Wife's LG Ally -124dBm PRL40065 / My MotoDroid -94dBm PRL40063 - What's going on?

[CharlieJ]

As the title infers, I think there's a problem with my wife's brand new (24 hours old) LG Ally. Sitting side-by-side, her LG Ally shows -124dBm (to -126dBm). It has PRL 40065, Android 2.1-update1. My Moto Droid shows -94dBm (to -87dBm) and has PRL 40063; Android 2.1-update1.

We already did a *228, Option 1 on her phone. No change.

I googled a manual change after downloading a few PRLs from corolada.com, but cannot, for the life of me, find a working manual method for updating the PRL on her Ally. BTW, I tried ##778, ##775 and ##7764726. All said the number has been disconnected, blah, blah... and the edit screen never showed. Tried the ##775 and ##778 on my Droid... same result. Do I need to have the PRL files copied to the root of the SD card for this to work? Or am I doing something else wrong?

So, I'm at a loss. I have seen the Update your PRLs thread. Looks like here in NC, it prolly should be 51926 (Verizon). Like I said, her Ally won't change PRLs and I"m not mucking around with mine when it's working fairly well. I might end up with PRL 40065 and screw my signal strength up, too.

What are YOUR thoughts and ideas?

 

[titans]

I'm pretty sure that its *228 option 2 not 1 to update prls.

 

[CharlieJ]

You know, I've read both options on all sorts of forums, including Verizon.com. ??? Some say one works. Others say two works. Several say either works. IDK.

Just for S&G, I did a *228, Option 2 on my phone. I now have PRL 40065. My signal strength isn't changing much... but I still think I should have PRL 51926 if Burlington, Raleigh and other places in NC have it. Don't you?

I would really like to try a hybrid or an old, more stable PRL, if anyone knows of one that works for my area. I live near Wilmington, NC / Whiteville, NC and Loris, SC / Myrtle Beach, SC. Anyone else around here have PRL 40065... or do you have PRL 51920/51926?

The most important issue ISN'T what PRL we have on either phone... it's that her phone's signal is significantly LOWER than mine... sitting in the same room, side-by-side.

 

[Mule65]

I returned a Moto Droid and an Ally. I noticed the same thing -- stronger signal with Droid. That said, Ally never dropped or face-hung-up a call and sound quality was better than Moto. The Moto spearker phone was much, much better. I'm disappointed to say LG didn't do a great job with the Ally.

 

[thinkdata]

I am dropping calls on my LG Ally in places I never had trouble on my Palm Treo 700w.
Side by side, I will read 12-20 dBm poorer signal on the LG Ally. (e.g a -91 dBm on the Treo vs -106 dBm on the LG Ally) this sucks

 

[Bilgediver]

I've noticed that too actually, I've compared my phone (Droid) with my gf's (LG Ally) and I just think Motorola has a stronger Antenna in the Droid than LG has in the Ally.

I could make calls where she couldn't in her house (she lives on the Eastern Shore of Virginia), so I ended up buying the network extender (which is basically a localized cell phone signal generator using a VOIP protocol) over her Verizon DSL internet and now she's fine.