My ic502 Review

[Fire14]

Yesterday the county upgraded all of our Nextel i530's to the new ic502 dual mode phones.
I have been sick so I haven't been able to give it as good of a try as I wanted to yet, but will update this as I go along.

So far I like the phone, the Nextel DC works better in my house, where with the other unit I couldn't use it at all in my house. I did have an issue with the DC and the screen said "Network Trouble" and the DC icon went away.

I was able to call the person on the phone using the CDMA side & I had no problems with the call inside or outside my home, with the exception of my basement (no signal).

So far signal strenght with the bars (I need to find out how to get the phone into engineering mode to see actual db's) I have between 2-4 bars out of 6 in my house. (I have 4-5 out of 5 with my Cingular service, including the basement)
What little driving I did yesterday & today the signal strength went from 0 to 6 bars with the highest being near the towers & 0 being between 2 towers for 1 block.
I hope to try it out in some buildings this weekend if I get better & I am going to AC next week for 4 days, so I can try it & report about it there.

The phone is thinner and comfortable to use, I like how the DC button lights up when being called by someone & the outside display is great to have vs the i530.
The inside color screen is clear & the software is fast, and was easy for me to figure out.
I don't know if I like the external speaker, it's deeper sounding then the older phone which can help understand the other person a little better but it's an odd sound & I may need some time getting use to it.

You can force roam the phone, but only with a 1900 Mhz carrier, since the phone does not have 850 for CDMA, only DC.
I tried it and was able to connect to the Verizon tower, and found the signal was worst with Verizon (again this is on 1900 & I dont' know if 850 would have helped, others with Verizon phones haven't had a much better signal in my house).

The 2 calls I did get to make were fairly clear, and the earpiece sounds like the external speaker. It may be me right now being sick causing some of these sound issues/differences and don't want to judge the sound fully yet.

Overall I am impressed with the phone & Sprint's service in the little bit I used it, and don't know why the signal went to 0 or if it will affect calling till I try it in these 2 spots. I am also impressed/suprised at the DC ability improving slightly at my home, but don't want to jump the gun since I did already have an issue with the network.

I plan on adding to this thread as I use the phone/DC & if anyone has questions on it, I will do my best to answer it at this point.
I think Sprint/Nextel made the right move with offering a phone like this & it may help slow down some of their defections.

[larry]

Thanks for the great review. To answer your question about why the phones went down to 0 bars... That's pretty normal for CDMA phones even if you're in an area with good signal strength. What happens is that phones will sometimes land on a PN offset that's further away and has more noise even if there's a much better one that's available. That's simply a CDMA technology flaw and I've seen it happen lots of times over the years. I've never used GSM so I don't know how their phones behave when it comes to finding a PN offset to land on.

[TelcomJunkie]

Originally Posted by larry

I've never used GSM so I don't know how their phones behave when it comes to finding a PN offset to land on.

Unfortunately Larry GSM phones have a devil of a time finding PN's

[larry]

Originally Posted by TelcomJunkie

Unfortunately Larry GSM phones have a devil of a time finding PN's

Well whatever their equivalent is.

[Fire14]

Originally Posted by larry

Thanks for the great review. To answer your question about why the phones went down to 0 bars... That's pretty normal for CDMA phones even if you're in an area with good signal strength. What happens is that phones will sometimes land on a PN offset that's further away and has more noise even if there's a much better one that's available. That's simply a CDMA technology flaw and I've seen it happen lots of times over the years. I've never used GSM so I don't know how their phones behave when it comes to finding a PN offset to land on.

Thanks for the explanation Larry, I have to start learning the CDMA lingo and what they mean now.
As for my Cingular, the only time I had the signal fluctuate like this was during the tower integrations, that lasted about 2 weeks and you don't see that happen at all anymore.

[larry]

CDMA phones aren't smart enough to stay locked on the best available tower/PN offset unless there's a significant difference between them. In other words you could be bouncing back and forth between a PN offset with -90 dbs to another PN offset that might be -97 dbs. But as long as you are able to make and receive calls the signal bars don't really matter all that much.

[Fire14]

Thought I would add this:

I did find an area where I couldn't use this phone for either DC or CDMA service.
The location is called South Mountain Reservation and basically is a large park and trail setting. While driving through the phone would jump from no service to service, when we got to park and walk through the woods it would go between -102 to -105 db.

At an area called the falls (due to the water falls duh) I had no service with this phone in parts of the area. I did have full coverage with a -85 to -93 db reading the entire time on my Cingular phone.

Now I do want to add, if this phone did have 850 CDMA roaming, I am sure I would have picked up a Verizon signal, especially with the coverage I had with my Cingular phone.

Other then this so far I have been seeing good coverage in my area & still am trying to go further West to see how it works & really think if Motorola can do it they need to come out with a phone that includes 850 CDMA service for these area's.