[rantrod]

Unfortunately, this note is mostly a complaint and an explanation about why I had to give up my phone. I'm not trolling - I've been asking questions to solve several issues I had with the phone, but at the end I couldn't justify keeping it.

The phone is absolutely great at everything, except being a phone. The audio is very poor quality. I think it's funny how you can walk into any store and every phone tells you how many pixel the camera has, but no phone tells you how good it sounds or how loud can the volume go. At the highest setting, the handset volume was too low, and I had problems hearing people if there was any noise around me. If I turned the "Loud" audio profile on, it would still be too low, and in addition, people at the other end would complain my voice was distorted. The speakerphone was equally bad. It sounded very distorted and people had a hard time hearing me. I tried customer care / technical support but there was nothing they could do for me. Same thing with the carrier (T-Mobile) to no avail. I returned my phone after an overwhelming outcry from my contacts to do so, because they found it so annoying to talk to me on that phone. It still saddened me because I loved everything else about the phone so much!

I tried several headsets and Bluetooth devices, but the audio quality either sending, receiving, or both was usually bad (ie. either I was complaining I couldn't hear, the people on the other side would complain they couldn't understand me, or both)

I gave it a 1 star at e-pinions.com because no matter what else the phone does, being a phone is at the core of what the device is, and without it, the rest is irrelevant.

I think all those who agree with me should file complaints with the FCC to have new regulations that require cell phone manufacturers to release data on the audio of the devices. Like I said, I can find out absolutely everything about any phone, except how good the phone component is! At the least we should require them to release information about how loud the volume on the phones are. If there's an easy way, we should have them also release information about how much the sound distorts as the volume gets louder. If we manage to make this happen, I'm guessing people will start making purchasing decisions based on audio quality and all manufacturers will start producing better phones (as in the phone part of the phone - not the internet explorer or anything like that).

Thanks to all those who responded to my questions here. Some of the problems I had were specific to T-Mobile so thanks to those who pointed that out...

[John Clark]

Funny....I have none of those complaints with my 8320. Speakerphone is so-so but I've never used any speaker phone that I thought was good.

[rantrod]

Originally Posted by John Clark

Funny....I have none of those complaints with my 8320. Speakerphone is so-so but I've never used any speaker phone that I thought was good.

You must have amazing hearing!

I didn't even go into the problems I had with T-Mobile. Worse of all was the texting. 1 in 4 texts would reach the recipient. I even went to the T-Mobile site and sent texts to my T-Mobile phone, and would get 1 in 4. I do a lot of work over text so that was reason enough to switch carriers, and since I wasn't switching to ATT, I'd have to give up the phone anyway.

T-Mobile's reception in Los Angeles proved to be too unreliable. I kept hearing glitches when talking to other people, and the phone would cut-off even if I had solid full bars showing. These might be phone or carrier, but either way, these were reason enough to abandon the whole thing too.

I got the T-Mobile Wifi plan since at my home and work, I have wireless networks, but the phone was unable to connect. T-Mobile's response was to ask me to get a T-Mobile router (It'd be funny trying to convince my work to switch the router so I can hook up my phone to it).

I also regret how T-Mobile tried to nickle and dime me to death. So many basic things about phones are charged for nowadays. If I want emoticons for my text messaging, $6. If I want quick text responses, $6. If I want to use googlemaps, $20/mo, etc, etc, etc.

When I quit the account, they canceled my phone number which I've had for 10 years - that really irritated me. I can't imagine how many contacts, family, business cards of mine are out there with an obsolete number now. They got away with it through a technicality so I cant sue or anything like that.

I had to get a temporary phone which cost me $14 lock-stock-and-barrel. The cheapo Motorolla phone does have a high volume on it so from the practical making-phone-calls point of view, it works a lot better than the $300 + plan costs BB phone (I'm not saying it to needle people, I just find it amusing to no end In addition, all texts go through with absolutely no problems on it. If "Tracfone" can do it, why can't T-Mobile?

[John Clark]

You have to "port" your number in order to keep it. That's just how it works. Also, I connect to my work router...

I'm not sure why you had so many problems when so many others have none.

[rantrod]

Originally Posted by John Clark

You have to "port" your number in order to keep it. That's just how it works. Also, I connect to my work router...

