what does the Telstra tick REALLY mean for Next G phones??

[gordon_s1942]

I am in a soon to disapear CDMA area and I have to change over soon as you are all well aware. Now GSM is useless and CDMA has maybe 1 bar if the phone is held right.
So I am told by the Telstra shop that I need one of these 'Tick Approved' phones.
Well my friend has a flip type tick approved phone and it is rubbish, the CDMA works better than it does so this is my question, EXACTLY what makes these Tick approved phones better than the NON ticked ones??
as an experiment I bought a model F156 made by ZTE because its a one piece unit, I dont want to slide,flip or skew it, and it has the facilty to plug in an external antenna.This isnt mentioned in the handbook either.
This works just as good as my friends TICK approved phone without the antenna and not bad with an antenna.

QUESTION, so what have these 'Tick Approved' phones have that makes them receive/make calls other than a pull up antenna ??
Forget all the glitz,streaming video which needs 3 or more bars according to Telstra, games,music and pretty colours.
I want a phone that works when I want it, where I want and believe me that next G DOES NOT WORK EVERY WHERE !!!!!!

[big mick000]

this next G is a crock of ... well, you know. we had the telstra propoganda caller ring us. i answered. dad said i could deal with this telemarlketer. he asked what plan i was on. i said i was on optus GSM. he said, according to telstra files (our landline is telstra) optus will not work at all, and CDMA should not work, and next G will geive you a nearly full signal. i says to him, i says, i am looking at my optus mobile right now, and i have 3 bars out of 4. dad's next g phone has 1 bar out of five if i take it down the other end of the house, and telstra GSM is non-existant, even with an antenna, and CDMA is 2 bars out of seven, if i hold it up. now, what were you saying about next G having the best coverage out of all the systems?? ........... telstra's next G has 100% coverage in your area, sir. what makes you think that? it is on our database, sir. a telstra database? yes, sir. there you go. hangs up. i seem to have inherited my dads enjoyment for messing with the heads of telstra telemarketers.

oh, and gordon_s, the ZTE phones are rubbish. LG are okay, as are sony ericsson, in terms of sensitivity.

[SatGuRu]

Speaking of Next G, it does have its faults, but will improve once CDMA is switched off. CDMA is stopping Telstra from Next G's full potential (signal wise). It's hard for them to have 2 services in close proximity frequency wise on the same site, once one is eliminate, problem solved. As for Tick Approved etc, don't have a clue.

[zeke.damien]

ummm i have the zte 252 and i have had no problems at all in gippsland

even streams foxtel awsome on 1 bar

but i generally get 5 bars

the phone isnt all that bad

but i think i need a more rugged water proof one *any recommendations*

[jmc96]

yeah, shame about CDMA. They had to push one of the CDMA phones onto me when analogue was switched off. I didn't wanna change from analogue because THAT worked so well. Telstra sent me out one of their ZTE 165 phones and so far, well the last 3 days that I've had it, has worked quite well,. signal wise. Dunno about the ruggedness of them, they all seem to have big screens that won't take too much bashing I would suspect.
The big tick of approval is meant to signify better reception in fringe areas. So far, so good, and if it gets better when CDMA is switched off, I'd say we won't have a problem.

[gordon_s1942]

Thanks for the replies and I must say that because of Next G, one area near where I live has improved dramatically over GSM/CDMA but ONLY because there is now a tower covering that area where before the transmission was from another location that only gave minimal coverage.
I must say I cannot see why the dual transmitting is causing problems as they are 2 different formats.
After all they are transmitting both analog and digital TV from the same locations and on the same frequency band so I dont see that is a viable excuse.
Also for quite some time they were telling everyone that Next G was on a different frequency to CDMA and it had better coverage which it didnt.
But once CDMA is turned off, how would you know if the service is better when you dont have anything to measure it against???

I was an analog user untill I had to change to GSM which didnt work well here to CDMA which was better but I still dont think it equalled analog.

Big Mick, the LG is a flip phone and I dont like flip,skew or slide units.
As for sensativerty, my friend has the samsung tick approved phone and the CDMA outperforms it hands down.
I like the F165 but I am not paying $520 outright or having a plan when I dont make $5 worth of calls a month.

[Jason_dinAlt]

im almost in the same boat gordy, our area is cdma only, but no signal in our house. 300 m down the road or up the hills and cdma starts to work, but there is nothing on our new nextg (with tick) in the same area where cdma just works. Once off our road and on the main road, cdma works all the way to our nearest town where the cdma tower is, but nextg? nope, drops out in several area, now we are only talking 20km but 12km of them DO NOT work with nextg, so Im hoping the propaganda is true that once cdma is switched off it will be better, cause currently its nowhere near as good as cdma for us. BTW analog worked in our house, cdma no service or flickering 1 bar, not enough for calls or sms, next g NOTHING AT ALL. I hated telstra for shutting down analog, but I could understand their reason, but there is no justifiable reason to shut down cdma except it gets everyone to buy new phones and contracts ie more dollars for telstra

[wallie]

