Carrier / Rating

Location / Comment

Date

Perfect reception at the Homewood Suites Hotel and Elliott Bay Office Park (HAL).

Sucks! Unreliable in the house does not work at all.

Calls are often dropped. If I walk into some rooms, there is a 50 / 50 chance the call drops.

I usually only have one bar inside my house, and often none at all. I have to go outside and walk down the street about 50 feet in order to hold an entire phone call that doesn't get lost. I have contacted Verizon about this and they didn't even bother to send me a form letter or anything. We're switching to someone else as soon as we research which services can actually be used effectively in our neighborhood.

Very poor reception inside my west facing townhouse. Ok in some parts of Seattle. Have been told it is my phone, but I have no problem with it or the conversations in other cities I have traveling in... ...

Very good reception / transmission inside an apartment facing west; excellent reception / transmission outside. Have had phone about six months and am quite pleased with it. The only time that I have been unable to make a call has been while on a bus heading south on the freeway from the Northgate Transit Center. Apart from that situation, T-Mobile service is excellent wherever I travel (Seattle / Tacoma / Olympia).

Typically get 3 bars inside or out. This is the bottom of Queen Anne ("Lower" QA). As I've had this phone only 24 hours, it is perhaps more useful to mention the Motorola 120c which preceded it, which usually got 2-3 bars and occasionally dropped a call, but mostly downtown where there are plenty of tall buildings to cut off a signal. Overall Qwest has had the best coverage of the four providers (Qwest, Sprint, GTE Wireless and AT&T) I've used. They also have hands-down the best customer service, although plenty of people seem to think it sucks: If you're one of those, here's a tip: Be nice to them, and they'll come up with ways to help you that pissing and moaning will never unearth. Trust me. I've done it dozens of times over the last few years -- over their entire existence in this region. :-) Last year I lived on the upper east side of Queen Anne overlooking Lake Union and had Sprint PCS on a Motorola Timeport (the silver flip -- which model no. escapes me, as did the antenna, thus my defection from Sprunt -- that's not a typo; their customer service was diminutive, but that's a separate rant). I could reliably find quite a number of dead spots between Queen Anne Ave N. and 5th Ave. N. where it was impossible, while on foot walking through the neighborhood, to either make or sustain a call. Can't say if this problem also exists on this phone with Qwest a year later, but as with Capitol Hill, we have three large TV antenna towers with microwave antennas on them, in addition to an incredibly 50's sci-fi-looking shorter array near a Qwest central office around W. Galer and 3rd West. I also had trouble around 5th Ave N. & Newton St. (line-of-sight to at least two of those towers) getting my car alarm remote to work, unless I stuck the remote under the front wheel well above the tire or some other place that shielded the remote from line-of-sight to those towers. That never happened anywhere else. Sometimes I had to walk around my car three times just to disarm it.

Usually get one or 2 bars on Queen Anne. Sometimes phones fails to ring and I just get messages later. 70% of calls are clear 10% almost impossible to hear, and the rest in between. Happy with Verizon service and service is stronger in many parts of Seattle.

One or two bars in my apartment on lower Queen Anne--although I can get signal reliably.

If you're expecting a call, or making a call, switch to the Edge network, it takes seconds to toggle between Edge and 3G. I never drop calls while on Edge, plus it greatly reduces battery usage. To utilize Edge go to: settings;general;network;Enable or disable 3G - it literally takes seconds to toggle between 3G and Edge, no big deal, iPhone users, I assure you, you'll notice a positive difference while on the Edge network, when done talking go to 3G. For whatever reason Edge greatly reduces dropped calls. No biggie to switch between edge and 3G, the tricky part is making sure to have the phone on Edge if you're expecting a call, other than that, business as usual, just switch back to 3G.