Droid "Phone" issue

[StupidGenius]

I agree with most people on here that you unfortunately got a lemon. If you haven't already, this is one other thing you could try which i found in another thread:

----------------------------------

JamesX Rules, this fixed it for me.
Simple enough. Called my wife as a test and whispered lightly to her on the phone, she understood it all.:

-Dial ##7764726 (##PROGRAM) and act as if you were going to call that number.
-Enter 000000 for the SPC Password and then tap Verify
-Tap on "04 Vocode"
-Tap on EVRC-B than Apply
-Tap the Home Screen button and the phone should automatically reset a few seconds afterward. If not, power cycle the phone

Explanation - This changes how the phone compresses and decompressed the call audio which improves the quality.

 

[Dmoralize]

In my personal experience, this droid has the greatest call quality of any phone i've owned. It's extremely clear.

I don't have anything to add beyond what's already been said in this thread. Hope you can get it to work properly. I think you'd be pleased with the sound quality.

 

[hookbill]

In my personal experience, this droid has the greatest call quality of any phone i've owned. It's extremely clear.

I don't have anything to add beyond what's already been said in this thread. Hope you can get it to work properly. I think you'd be pleased with the sound quality.

Agreed. Much better then my Blackberry Storm when I was constantly having to say "What?" Plus it has great noise reduction too.

This thread falls under the category of one person likes it he tells 2, someone dislikes it he tells the internet.

 

[mattygabe]

In my personal experience, this droid has the greatest call quality of any phone i've owned. It's extremely clear.

I don't have anything to add beyond what's already been said in this thread. Hope you can get it to work properly. I think you'd be pleased with the sound quality.

Agreed. Much better then my Blackberry Storm when I was constantly having to say "What?" Plus it has great noise reduction too.

This thread falls under the category of one person likes it he tells 2, someone dislikes it he tells the internet.

Hey now, regardless of whether or not it's a common issue or not was not the point of the thread. The point was so he could get help, and the OP has been nothing but nice and thankful for the help provided thus far. He made no comments about the Droid (except positive ones - because he's excited to switch) so there's no need to come down on him.

This thread actually falls into the category of "one person likes it, he goes online and joins DroidForums.net to talk to other people about how awesome the phone is, someone dislikes it he goes online joins DroidForums.net and asks other people if they've encountered this before and how to fix it so he can enjoy the phone". Not as catchy as yours...

 

[hookbill]

In my personal experience, this droid has the greatest call quality of any phone i've owned. It's extremely clear.

I don't have anything to add beyond what's already been said in this thread. Hope you can get it to work properly. I think you'd be pleased with the sound quality.

Agreed. Much better then my Blackberry Storm when I was constantly having to say "What?" Plus it has great noise reduction too.

This thread falls under the category of one person likes it he tells 2, someone dislikes it he tells the internet.

Hey now, regardless of whether or not it's a common issue or not was not the point of the thread. The point was so he could get help, and the OP has been nothing but nice and thankful for the help provided thus far. He made no comments about the Droid (except positive ones - because he's excited to switch) so there's no need to come down on him.

This thread actually falls into the category of "one person likes it, he goes online and joins DroidForums.net to talk to other people about how awesome the phone is, someone dislikes it he goes online joins DroidForums.net and asks other people if they've encountered this before and how to fix it so he can enjoy the phone". Not as catchy as yours...

Point taken. That is another way to look at it, and you're right that does happen a lot here. It's kind of hard though to give help to someone who has an issue with the phone quality when the rest of us don't. Still, I see where you're coming from.

 

[zakany]

Never had that issue. If it turns out to not be a defective phone and, instead, a bad tower near you then go with a carrier that works better. At the end of the day, the Droid is just a phone. There will be better ones on every network.

 

[mattygabe]

Never had that issue. If it turns out to not be a defective phone and, instead, a bad tower near you then go with a carrier that works better. At the end of the day, the Droid is just a phone. There will be better ones on every network.

