HTC Signal Strength Not So Incredible

Like many others I was excited to get my brand new HTC Droid Incredible. It looked great, felt great, worked great, has plenty of features that other phones just can't handle. Then it came to actually using the phone portion of my cell phone.... I very quickly found out just how poor the antenna is on this new HTC Incredible. I've had several other Verizon phones which never had any signal/service issues. Never had problems with dropped calls, or voicemail that's impossible to listen to.

Now I bring home my new shiny HTC Incredible and suddenly I can't make or receive phone calls, and never get 3G service. I have to literally drive 2 miles from home to get a strong enough signal to make a call without having a dropped call. The phone has a menu that lets you see the actual signal strength in db's. At my home I get around -110 db's. If I drive away from home the strength improves to around -85 db's. That's still not a great signal at all, but at least works. If I place my hand behind the phone and hold it like normal, the signal gets worse by -10 db. So I have to hold the phone lightly from the sides, looks rediculous and it's easy to drop the phone.

After searching the internet it seems as this weak signal is a major problem for HTC and for all it's new unhappy customers. Verizon has attempted to "fix" the problem by performing an OTA (over the air) system/software update. This apparently did not make the signal any better at all. The upgrade simply made the signal bar register one bar higher so it looks as if your getting a signal, even though the signal strength is the same.

After now recieving my first bill I'm even more upset. It's because every dropped call I had resulted in being charged 1 minute even though the call never was completed. I would have to make 7 or 8 attempts at actually completing a connection to the other person before they could hear me, in turn one phone call ended up in 8 minutes of dropped call attempts all within the same minute of time.  Verizon has some work to do if they want to keep promoting this phone.

The OTA update had nothing to do with radio reception. It was an update for Exchange email.

From what I've seen on this.. the radio reception is kind of isolated, there are people that complain about it, but then there are people who don't have any issues at all, regardless of how you hold the phone. The few that I've used in store, and from other people, even in a weak signal strength area have had no issues with dropping calls, or severe radio signal dips.

My reception with the Incredible is about the same as with my previous phone.  The thing that I have noticed (and this is a little off-topic) is that my voice on the "other end" is a little pitchy.  I have listened to messages that I have left on my home voice mail just for a test and the quality is not as good as I think it should be.

Thanks DM...I too live on the Eastern Shore, and work in Baltimore, and I was worried about some of these concerns on signal strength, etc. I was happy to hear a local guy isn't having those issues...my phone wont be here for another 12 days.

HTC is getting a lot of complaints on this same issue, millions of others also. I am not the only person with this problem. In fact, now they're having a record number of people returning their new Droid "Incredible" because of horrible reception, dropped calls etc.

HTC is trying to fix this problem by creating a ROM update. I don't know how a ROM update can fix a weak antenna hardware problem but it will be interesting to find out what happens next.

When I called Verizon they very clearly stated there is a design problem with the new HTC Incredible phone. Because of this they will not lend me their "Network Extender". The network extender is an internet based home cell phone antenna basically. It will provide cell service when you are out of range for a cell tower. It uses high speed broadband to provide the phone service.


Verizon has the balls to say they will gladly charge me $200 to use this device, so that I can actually use my brand new $300 phone while I'm at home. I can't get them to loan it to me until this supposed "ROM Update" is available.

On the other hand, HTC has no recommendations for me other than "hold the phone with your fingertips and do not block the back of the phone....". They say holding it this way will increase the antenna affectivity.

I have only had a few issues. But this is when I travel in NO MANS land .. Im talking places with less than 2,000 residents where service is provided by another carrier and demand is low .. I believe service also depends on current weather conditions 

It's been several months and still no "ROM update". I'm pretty sure we've been screwed by HTC on this one. They are just waiting for the complaints to die down and keep designing other new phones instead of fixing this one. I email them every few weeks and they give me the same pre-written statement of how they are working on a fix for their design flaw. By the time my phone is fixed it's going to be old and outdated. The only thing I like now on this phone is the 8 MP camera. Unfortunately I didn't purchase a camera, I purchased a $300 phone that barely works and a cheezy built in camera is what I got.

I also got an email from this forum yesterday telling me this topic is being removed. It's still here right now, but probably will be gone soon. I don't know why they would send an email sayings it's removed, and meanwhile it's NOT been removed......what's going on?

UPDATE: the phone still sucks!

Verizon finally agreed to send me a replacement, and promised me it would contain the newest radio/baseband updates. It was supposed to have Froyo version 2.2. It was supposed to have the HD camcorder.

What I got was an exact identical replica of my old broken non working phone. It has the old original baseband version 1.00.03.04.06. There have been FOUR (4) upgrades since baseband 1.0, now it's 2.1.x.x.x.

The new phone still does not work at or near my home. I live 3 miles from a tower, and 4 miles from another tower in a slightly different direction. My Motorola droid got 100% perfect reception, and my mother's phone got 100% perfect reception, but mine sitting next to theirs says no service, and has an "X" over the antenna bars. The new one does the same thing.

The bottom line is the Verizon doesn't give a **** about me, or any other people with this problem. They just keep rolling in money each month until you finally get pissed off enough to cancel them for failing to provide phone service. Then they screw you one last time with a $350 cancellation fee.