I'm not sure why you had so many problems when so many others have none.

I wish you were right. Check out all the WiFi complaints on this website to see the truth. The common response is "get a T-Mobile router". I wanted it to work really badly 'cause I loved the phone so much. It was the only christmas gift I received :( I spent hours and hours on it, but I could find no resolution.

[John Clark]

I don't have a tmobile router and mine works great (it's a linksys WRT54G.) Yes, there are some routers that don't play well with the BB. Apple, and Belkin are a couple. Most of the rest will work.

Anyway, we are wasting breath since you took it back. I hope you find something you can live with.

[bevy]

I've been nothing but pleased with my 8320. It performs exceptionally well as a phone (the speakerphone isn't great.. but like John said, it's pretty tough to find a phone with a great speakerphone), and the Wi-Fi works pretty well for me. I occasionally have some issues with Wi-Fi, especially in areas with a weak signal, but nothing too bad, and on the whole, the Wi-Fi is a HUGE plus for me.

[NJBlackBerry]

8320 is my favorite BlackBerry. And I've had a few. No audio problems.
Love the WiFi.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

[dbltap]

Coverage, carrier and frequency being used can have an awful lot to do with call quality. I was blown away with how much BETTER my 8820 sounded..... In Santiago Chile! My calls sounded as if the person on the other end was next door. I've never had calls that clear with AT&T. Granted, I was probably on a different frequency in Chile. But it was a significant difference.

I may not be able to do UMA with the 8820 on AT&T. But as a networking IT guy, I can't help but believe that a lot of the issues are router compatibility and network upload speed. Not all WiFi routers are created equal. Even getting business VPNs to run reliably can be a tremendous challenge with many of them. T-mobile has done the right thing by providing a router they KNOW will work provided there is enough upstream bandwidth. If you are technical, John and others have pointed to many options to tweak older routers to get them working. If you are not technical, go with the router T-mobile is providing.

On the bandwidth side, I've seen a lot of issues with Voice over IP (VoIP) and limited upstream bandwidth. Personally, I wouldn't even attempt VoIP with less than 256kbps of bandwidth. 384kbps is even better. You MAY be able to get it to work with less. But if you do anything else over that network, your VoIP performance can be problematic. UMA has to have similar concerns. I certainly am not claiming to know what the bottom line upstream bandwidth requirements are for UMA. But I can see 128kbps being a real challenge.

[Alex Alexzander]

I am a former field tech, and I also feel this is likely a connection issue. It could be the phone simply didn't make good contact with a signal for t-mobile. And if you were attaching to wifi, understand that there is more latency in wifi than a connected cable. And as others use the wifi, the quality of service degrades. It's a fine idea to switch to wifi but it also adds yet another issue that can cause problems. One the one hand, a poor signal area can be avoided, but at what expense?

If the phone itself, meaning the construction, design, etc of the 8320 was really this bad, you'd be hearing a lot more screaming from a lot more people. Some places don't have great signals. I know in my company building, Verizon tends to get the best signal. The long hall I sit beyond seems to weaken the signal of Sprint. And my own personal choice of phone carrier, AT&T, tends to work well in this area, and even better every where else I go. Some people in my office swear by Verizon. A few by AT&T. I used to have t-mobile, but left them because in the areas I am go to, they had a weaker signal and poor sound quality as a result. And people did tell me this as your friends are telling you. The day I switched to a t68i years ago, my friends knew it. I got asked that very first call made what had happened to the phone. It was noticeable. I stuck with that phone a while anyway, and later I switched to Metrocom. Again my friends knew it. Better sound they said, but Metrocom wasn't national. So I switched to AT&T, and in doing so no one knew it. The sound was just as good as my Metrocom network. I am on my 3rd phone with AT&T and no one tells me anything bad about the phone, and it sounds wonderful to me.

I was a big fan of skype, and I can tell you I have tried just about every wifi phone made for it. I am convinced it just isn't ready for prime time. For Voip, I firmly believe it is best to have a wired connection to the router. It is for this reason I avoid cell phones that make use of wifi. I just don't believe it works well at this time. That being said, what these special routers do is change the QoS so that the phone has a guaranteed quality of service. That's what QoS means. Now even with QoS, it's not perfect. It's just an attempt to stack the deck in the phone favor so that the problems you have illustrated are less likely to happen. This is why t-mobile will say, use our router. At least then they know all that can be done has been done.

