Non T-Mobile® Phones

[djm1834]

My wife and I have been using unlocked Palm Centros with T-Mobile since October 2008.  About the beginning of August we noticed the voice signal would have intermmittent dropouts.  We can hear everything fine, but the person we are talking to experiences problems hearing us.  I have tried a number of things to try to understand the source of the problem.  Initially I thought it might be a problem with the Palm Centro, but the problem exists on both of our Centro devices.  I then moved one of the Sim cards to our older Palm Treo 650 and the same problem exists.  I did a hard reset on one of the Palm Centros to eliminate the impact of any third party software.  The problem still exists.  I went to our local T-Mobile store and they recommended that we replace our Sim cards.  This did not solve the problem.  After that I considered the signal strength at our house.  Even though the signal strength indicated no problem we tried the phones at different locations and the problem still exists.

I am now at a loss.  One possibilitity is that there is an incompatibility between T-Mobile and Palm but it would have had to resulted from a change that was incorporated during the summer of 2009.  Are you aware of any changes?

Any ideas or suggestions wold be greatly appreciated.

David

[larrygump]

TMO is rolling out the 3G ...thats all I can figure......changing bands.....youve ruled everything else out

[Joel47]

I've been getting the same thing on my 650.  I thought it was pocket lint building up in the microphone, but switching over to a Bluetooth headset didn't help...

Time to get a new phone -- and maybe a new carrier, if Palm OS devices won't work on T-Mobile.

[adanziger]

Usually choppy voices are due to a weak signal or over-saturation of the bandwidth, in other words, more people using the service in one particular area than the service is designed to support. You've ruled out pretty much everything else. Maybe they have a tower that's out causing your calls to be routed over to a tower that's a bit further away? How's the signal strength? Do you have this problem everywhere and at all times of the day and night?

[dessa]

My wife and I are experiencing the same problems, in the same timeframe.  She has a Treo 680, I have a Centro.

We have done all the same steps as the original poster.

Our voice will be inaudible (actually, the other side cannot hear anything - it goes "eerily silent" as one listener put it).  This happens any time of day, weekdays and weekends, in all areas around Seattle.

The one additional thing I have done is taken a free Motorola phone we got a couple years ago when we added a line and put my (old, before replacement) SIM card in it.  During my 20 min experiment, I had none of the drop out problems (same experiment with my Centro in the 20 minutes preceeding and following had 5 or more drop out episodes).  The Moto is a 3G phone.  Also, my daughter and her boyfriend, who have the same Samsung 3G phone from T-Mobile have not noticed the issue (althought they don't talk much, they text, so it is possible that they have it and haven't noticed).

[adanziger]

It's not a 3G issue. 3G is for data only (although some VOIP signals can be carried over a 3G data line but that's nothing to do with what's  happening here). Voice calls are going over GSM. Do you live in an area served by both 850 MHz and 1900 MHz? (You can tell by typing your address in here: http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/pcc.aspx

Another possibility is that your talking on an over-saturated 1900 MHz band and your old Moto is using the un-crowded 850 MHz band. Do your Treo and Centro phones support 850 MHz? Is 850 MHz available in your Seattle area (from the link above)?

[djkieras]

I also had the problem with my Treo 650; after replacing the SIM card and then upgrading to a Centro, the problem remains.

I was told by support that T-Mobile now pushes software to every phone to prevent/report Internet tethering.  Seems like since this started recently, and these problems started recently, perhaps they are related?  I am assuming that everyone here uses their Palm with Internet service, correct?

[Joel47]

I do not have Internet service -- I have a Treo because it lets me have a PDA and a phone without having my pockets bulge unattractively.

I'm in Phoenix, and the dropouts happen even when I'm standing still and have three or four bars.

[adanziger]

To diagnose the problem you're going to need use of someones phone that works properly on T-Mobile, a friend or relative perhaps? Stand next to each other and make a call with each phone to the same landline number. Does one drop out and one work properly. If so then we've at least started to narrow this down a little. If the regular phone works fine, take that sim card out and put it into your Centro, is it still working OK or is it now suffering from dropouts? Put your sim in the other phone, is it working better?

