V800 - 3G Coverage Tip

[GregHughes]

Bought a nice new SE V800 yesterday, love the phone, very fast, great screen, a great upgrade to my T610.

But I have been having difficulty getting 3G coverage, I live in the Solihull area (West Midlands) which has bright red coverage on Vodafone's map so all should be okay...

So I went back into the store in Solihull, they had a nice little 3G on their phone but not on mine (they confirmed all stores have a 3G access point upstairs!).

Swapped my sim into their V800, up it came 3G straight away. So we thought duff handset, we will swap it, tried a new handset, same problem. Tried a new SIM, still no joy. They rang Vodafone tech support who were unable to help, a complete mystery. They then got hold of someone who setup the store demo V800, they had to do the following:

-> Main menu, select Connectivity.
-> Pick Mobile Networks, then Select Network. It will then search.

When the list comes back there will often be two vodafone UK networks listed, the one with the little blue splat icon is the 3G network. Select it and you will be onto the 3G network rather the the 2G one.

There seems to be a problem with the V800 in that it is often seeking out the 2G network rather than the 3G one.

Once I have done this it is okay for a while and will then go back to 2g again, I have to manually reselect it. The quest continues...

If you have having problems with lack of 3G coverage, then it maybe that your phone is not selecting the available 3G network automatically.

Anyone else experiencing the same thing? Any tips?

Nice phone, not sure about the network yet. :(

Greg .

[simon69c]

Not had that problem on mine - always finds the 3G network and stays on it if it's available. Signal is incredibly strong where I live but it's good enough. Nice if it gets stronger with time though so it eats less battery.

[danknightuk]

I only have 1 or 2 bars of 3g but it works fine. Maybe there is a strong 2g signal in the background for voice?

[paulo]

I bought a v800 .took it back the next day..I live in the suburbs of glasgow....had the same problem as greg hughes (having to force the phone onto 3g but going back to 2g at the drop of a hat).....not much good to me...the coverage is not up to scratch....very patchy in the covered areas!!....will wait for orange to launch as they will have an easier time making the 3g network useable as they have 10000 transmitters available to upgrade. Voda will struggle as they have less transmitters to start with on 2g than orange. It's the 900Mhz/1800Mhz thing....Voda need three times the UMTS transmitters as they do now GSM. Orange only need 3 UMTS for their existing 2 GSM.

[simonlant]

but orange wont be selling the SE V800 :(
Id like to go for the Z1010, but its just got nothing on the V800

[Gunner]

V800 is only exclusive to Voda at launch. Orange will probably retail the handset next year (I was told February by Orange CS).