Well i have found nextg excellent i live in north west Vic and there is places where i had very poor or no cdma coverage where on nextg i was able to watch v8 supercars and have high speed Internet make calls and video calls no problems it dose not matter if i full coverage or 1 bar. When cdma closes down it is going to be even better because they are both on 850 MHz witch will affect the single strength i have had 3 different phones a LG tu500 samsung a701 witch both worked well and now i have a nokia e51 witch has the best performance of all and is a excellent phone there has only been a couple of times i have had no reception and that where no phones worked but drive up a mountain and have coverage and high speed Internet i travel moistly all over Vic and SE SA

[gordon_s1942]

In for a penny etc and I am now really going to throw the cat among the pidgeons as to why I believe Analog was shut down.
Analog apart from probaly being an outdated, resource hungry service, phones the size of bricks and limited battery life, the biggest problem was that Analog was scannable.
Just an El Cheapo scanner that covered the 800 MHZ band and you were away.
Listening to Two way business radios is one thing but telephones where people talked ABOUT EVERTHING, oh boy !!!!!
Cordless phones in surburbia was always very entertaining too.
Another maybe circumstantual reason was when a party of Journos were following a car containing a well known Politician of the day talking to another equally high profile Pollitician and they overheard the plot to dethone their leader and of course it made front page headlines.
Now they could have passed secrecy laws and did but they are as useless as trying to put a Band Aid over the hole in the side of the Titanic.
So Analog went and in came GSM.

Wallie, Unless you have been around the Sydney and the Blue Mountains area to experience just how difficult the terrain is for most radio/TV mobile phone services, Victoria is table top flat compared to here.
Right behind me is one of the highest points at 4100 feet (1200 m?) and when we had the CB repeater there, it had well over 60 km range , BUT locally in the hills and hollows, not a crackle and you could be with 5 ks of the tower.
I know they cant put towers everywhere to cover all the holes, even if Telstra has claimed 'Its Available Everywhere you need it' untill you read the fine print and it says its not.
I live along the main corridor between Sydney and Orange and I know there are still patches where the signal is poor.

[Serangan]

Speaking of Next G, it does have its faults, but will improve once CDMA is switched off. CDMA is stopping Telstra from Next G's full potential (signal wise). It's hard for them to have 2 services in close proximity frequency wise on the same site, once one is eliminate, problem solved. As for Tick Approved etc, don't have a clue.

Closing the cdma band will make no difference to signal/problems of Next G. They dont interfere with each other.

Next G is only designed to keep us connected, a continuous connection to the internet.

[gordon_s1942]

Serangan, and not very well at that as here at my computer, the nextG phone is fluctuating between 1 bar to no bars to NO SERVICE, Searching where as my now sadly disconnected Nokia CDMA is still showing one bar and I am still able to get the recorded voice loud and clear if I dial a number on it telling me I cannot connect to any service.

I must say that I just love Telstra's FREE UPDATE to NEXTG, all I had to do was buy a new phone and they didnt charge me for the changeover!!!!!!!!
I am astounded that TELSTRA could afford to be so generous after forcing me to give up the phone that I had bought so I could use the mobile system when the GSM phone that replaced the analog didnt work here.

I cant wait to see what it will cost with the next FREE upgrade to whatever they decide we need.

[DaIceman]

Closing the cdma band will make no difference to signal/problems of Next G. They dont interfere with each other.

Next G is only designed to keep us connected, a continuous connection to the internet.

FYI

Closing down CDMA will make a big difference to the Next G in some areas.

At some of the Base Stations where tower space is limited, 3G850 (Next G) shares antennas with CDMA or GSM. Depending on the sharing solution used, there may be many extra interconecting cables and splitter/combiners used. All adding loss to the system. This loss reduces receiver sensitivity and output power at the antenna. Another problem with sharing antennas (for both CDMA and GSM as they are extremly close to 3G850) is Intermodulation products caused by bad cable/connectors, antennas that are old/faulty/poor quality, bad/corroded joints in the tower, and other antennas that have nothing to do with Next G.

Shuting CDMA down will free up antennas where needed reducing system loss, and free up frequency sprectrum so a second 3G850 carrier (Channel) can be turned on. This will give Next G more capacity, and allow for calls that drop below a certain quality level to switch to the second carrier in the hope the interfierence level will be lower. (GSM uses this technique very sucessfully).

[DaIceman]

The Signal 'Bars' on your phone are not Signal

[White Lightning]

The Blue Tick that appears next to selected phones are from a recent independant audit/ test carried out on all of the NextG handsets, and some, not all faired better than the rest (that's what we've been told) and the explanation for the Blue Tick was that the handset can work in rural and regional areas using the handset itself without a carkit.

From what I know of so far the best NextG phones on the market are the ZTE 165 "Country Phone" (yes I know it's a ZTE but I've heard some really impressive reports on this) and the Nokia 6120.

[Woodstock]

is there still 3g ? or that not exist as well ... cause Phone I have is 3g and GSM .. think I am on GSM .. how does one tell which network they on ?

[White Lightning]

What type of phone do you have Woodstock? the 3G network is still in use, but to use the 3G features you would have to live in the areas surrounding the Sunshine and Gold Coasts, greater Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth etc.