You're going to have to try this since we have nothing else to go on.

[djkieras]

Adanziger, per dessa's post, this already has been tried.  Also, I've already used two different Palms (a 650 and a Centro), the 650 with my original SIM, then a replacement SIM card from T-Mobile before purchasing the Centro thinking it was a device issue.  Do you still think this SIM-switching test is worth trying and, if so, is there a specific test plan you have in mind more detailed than you have described?  I'm not against re-trying, I just want to make sure we all have a good solid idea of some approaches and perhaps some alternate approaches.

Also, I am experimenting restricting my quad-band phone to only the two T-Mo 850/1900 bands.  Don't know why, just thought maybe it was worth trying.

[djkieras]

Here's an additional question for everyone on the forum...thought of this after sleeping on it...

Is everyone using an unlocked AT&T/Cingular-branded phone as I am?  Or are there those using unbranded unlocked phones?  Not sure if this matters but figured I would ask.

Another note...my father told me when he was talking and I dropped out that he could hear my voice getting a little tinny before it went away.  Not sure if that means anything to you, Adanziger.

I think what I'll do this weekend is this: have my Centro sitting next to a radio on a talk station, then call it from the home phone and listen to when it drops and if there are any other audible clues.  Then I'll do the sim-switcheroo with my wife's phone and repeat.  I'll try to keep a stopwatch so I can time the drops and see whether there is a pattern.  Any other specific tests please reply to this thread.  I'll post my results when complete.

[dessa]

For the record, both of our Palms (Treo 680 and Centro) were purchased directly from Palm and have never been locked by a service provider.  My wife and I are planning to do the requested test over the weekend, as soon as we can figure out someone we know who has a land line and call waiting!  I'll also publish the details on that T-Mobile Moto phone, just to have the all the facts out.

[adanziger]

Texting and talking (voice) are two separate things. SMS working on one phone and voice not working on another doesn't correlate to anything. But, you said that you got good voice service without the dropouts using an old phone that you had laying around. If using both your Centro and your old phone at the same time in the same location produces markedly different results as it would appear from your post that it has, makes me believe that you either have a loose antenna connection in your Centro or that you have a phone setting causing a bandwidth or power reduction. Does the Centro work fine with AT&T in locations where it has continuous dropouts with T-Mobile? Absent a phone setting that could be changed this could still just indicate that you have strong enough AT&T service in the area to make up for the shortcoming of the device. This is starting to sound like a signal sensitivity issue with your Centro.

[dessa]

Guess I'll buy a cheap AT&T pre-paid SIM card and try that too.

I really do not think that this is phone related.  It started at the same time on two different phones.  I will also try and find a stopwatch and see if the one-sided drop-outs are occuring at a regular interval.  [We can still hear the other party, they just can't hear us.]

Both the Centro and the Treo 680 are quad-band, but I don't know how to tell what band they are using.  Nor could I tell from the site you ponted us to, what bands are being used in the coverage areas.

[gregorys]

Ok, this is interesting.

I have confirmed the exact same symptoms as posters above. Portland Oregon market.

Five different handsets, on four different accounts.

Some have data, some don't.

Occurs in any coverage - full signal to nil. 

Occurs anywhere, inside, out, in the car etc.

The person on the Treo is NOT heard, but the other party is heard by the user on the Treo. (I've been on both ends of a call, both as the caller using the Treo, and the "callee" using a regular land-line.)

Happens either using a BT headset or using the handset directly.

I've opened up a ticket with TMobile, and I strongly suggest that everyone that finds this thread do so too.

I'm available via email ****edit**** - I suspect it's going to take a lot of pressure to get TMobile to fix this - though I'd be more than glad to be pleasantly surprised. I'd guess we'll get the bum-rush claiming - "you're using non-tmobile hardware, so we simply can't/won't help you."

TAGS: Loss of voice, called party can't hear me, Treo, Centro, intermittant voice quality, intermittant voice loss, Microphone or Mic cut out, Treo 680, can't hear me.

