Old mobiles better for calls and texts than smartphones
EVER feel that your expensive high-tech smartphone doesn’t work as well as the basic mobile you had a decade ago?
According to industry regulator Ofcom, you could be right.
In a study, it discovered that the no-frills handsets of the past provide better signal performance for making calls and sending texts than modern smartphones.
Tests showed that despite being packed with technology, smartphones are not as good at picking up weak signals as cheaper devices.
Some required a minimum signal nearly ten times stronger than that required by non- smartphones currently on the market just to make or receive calls.
On average, the smartphones examined required a signal at least seven times stronger than the average nonsmartphone on the 2G network.
The worst smartphone on the G network required a signal nine times stronger than the minimum level recommended by the GSMA, the standards body for the mobile industry.
On the 4G network, the worst performing smartphone required seven times the recommended signal strength to send data.
Ofcom’s findings support claims that the glass and metal used in smartphones, as opposed to the plastic used in cheaper mobiles, are responsible for calls cutting off.
According to the research, which will be used to create detailed mobile coverage maps, even the hand you use to make a call can affect the chances of a call being cut off due to the position of the antenna and whether it is covered by the user’s fingers.
The report noted that there was a ‘sig- nificant variation in performance’ for some handsets ‘depending on whether it was held in the left or right hand’.
Ofcom refused to identify the smartphones used in the research. A spokesman said: ‘We tested a very small number of mobile phones, not for ranking but to understand how handsets performed in different situations.
‘As no one device consistently outperformed the others we chose not to list the handsets.’