7100t on Rogers
 

I have recently bought an unlocked 7100t and am using it on Rogers in Toronto. I was using a 7280 and have noticed a few differences. First, my reception is much worse with the 7100t. I have also noticed that when do a manual scan of available networks I only see Rogers and not Microcell (Fido). With my 7280 I would usually see Fido as an available network if I remember correctly. Even though I can't go on Fido for GPRS data, it should be available for voice.

The battery life is also quite different from the 7280. I am still finding a profile I can live with on the 7100. ie. screen brightness, backlight timeout, keeping bluetooth on all the time or not.

I left the T-Mo 4.0.2.32 OS on the phone, but replaced that horrid theme. Would there be any benefit to putting the Rogers 4.0.0.219 OS on? I am guessing not, since it is working perfectly with e-mail / data and I doubt it will do anything to benefit signal strength / battery life.

I ran my battery down 3 times and now the battery life seems to be better. I can now get 2 full days of use with a single charge. I was turning bluetooth off when I wasn't using it, but that doesn't seem necessary anymore.

I would suggest to try loading the Rogers OS to see if it improves reception, as it might be tweaked to work better with Rogers' network.

I have an unlocked 7290 on Fido and have the Rogers OS loaded and I don't have any reception problems.

As for the Fido network... the fido/rogers networks have been merged in most parts of Canada now, hence you only seing Rogers now.

Battery life is a difficult one to control but a few good habits can help out a lot, although it is difficult going from the excellent battery life of the 7200 series to the more power intensive 7100 series.

Obviously (as you've noticed) you can turn down the backlight brightness - I found I could reduce mine to around 80% without noticing much difference visually. Also Lithium Ion batteries act a little like car batteries, if you let them run down too much too often they will naturally start to under perform. Luckily they're not that prone to over charging (like the old polymer batteries were), so you can charge them as much as you want (within some reason). I tend to carry a spare in my glove box to be on the safe side, but I can generally go around three days with a single charge now on a 4 month old battery - which is used for quite a bit of voice as well as data, and I even use it with a bluetooth carkit for around 30 minutes a day - I don't think that's bad going.

I think I might give it a try. It sucks that it is only at ver. 4.0.0.219 and I have 4.0.2.32 already on there. If it doesn't give me any improvements, I'll just switch back.