Message Edited by gregorys on 09-20-2009 09:27 PM

Message Edited by gregorys on 09-20-2009 09:28 PM

-edited for personal information

[adanziger]

Without more testing there's still no telling where the problem lies. The other poster is getting a prepaid AT&T card and is going to see what happens. Another option is just to borrow a friends AT&T card and put in into your phone.

I can tell you that no one is going to have any idea what to do about this problem. I understand it's a problem but I can tell you that it's going to take someone accidentally stumbling onto the answer to fix it, if it turns out to be a T-Mobile compatibility issue. This sounds eerily similar to another poster who was unable to receive calls from his father in Malaysia. Calls to everyone else got through but calls to his son on T-Mobile would not. It's one of those impossible to explain things. Obviously there's some kind of answer but it's going to take someone a lot smarter than a customer care rep to get it solved, if anyone even can. Sounds like an electrical engineering issue.

[djkieras]

When talking to my family this weekend with a timer, it seemed that there was little pattern with the timing of the drops.  Usually I didn't ever make it past 2 minutes, sometimes less, but sometimes more.  Very frustrating.

I called myself as I indicated I would and there are no auditory cues I can determine for the dropouts.  It just gets eerily silent for a few seconds, then comes back.  What I did was lay it down next to the radio and just call from my home phone.  Seemed to me there were no dropouts during songs or commercials (constant sound source) however, in conversations (where there are natural pauses and periods of brief silence) the dropouts occurred.  This makes me wonder whether there is a duplexing issue.

I will follow gregorys' advice and file something with T-Mo support.  Gregorys, do you have a ticket number for this?

There was a news article about T-Mo fixing their network to work better with the iPhone.  One can hope they would do the same for us...even though there is no money in it.

My hope is that, since this is a relatively recent trend, that they'll be able to identify and make whatever change is needed on their network.

[gregorys]

I'd be willing to bet there was a software upgrade to the system (towers) that occured about a month ago - and this is what has caused the problem.

I can't find an exact date when this started occuring, but I've spent the last several weeks thinking it was the new voyager pro headsets we have. (They do noise cancellation, and it appeared it was "over-active" and canceling us as well as the noise.)

But over the last week, I've had several conversations that were not on the headset and they also caused the problem. I have a colleague who brought up the problem with me, unprompted, and described exactly the same symptoms I've been having.

Checked with another person I know who also has a Treo 680  and they're getting the same problem. For us, it's quite severe!

So, that's at least five handsets, I know personally about, that all have the problem.

I stongly recommend that each of you open a trouble-ticket with T-Mobile. I'm as certain as I can be that it's not a "fault" of the handset. It's likely an interaction of the tower software and the handset. But it's working as designed. Only a fix by T-Mobile to their systems (or whereever the software is on their side) will resolve the issue.

Realize this: GSM is a world-wide standard. The Palm phones are all GSM compliant. If it's not working on t-mobile's network, that's a problem with their interaction with GSM compliant phones. Also realize that a month ago it worked fine, and now it doesn't. All point to some change to the TMobile system that caused the problem.

-Greg

[adanziger]

If only someone could figure out what that change was. Ths is going to take some serious research by their engineering department and I'm not so sure that they'll be willing to invest the time trying to figure it out. It's probably a very minute thing that's causing the problem, but minute electronically speaking, which is going to make it hard to track down.

[RALTMAN]

After reading all the messages, it seems to be evident this is a communications problem with palm and T-Mobil. I live in Houston and in the last month I have the same intermittent voice problem as well. I had the Palm 680 and thought, it was the palm 680 going bad. So I bought a new Centre unlocked directly from Palm. I have the same problem with it. I went to T-Mobil and have gotten two new sim cards. One was copied, so I thought maybe the copied one had the same bad corruption. Went back to T-Mobil and had a new sim card made directly from scratch (from T-mobiles computer), that did not help.  I have the same characteristics as other posts, strong signal and anywhere throughout Houston  this happens (hundreds of towers). I did the whole thing of phone reset without adding software to isolate it, to see if it was a software issue, to no avail. I really like the palm system and do not know how much more I can take. It appears to me it has something to do with a change with T-mobile. Any ideas?