Again, i don't feel like there needs to be a defense of the Droid here. No one's saying anything poor about the phone, and there certainly isn't a lack of defenders of the phone on these forums to begin with. Just because someone's having an issue doesn't mean a defense needs to be made. If someone comes perusing the boards and sees this person having this issue, and then just naturally thinks every single Droid is like that, then they have no discernment skills and can't tell their *** from a hole in the ground, and they're not necessarily the type you'd like using the Droid anyhow.

 

[jsh1120]

I agree with most people on here that you unfortunately got a lemon. If you haven't already, this is one other thing you could try which i found in another thread:

----------------------------------

JamesX Rules, this fixed it for me.
Simple enough. Called my wife as a test and whispered lightly to her on the phone, she understood it all.:

-Dial ##7764726 (##PROGRAM) and act as if you were going to call that number.
-Enter 000000 for the SPC Password and then tap Verify
-Tap on "04 Vocode"
-Tap on EVRC-B than Apply
-Tap the Home Screen button and the phone should automatically reset a few seconds afterward. If not, power cycle the phone

Explanation - This changes how the phone compresses and decompressed the call audio which improves the quality.

Now THAT'S interesting. It's quite possible, of course, that the consensus on this thread that the OP has a "bad phone" is correct. But given his success in using his Droid for 3G data transfers, I have a feeling the network's audio handling algorithm (at his particular location) may be involved.

One of the difficulties of diagnosing problems people have with their phones is that the cell carrier's network (VZW or others) is not invariable. Cell towers are sometimes flakey or have old equipment. Some locations have heavier traffic than others. Carriers "tune" various portions of their networks to cope with these and other variables.

And when a problem is intermittent, most of us are not in a position to drive around testing the performance of our phones at different locations at different times of of the day (heavy vs light traffic.)

The procedure cited above sounds like an apparently undocumented feature that allows a user to select a non-default compression algorithm for an individual phone. It's certainly worth trying if one is having audio problems.

 

[BradDroid]

Sorry I didn't respond earlier, as the snow has kept me mostly indoors.

Because of the weather, I was not able to make the 50 mile drive to the VZW store today to see about a replacement. But I did drive to the VZ cell tower this morning and do a *228 opt. 2 to see if it helped.

And surprisingly, it did! For the first time in about 4 days, my phone actually gained bars instead of dropping during a call. I don't care if it shows full and drops to two or even 1, as long as I can hear the call! This seemed to help as I have received about 3 calls since the reset and all three calls have been crystal clear.

The location of the tower is the opposite direction that I drive from in the evenings. I think the phone was connecting to a tower nearly 4 to 5 miles opposite of the one closest. Needless to say, I'm going to watch it over the next few days and see what happens.

For those of you that think I'm trolling....

Verizon and AT&T are the only two options in my location. There is literally no service with any other carriers. 0. Yeah, it's a smaller market, but there is a Verizon tower very close and according to the maps I'm in excellent coverage.
It's kinda pointless for me to even have AT&T (ie; iPhone) because I can only get one bar (EDGE) in my house. Heck, I'm 30 miles away from their nearest 3G coverage!! I like the Droid, it's an awesome smart phone from my limited experience with it and I just need it to get enough service to talk and I'll be happy. Heck, I can use my wifi at the house to connect to web pages. I just need the phone part to work as it should.

I came here for help as I am not familiar with how the Verizon network handles calls and wanted to hear from other Droid owners on the issue I was having. I needed to know if it could have a been a network problem or a phone issue. I am impressed with this forum and the layout and the help and suggestions given have been great. I hope to remain a part of this community.

 

[evilsock]

even if its working id still say go swap it out for a fresh DROID
keep us posted when u make the long journey!
good luck, welcome to droidfoums.net

edit, if u tried to change the vocod, set it back to what is what is was at befor eu go back to vzw, dont want them thinking u were messing with it and refuse a swap out

 

[BradDroid]

Thanks for the welcome! Unfortunately, it was a quick fix. I'm getting it replaced Thursday. I'll report back how the new one does.