Since I don't own a 8320 with WiFi I can speak to the following, but it's something to throw out there anyway. Some wifi devices will switch on and off in some circumstances. Sometimes they will switch to other networks that appear to have a better signal, not a better routing technique. So there may be opportunities within the settings of the phone that control the access to wifi that can help keep the best of circumstances configured for you. It's one of those tech things you'd just have to know exists, and plan for, or threw trial and error figure out on your own.

Lastly I have a simple comment. You may want to be careful where you lay the blame for a problem. Sometimes it's not where you think it is, but instead elsewhere.

Best,

Alex Alexzander

[rantrod]

In all the problems I had, I had full bars for the signal. Doesn't that imply it is not the signal, but the carrier itself (T-Mobile)? With FULL bars showing, I would get calls shut off, I would hear glitches in the audio, others would have a hard time hearing me, and 1 out of 4 texts went through. Where would the blame go, if not T-Mobile? (all these things without Wifi - never got Wifi to work). Again, with the text, from the T-Mobile site, texting to my FULL bars T-Mobile phone, I would get 1 out of 4 texts through.

On my $14 Tracfone by Motorolla, I experience none of these problems. Why is that? Some of the issues might have been the phone itself, while others might have been T-Mobile, but from my point of view, I have to disassociate myself from the whole thing.

I still think cell phone manufacturers should release audio volume and distortion information the same way they release how many mega pixels the cameras hold and how much internal memory the phone has. Can we at least agree on that?

[monkeypaw]

I have some complaints about my Curve but voice quality isn't one of the. It's by far the clearest sounded phone I've ever had. Left myself a voicemail from Asia over UMA to check quality and when I got home the quality was astonishing. It sounded like a landline call.

Sounds like you had a defective device or maybe the OS needed to be reinstalled. If you had 4 bars and the phone is dropping calls that's a problem with the phone. UMA is not yet the most reliable service, but for me its the only reliable signal I can get at home.

I think trying to reinstall the OS and a warranty exchange would have been the steps to try before giving up on it. My 1st phone crashed so I had no choice, but my 2nd performs so much better I'm glad the 1st one died. Even on the 1st one, voice quality was fantastic.

[Alex Alexzander]

I don't trust those bars at all. They merely mean the a signal is present. From my technical point of view, it's like saying the internet should work flawlessly because I can ping the router and get a low latency return on the TTL count. If you're technical as I am, you'll understand what I mean by that. Great signal is only a small part of the whole process. It's the first step, but not at all the whole package.

I got back to what I said, if a lot of folks were missing 3 out of 4 SMS messages, you'd hear about it quickly. I personally send well over 1,500 SMS messages in a month. Some times as many as 200 in a single day. If I were missing just 10 out of the 200, I'd know it. But if I were missing 150 out of 200, it would be unmistakable. I hope that makes sense. Because somewhere in the process, your phone is saying it's been delivered, or has not been delivered. That needs to be traced to fully understand where the problem truly are. I can't say it is the phone, and doubt it is to be honest. I think it is more likely the network.

You should be able to take the 8320 back to where you bought and get another one. They come with a 30 day policy so you can make sure it is to your satisfaction. Did anyone else tell you that, and if yes, did you try that?

What I am trying to say is, I don't think it is all 8320s. A lot of people would be screaming murder if that were the case. Something odd is indeed going on. But consider the facts. You tried another type of phone and it worked with your network. So that sort of says the network appears to work well. And others have the same 8320, manufactured off the same assembly line, and they use t-mobile, and their not experiencing the same problem. So if it's not the phone in general, and not the network, what is left? The answer is, it could be that specific phone. Perhaps dropped, perhaps something is lose, perhaps it's an honest lemon. That certainly happens. rare, but it does happen. Perhaps it's some combination of that phone in your specific area, and thus others in other areas are not seeing it. Perhaps it roaming and that may have something to do with it.

Without it happening to me it's hard to say as I don't see the symptoms as you do. I only know what you tell me. Did you notice this happens in specific geographies for example. Like my office, as I was saying, has a problem with Sprint. Leave me office and it works. But in my office, sprint seems to fall apart. Who knows why, it just does. AT&T is office friendly for me, so I went with that.

