My town is NOT a NIMBY town? Am I confused?

[t720]

Ok...I'm a teen, so anyway...I have a good friend of mine that previous did not have a cell phone, but oddly enough decided to go with a Samsung V205 as of today and he showed me around. It's a neat phone, and plus, I figured out the ODDEST thing! T-Mobile gets 6 out of 6 bars outside of my town, while AT&T only gets 3 out of 5 bars outside of town. I would say that it's 40% more service than I get. Also, when we went into my town, he got 3 out of 6 bars and I only got a lousy 1-2 out of 5 bars. Maybe my town is monopolized by T-Mobile? No other service provider has this good service...not even Verizon! I really don't understand this...but all I can say is that when my 1 year contract is up, I just wanna give T-Mobile a try. It's said that it's the worst provider on LI, but I'm not too sure about that after what I saw with that V205...it REALLY surprised me. AT&T gets service in more places on the island, by far...but I just want to see if T-Mobile works a tiny bit better. So...I guess T-Mobile is the only provider that makes my town a Non-NIMBY (but any other carrier, that's not true...Sprint and Verizon get 1 bar...Cingular is about the same as AT&T, Nextel...DEFINITELY NOTHING...) iDen is extremely unpopular around here and it's incredibly rare to see someone using Nextel on Long Island.

Also...is the V205 a good phone for reception? Please...do tell me...that could affect the results.

EDIT: It was a Samsung V105...my mistake.

[t720]

Our town is INCREDIBLY spoiled rotten...just another piece of info you might want to know.

[larry]

Comparing signal between carriers using "bars" is not an accurate way to tell who has the best service. There are a lot of variables between brands, phones, frequencies. etc.

[t720]

Yes...but this is the same type of network @ the same frequency...and it couldn't have been the phones, because this was a somewhat drastic difference. Could AT&T have forgotten about one of the towers in the area? T-Mobile's signal is only 1900...and AT&T is 1900 (and 850 in TDMA). So I'm surprised that the GSM signal is not the same. And by the way, I am familiar with the fact that bars is not a great way to tell...except, this was like a 1/2 full to full ratio...that's a huge difference.

Oh yes, and if it were the T68i...I would excuse the fact that it's the phone, but I mean...this is a T720...this is a completely different story we're talking about.

[larry]

The brand of phone and model of phone can show a big difference in signal even on the same network. Try comparing a Sprint Sanyo 4900 and a Sprint LG or Samsung. The Sanyo will show 4 bars where the Samsung and LG will show 1 or 2. Therefore you would think Sprint service is great if you happened to have a 4900 and you would think it was terrible if you happened to be testing a Samsung A500. It's just a brand difference. I remember a few times when my Kyocera 2255 would show 0 bars and my 4900 would show 3. But both phones were able to make and receive the same good quality calls. I have even seen a huge difference between the same brand but a different model.

[t720]

But all of the AT&T phones and T-Mobile phones are showing the same results around here. Or at least, I know all of the AT&T results because that is the majority of our population. Otherwise, what's going on? Have they possibly forgotten about our area? I just sent them an entire form thing via their site about the coverage.