T-Mobile San Francisco experience

March 12th, 2004

These measurements were taken at 8am-9am, 3/12/04 using fully charged samsung e715. One thing that is apparent is that some underground stations have very good coverage.

T-Mobile GSM (voice) service strength on BART Richmond line:

stationmeasured
between stations underground and above ground tunnelsno service
South San Francisco2-3 bars signal
Colma2-3 bars signal
Daly City5 bars signal, 4-5 bars to entrance of Balboa Park tunnel w/ additional 1bar dead zone about 1/2 mi east from daly city
Balboa Park1-2 bar signal
Glen Parkno signal
24th and Missionno signal
16th and Missionno signal
Civic Center5 bars
Powell5 bars signal, but “no cellphone” icon displayed and no service — maybe AT&T or Cingular network
Montgomery4 bars signal, but “no cellphone” icon displayed and no service — maybe AT&T or Cingular network
Embarcaderono signal
West Oakland3 bars signal
12th St Oaklandno signal
19th St Oaklandno signal
Macarthur5 bars signal
Ashbyno signal
Downtown Berkeleyno signal
North Berkeley1 bar signal

Samsung e715 experience

March 12th, 2004

Negatives:

  • in-service light blinks so brightly at night it lights up room, but the phone can be turned face down to hide that.
  • phone crashes when it goes to a big web page (with a lot of text, no images). It also scrolls through text slowly in general.
  • (added 7/21/05) LCD display starts to deteriorate after a year – I have two phones, one is unreadable most of the time, the other is still working ok.