Anyway, I am not trying to anger you. I am more curious than anything else. Just because my experience with a close cousin phone has been so spectacular.

Best,

Alex

[adamrhoffman]

I think if we look back at the base of this thread it is obvious there is a problem, i totally agree that it is dumb that we can find absolutely everything about the added extra features, but we cant even see how good the sound quality is! BUT at the same time some carriers have a 30 day policy where if you don't like the phone you can take it back..

[rantrod]

For the tracfone, that's not on the T-Mobile network. I don't know how the pay-per-minute phones work, but it's 100% reliable and the sound quality is as good as I want it to be.

My phone problems were independent of where I was, but I don't travel a lot. I live and work in Burbank, ca.

The full bars I got were solid - no fluctuation at all. They didn't go from 2 - 4 or anything like that. It was solid.

I didn't replace the phone, but I called T-Mobile technical support several times and their conclusion from their end was that everything looked normal. I contacted BB and they were similarly un-helpful.

I thought there were so many problems with either the phone or the network that it wasn't worth it trying to salvage it. If it was just the volume or texts not going through, I would've tried more things, but the problems were overwhelming.

[numetheus]

My solution was to dump T-Mobile. I was on there and got sick of it ... text messages would come late sometimes, and sending MMS was a pain in the arse because several times I would get the red X. I would have to resend numerous times for it to work. I didnt have problems with SMS and MMS all the time, just certain times a day it seems. Its easy for me to notice because I sms txt A LOT! I can go through over 4000 txt messages a month so I know.

Anyways, I dumped T-Mobile and went to AT&T and everyone gets my txt messages instantly, and MMS goes through all the time unless I am in a weak edge signal area.

SURE i'm paying more for AT&T than T-Mobile but you know what? You get what you pay for. T-Mobile doesn't have the money to keep up with everyone else with the rates they are charging. Heck, they are just now STARTING their rollout of 3G (older 3G), when everyone else is going to 4G soon! TMO users are rejoicing that they finally will have 3G in limited areas, but they will be the slow guys on the block STILL when everyone else is 4G.

Tmo is a great carrier don't get me wrong ... and I would rather be with them than ripped off by Verizon. But, you pay a cheap price, get cheap service and slow advancement.

[jeremyckitching]

I think there are some areas that are weaker for T-Mobile, but where I live it is excellent. The only issue I used to have (with my 8700g) was with the MMS sometimes not sending. With my previous 8320 Curve and my current 8100 I don't have that issue any longer. And the call quality is excellent, too. I think the OP might want to look at a different carrier, possibly.

[numetheus]

Originally Posted by jeremyckitching

I think there are some areas that are weaker for T-Mobile, but where I live it is excellent. The only issue I used to have (with my 8700g) was with the MMS sometimes not sending. With my previous 8320 Curve and my current 8100 I don't have that issue any longer. And the call quality is excellent, too. I think the OP might want to look at a different carrier, possibly.

Here we have a wireless service called cricket which has unlimited minutes, txt, data, mms, and everything else for $50 a month. Problem is its limited in service. T-Mobile is only good if you live in a good area, and that is spotty and unreliable. With me, my Tmobile was GREAT around work, but sucky just 20 miles away where I suffered late SMS and problems sending MMS. So since its just as spotty as Cricket why use it instead of Cricket? Its just as bad.

With either AT&T or Verizon I can go anywhere I want and get perfect SMS and MMS. Yes I used to be with Verizon, and it was the best network I have ever used.

[ezrunner]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8800/4.2.1 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/100)

Txts are not guaranteed to go through in a timely fashion read terms and service closely!

Truly in sounds like the phone was bad!

Or there was a network issue.

I would have at least exchanged the phone once and see if that made a difference.

I agree would be nice if they would post some other technical info reason they don't most people won't comprehend what it means.

[rantrod]

If they put audio info on the specs it would definitely have to be dumbed down. I just want volume and noise. Develop a standard and make it 1-10. Easy to understand. 1 = very low maximum volume, 10 = too loud for anyone. Noise 1 = you can't make out what anyone is saying, 10 = crystal clear. The '10's would have to be nearly impossible to achieve so they don't become irrelevant.