If you live outside of these areas, the phone automatically switches over to standard GSM. My brother has a Sony Ericsson K800i 3G phone, but where we live in regional Queensland he can still use the phone as it's on GSM.

If you are 3G, a 3G logo will appear in the top of the screen, and if it's on GSM, some phones may have a 2.5G logo indicatiing standard GSM, or on other phones such as the K800i, the 3G logo dosen't appear at all.

[Serangan]

Serangan, and not very well at that as here at my computer, the nextG phone is fluctuating between 1 bar to no bars to NO SERVICE, Searching where as my now sadly disconnected Nokia CDMA is still showing one bar and I am still able to get the recorded voice loud and clear if I dial a number on it telling me I cannot connect to any service.

I must say that I just love Telstra's FREE UPDATE to NEXTG, all I had to do was buy a new phone and they didnt charge me for the changeover!!!!!!!!
I am astounded that TELSTRA could afford to be so generous after forcing me to give up the phone that I had bought so I could use the mobile system when the GSM phone that replaced the analog didnt work here.

I cant wait to see what it will cost with the next FREE upgrade to whatever they decide we need.

FYI

Closing down CDMA will make a big difference to the Next G in some areas.

At some of the Base Stations where tower space is limited, 3G850 (Next G) shares antennas with CDMA or GSM. Depending on the sharing solution used, there may be many extra interconecting cables and splitter/combiners used. All adding loss to the system. This loss reduces receiver sensitivity and output power at the antenna. Another problem with sharing antennas (for both CDMA and GSM as they are extremly close to 3G850) is Intermodulation products caused by bad cable/connectors, antennas that are old/faulty/poor quality, bad/corroded joints in the tower, and other antennas that have nothing to do with Next G.

Shuting CDMA down will free up antennas where needed reducing system loss, and free up frequency sprectrum so a second 3G850 carrier (Channel) can be turned on. This will give Next G more capacity, and allow for calls that drop below a certain quality level to switch to the second carrier in the hope the interfierence level will be lower. (GSM uses this technique very sucessfully).

DaIceman your right, but what i was trying to say was that cdma doesnt interfear with the signal of next g. its taking up a section of the signal, but not causing the signal weaknes. Next G just isnt quite up to the same signal strengths.

And what phone are your using? 'cause there are the older next g ones and newer next g ones. The later has better signal reception.

[hoe]

According to some telstra techs i was talking to the other day, next g is only running at 80% power until cdma is switched off.

apparently so it doesn't interfere with cdma......

[Moof]

I have a CDMA phone and I live in the country.
I went into a telstra shop and asked about the new next g and where I live may not be good for reception, so they told me that they would give me a loan phone with the Tick for a few days to test in my area at no cost.
I will try it out soon
Seems like the gogernment has made them try to help people as I dont think telstra would think of this themselves

[gordon_s1942]

Since I first started this post I have had to travel to the Sydney area on 2 seperate occasions by train and I took my F156 with me.
The first trip was from Gosford to Sydney and I checked the phone every so often and noted the expected variations.
Basically it was an intermittant signal between Gosford and Hornsby but once we past there the signal stayed fairly steady up to and including Central Station.
On the return trip we went via the Harbour Bridge to Horsby and I was estatic to see I had signal at Wynyard station which is underground and has a multi storied building on top.
Imagine being some 300 feet underground with a massive signal and bugger all at home.
The signal stayed reasonable via the North Shore to Hornsby then spotty back to Gosford.
My next trip was Lithgow to Concord via Strathfield but I didnt bother with the phone then.
The following day I retraced that journey back to Lithgow and this time checked the phone at intervals and saw it seemed to be usable up the mountains. I made a call as we were leaving Blackheath to my wife who was arriving at Mt Victoria to meet me.
She has an identical model F156.
The reason I have given all this info is because a report in a local newspaper made out that the reason there were problems with Next G was that some phones were not as sensative as others, my F156 being in that catagory.
Now I cannot comment on sensativety because I found there are no details of sensativety available for any of these phones.
BUT if this phone worked INSIDE a double deck Stainless Steel Electric train that was moving, it cant be too bad.
Because this phone doesnt work at my home as well as the CDMA used to I blame that on the lack of coverage provided by the transmission point.
Anywhere Inside my house I had around 2 bars CDMA and I could make and receive calls.
On Next G there are no bars showing and it will display No Service where the CDMA worked.
I have tested the Samsung Tick approved phone here and it works NO BETTER than the F156.
Nowhere was I told that 'Some Phones are better than others' untill I got a Call Back from that Telstra Complaint number and to cap it all, I got that call while I was in an ALDI store in Lithgow.
The phone rang and there was no voice so I disconnected after a few moments only to be rung again with the same No voice, but the third try connected and we spoke for several minutes untill I moved to another part of the store and we lost the connection.
If I had been in a Cow shed 100 kilometres west of Bourke I would have understood the connection loss but not in a town.
I have heard more excuses blaming everything they can imagine rather than admitting that the system does not work as they have beeen advertising.
I have been thinking of going to the Telstra shop to see if I can get the CDMA turned back on untill they do get it right.
I am not spending $500 to replace a $99 phone that DID WORK !!!