HTC Wildfire S (Vodafone) little or no signal

bertles86

Hi all,

We recently upgraded one of our business lines to a new HTC Wildfire S on Vodafone Business.

Since day one the signal on this phone has been atrocious, you could be sat at your desk with an iPhone 4S (Vodafone), HTC Desire (Orange) and the HTC Wildfire S (Vodafone) and the other two handsets would have fantastic signal.

The Wildfire S will either have no service or 1 bar of 2G.

I have been in battle with Vodafone for weeks and have done the following:

1. Replaced the sim card
2. Replaced the battery
3. Switched to GSM (2G) only signal
4. Updated the software

None of which have worked. Vodafone will not budge and have not offered me any of:

1. A new HTC Wildfire S
2. A different model phone
3. any adequate solution

Where do I stand on this? As we are 2 months into an 18 month contract for a phone that does not work at all.

Please help!

Gordon_Hose

What's wrong with getting a different model phone?

bertles86

That's precisely what we want, but every time we suggest that, Vodafone categorically state that because we are in a Wildfire S contract, we cannot get a different model phone.

Gordon_Hose

Ah, sorry. I mis-read your post. I thought they HAD offered you an alternative model.

gjchester

bertles86 wrote: »

Since day one the signal on this phone has been atrocious, you could be sat at your desk with an iPhone 4S (Vodafone), HTC Desire (Orange) and the HTC Wildfire S (Vodafone) and the other two handsets would have fantastic signal.

The Wildfire S will either have no service or 1 bar of 2G.

You cannot simply compare number of bars, a bar is a subjective measure by the designers, not a set %age or stength as an absolute value.

bertles86

Ok fair point on the bars, but to put it relatively simply our employee cannot make calls using the phone.

It takes him roughly 6-8 attempts at calling before anything connects at all and then it may drop out at any juncture.

In essence, unless he is standing outside in the open, away from any buildings, his phone does not work.

Do Vodafone not have a contractual requirement to provide a working handset?

Could it be a model design fault or just this unit? There is plenty written online about Wildfire S signal.

gjchester

bertles86 wrote: »

Ok fair point on the bars, but to put it relatively simply our employee cannot make calls using the phone.

Sorry should have been clearer, it sounds like you have a problem, but comparing bars is not a way to know for sure.

bertles86

Ah ok, so is there an app we could use to measure signal strength of the 2G/3G antennas?

Wayne3765

bertles86 wrote: »

Ah ok, so is there an app we could use to measure signal strength of the 2G/3G antennas?

Have you tried on the phone itself ?

settings - about phone - status - signal strength ?

signal is usually measured in dBm. dBm is the power ratio in decibels of the radio power per one milliwatt. A signal of -60dBm is nearly perfect, and -112dBm is call-dropping bad. If you're above about -87 dBm, Android will report a full 4 bars of signal.

http://www.tested.com/news/how-to/557-how-to-measure-cell-signal-strength-on-android-phones/

Vodafone

Hi bertles86,

I am sorry to hear that you are having some problems with the signal on your handset.

With the steps that have already been taken not resolving this, it certainly sounds like an issue with the device itself.

If you could drop me an email to the address here with WRT135 FAO Heidi in the subject, I will be more than happy to discuss the next steps we can take.

Kind regards,

Heidi
Web Relations Team
Vodafone UK

bertles86

Thank you Heidi, I have e-mailed you using the contact form.