Inferior Cell Tower Reception

I am a T-Mobile customer and wanted to use their MyFaves feature. My old phone was a Nokia, but being old, it did not support MyFaves. Therefore, I decided to get a new phone.

Reception at my home has always been an issue, before my old Nokia phone, I had tried out a Sony Ericsson, but had to return it due to not always getting a signal from phone. My old Nokia would get from 1 to 2 bars at home, not great, but it worked.

Looking for a new phone, I could find little in the way of comparison on reception in reviews and the T-Mobile sales associates were not very helpful, only stating that all their phones are tested and have similar reception. This turned out to be woefully inaccurate information.

Upon receipt of my new Nokia 5310, I was initially pleased by all the great new features such as a 2.0 Megapixel camera, high resolution screen, Bluetooth wireless, music player, FM radio, etc. This new phone is loaded with great features. However, this soon turned to disappointment, as whenever I went to make a call from home, inevitably there was no signal locked in and the call would fail. I learned to work around this by walking outside my house, turning the phone off and on again, getting a lock, dialing the number and then returning inside to talk.

To me, phone reception is the number one important feature of a cell phone. The primary reason I have been using Nokia in the past, is that they have a good reputation for reception. So, despite all the other bells and whistles, this Nokia phone was not acceptable to me at all.

Fortunately, there is a 30 day return period in my state, so I returned the phone and I also learned of a similar Nokia, the 6301. The 6301 has almost the identical user interface to the 5310, but with the one addition of being able to connect to the Internet over a WiFi router. This extra feature requires a second antenna and consequently, my new 6301 now has great consistent cell tower reception at my home and also can work over a wireless router!