seemed like switching to cingular in the virginia dc metro area would be a relatively safe move...

i got two brand spanking new moto v551's, thinking i would get some bluetooth headsets and be caught up in the 21st century finally...

For the first month, everything seemed fine, service was spotty but when I called it seemed that I just needed updates to my phones according to the service reps, no big deal, keep sending these magic updates that never seemed to appear, but I played along and called every couple of weeks getting new "updates"

Then i got my first bill, I had signed up online, had confirmation of what I had ordered and what I had paid already and approixmately what my bill would be.... upon opening my first $3xx.xx bill for a $90/month plan I was a little upset, but a short two hours on the phone (ha) and almost everything was straightened out... over the next two billing cycles I actually got it back to what I had originally ordered online...

So then the problems began, no longer did I get cell service at home, or in the office, or on travel anywhere south of dc, up in the northeast it seemed to work fine. I should clarify, I got bars of service, just lots of failed to connect messages and dropped calls when I actually tried to connect.

Then my first handset died, the speaker of the v551 apparently is a known problem and just stopped working. Cingular worked very quickly to get me a replacement v551 but not a different model phone. I had exceeded The replacement (refurb) died about 5 days after I received it. The next replacement took a while longer on the phone since apparently the "systems were down", so she had to order my replacement by hand??? Anyway, that one came about a week later, and I have now had it for a couple of months...

My service is abysmal at best, I always seem to have 5 bars, right up until I hit the send button, I am lucky if I get to hold a 2-5 minute call without saying what greater than 10 times or the call dropping first.

This isn't just my phone either, stupidly I bought my girlfriend the same phone at the same time just to be that annoying couple with the matching cell phones, huge mistake. But it does help me figure out that our two phones suck really really bad, and my roommate can talk to his girlfriend for upwards of 3 hours on his two year old piece of crap verizon (samsung phone) and never get cut off, ever.

My parents have verizon and my dad just shakes his head when he sees me redialing to talk to someone over and over again.

I had sprint out in the boonies when I was at school for a long time, I can understand poor reception or no service, but now it is almost laughable, I don't get upset with cingular anymore, i just want to stab myself in the eye with a fork.

I live in Tyson's Corner in Northern Virginia, I work in Arlington with tens of thousands of people, I have to borrow my roommates cellphone if I need to make an important call so that I don't accidentally hang up on someone.

Moral of the story, spare yourself the pain of dealing with cingular coverage.

The reps aren't all that bad, i don't think the customer service itself is truly that poor, they are about the same as when i dealt with sprint and smaller companies years ago, but the SERVICE IS HORRIBLE plain and simple and it makes people more upset with the servie reps who take the abuse of the customers.

Sorry to rant on like this for so long, so I will pose a valid question, I would love to at least switch phones to something apparently decent, like a nokia, or one of the new lg's which aren't getting tons of complaints. I just want to be able to talk on the phone without getting dropped and not have to say what 20x a call so,

What phones would give the best reception regardless of any other options?

I have read the report for my area on cellreception.com, so I don't know that I expect to get great reception in some areas, but at least at home and work, even if I am stranded the whole way there and back.

I am looking at the nokia 6230 and 6170 for starters, am I just wasting my money even bothering and should I just pony up the cancellation fee and save myself further headache? Or do I play the fool and suck it up one more time...

Thanks for any help

Signed, Cell Phone Newbie

ps. i read several pages deep, and if this is just another rehash flame away

Hello-

Did you know in some areas of the U.S. you may be able to manually choose between the AT&T, Cingular & T-Mobile networks? There's a way to modify (=hack) your v551 to accomplish this. I great place to start is over at howardforums.com, http://www.motomodders.net/, and http://www.cellphonehacks.com/viewforum.php?f=7

Another guy has a great site with more specifics on the typs of modifications you can achieve via hex edits-
http://xlr8.us/hofo/

What I am not clear about is, do you & your girlfriend use your v551s in the same location(?)

-Pedro

Thanks for the clarification.

I received the phone second hand from a friend, and it's not a Cingular branded v551. I was under the impression that his mods permit me to view & actually choose between all three networks (410, 380, 260). I incorrectly interpreted that the stock Cingular phone would not permit you to actually connect to those networks, but would only let you see them. As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong), in certain areas if you use your Cingular v551 depending upon the local roaming agreements with T-Mo, you might not be able to use that network.

How about helping the OP?

-P

[quote="Pedro7"]Thanks for the clarification.

I received the phone second hand from a friend, and it's not a Cingular branded v551. I was under the impression that his mods permit me to view & actually choose between all three networks (410, 380, 260). I incorrectly interpreted that the stock Cingular phone would not permit you to actually connect to those networks, but would only let you see them. As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong), in certain areas if you use your Cingular v551 depending upon the local roaming agreements with T-Mo, you might not be able to use that network.

How about helping the OP?

-P

[quote]

in my own experience I have never gotten a cingular or frmr ATT cust to register on T-mobile... always returns registration denied...

for the OP... were you originally ATT or cingular... if your not sure look at your SIM card... try the manual network search... that could be a clue as to what is going on...if there is more than 1 "cingular" on the screen select the second one..if your connectivity improves there is a tower issue in your area that *may* be unreported

also try the OP code ##002# send... this will cancel any call forwarding features and deregister the phone from the network... once you have entered the code... power the phone off and wait about 30 sec and turn it back on... see if there is any difference in connectivity...

hope this helps

Out of curiosity, where are you located? Luckily, here in Chicago the roaming agreements exist w/ T-Mo so I can choose between all three.

best,
Pedro

another cingular story, phone reception question

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