Good AT&T phone? V3xx or KRZR?

Given the choice I would pick the V3xx. I personally think its a better phone than the Krzr.

-Jay

 

The KRZR doesn't have 3G but it is a quadband world phone. The V3xx has 3G but it's only triband.

 

If you don't have a need for quadband, I would recommend the V3xx also.

The SE 810i, is an excellent phone and ofcourse a great music player. In my personal opinion the SE has better call clarity than the V3xx. The SE is not a 3G phone either though.

 

i like the v3xx too, its really quite good.

 

I've had both of these phones, and I preferred the KRZR over the V3xx. I experienced better battery life on the KRZR due to the lack of 3G. Both of these are good choices though.

 

I have actually been thinking about coming to AT&T due to the fact that my whole family had CellularOne/Dobson. I am currently with Verizon and I am much accustomed to the amazing call clarity with CDMA. I used to have CelluarOne before I went to college and I had the RAZR V3 and that is what made me hate the GSM network. The phone constantly buzzed due to the way GSM transmits voice but for some reason this phone did it much worse than my family's phones.

So I was actually thinking that, if I came to AT&T, is it going to be worth it for me? Has the GSM network improved? I've been thinking about the V3xx, the V9, or the iPhone. I'm just wondering what some people's experiences are with this issue.

 

Cellular_freak, I just ported all my lines over from dobson to AT&T and so far I have loved it!! I bought a nokia 6555 and two BlackBerry Curves for my work. Everyone who talks to me says my voice is alot clearer than it was before, but that is probably because the curve has better call quality than the BB 8700g that I had with Cellular One. I love the BlackBerry Curve, i like its awesome sound quality and clear 2m.p camera. AT&T hasn't fully integrated the dobson network with AT&T's (310-410) but the C.S rep said that by early next year they are going to really try to get it integrated completely.

 

all phones are different and have different quality. I have had a few motos, blackberrys, Nokia and have played with some LG's, Sonys and samsungs. The buzzing you are referring to is called a RACH or radio activation channel which only turns on when your phone is registering on a tower or incomming calls and is more noticable when near electronics. Now with frequency hopping and AMR codec the tradition TDMA style buzz is really not bad.

In my experience Nokias do better on Dobson network especially the dual system 850/1900 areas. Motos work great on CDMA but I have not been impressed on GSM, the same can be said for Nokia on CDMA. I was not impressed with the Nokias when I tested Alltels network.

I drive back in forth thru a 6 county area and will run my phone near dead at least twice a day from talking and making test calls and I hardly ever hear buzzing on my Nokia and If I hear a buzz its normally an equipment failure at the tower.

Now that Dobson is ATT you can take the test drive.

 

I agree that Blackberrys have crap audio, I havent tested a curve but the audio did get better on on the pearls. They crammed all the gadgets in a small plastic case and forget to add the most important thing, a damn decent phone.

 

So you are saying by early next year they should have converted Dobson's 310-680 towers into AT&T's 310-410? That's good news. It's just a shame they can't do it more quickly. Especially when people are having problems now going into areas that they used to have full signal and now they only have one bar of Dobson instead of full signal AT&T. If they can't flash people's phones over the air, then they should give everyone AT&T SIM cards so it will grab AT&T's towers first.

Do you think when they integrate the network they will also upgrade the EDGE to full speeds too? And maybe add in some more towers in some dead areas in between where AT&T and Dobson covered?

 

The at&t rep told me that by early next year into spring, they will be converted over to at&t's 310-410. Yea, im pretty sure that at&t will upgrade it to full EDGE speed's eventually, especially because they have the iPhone now. About the new towers, im not sure, i dont think at&t will be focussing on new towers right away, maybe later in 2008 would be my guess.

 

Is there a way to know when the towers actually get converted to the 310-410? Like I realize that we don't know when it's going to happen, but when it does, how will you be able to tell other than taking your phone to an area affected and seeing if it is fixed?

It just seems like they would upgrade the towers to full EDGE when they do the conversion, that seems most logical. I would just really like to see AT&T add some more towers in some of the Dobson territory that wasn't covered very well. Then maybe eventually they'll add 3G to Dobson territory when they start a more rapid buildout of the 3G network, like Verizon has.

 

Are you still talking of the Saginaw and Bay City area we talked about before? Those sites I told you about will disapear as they are no longer needed. On the ATT side if you go buy a ATT phone you will be able to use both 680 and 410 as they are home network, the phone will prefere 410 and go to 680 when 410 is not available. It is acutally worse on the Cellular One customers because there phone will prefere the 680 so if you go between Midland to the thumb or vise versa you will get stuck on the 2 sites in Saginaw and Bay City.

EDGE is already in the works for getting maxed out. Far as 3G for ATT its not as easy as the CDMA carrier and adding EVDO. 3G requires new equipment, antennas, cables, switching equipment, backhaul lines and updated leasing agreements. So regardless it is a long process not just add backhaul, upgrade software and change out a few parts at sites to get 3 G. Be prepared when the CDMA carriers go 4G you will experience the same thing. The ones going LTE, Wimax and UMB will more than likely have to build a whole new network. From what I have read the UMT is upgradable to LTE. So when its time for 4G ATT should be ahead of the game.

 

Yes, I am still talking about Saginaw and Bay City. Why would CellularOne do that? I just don't understand why they would put up only one tower in Saginaw and one in Bay City, knowing full well that people would experience problems when they venture out farther out from where that tower is. And now the problem is, those towers still say 310-680 so when CellularOne customers go over to Saginaw and Bay City, they normally go to where the malls are, and the towers are much farther away from them, so they get one bar of service, when they could be getting full service on AT&T's 310-410 towers. So they need to hurry this integration up so people aren't completely forced to have to switch to AT&T if they don't really want to.

 

On the customer side it sucks. These are the reasons they are there. Dobson bought RFB wireless that had a PCS license in these two areas but RFB was running some really crusty CDMA One PCS equipment that was obsolete when it was put into play. By federal law in order to maintain a FCC sactioned license you have to provide service to a minimum percentage of the total population. Basically due to the lack of operating equipment those sites had to be turned up by law or lose the license. These are what is called license savers. Cingular before they called themselves ATT and even now they have 1 tower in northern michigan in Alpena so basically the ATT customer is surrounded by full bar on 850 but the ATT customer will lock into that 1 1900 ATT tower. The plan was to build more in that area as we had nothing when we first got the area but now that ATT bought Dobson that area will be smoking pretty good. The word I heard was 1st quarter most of the changes will happen, but this time of the year sucks to do tower work.

 

I will try to frequently use my V551 that I seem edited to show the actual carrier connected to to see when 310-680 disappears. The sooner the better for me since I bounce between it and 310-410 where I live. I work in Vassar and only pick up the Cell 1 tower there, so when the V551 says ATT in Vassar, I will know the tower has been integrated. I'll try to keep you posted.