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How to Achieve Perfect Cell Phone Reception at Home

Written by Posted On Friday, 06 April 2018 07:33
Perfect cell phone reception Perfect cell phone reception

The year is 2018, everyone has a smart phone, and yet we still grumble about dropped calls and incomprehensible conversations. It is one thing to have a bad connection when we are outdoors or inside a school, but to have it happen inside your own home makes you feel powerless and frustrated.

But by understanding how cell phone reception works, you can boost your network quickly without having to shell money for a signal booster which seems to do nothing the vast majority of the time or a premium carrier package. And in fact, there is really one simple, easy way to make sure you have perfect cell reception in your home.

What causes Cell Phone Problems?

So why does your phone refuse to work randomly at a moment’s notice? While everyone’s exact circumstances are slightly different, there are two primary causes: geographical distance from your home to the cell phone tower, or poor coverage due to certain effects.

You can ignore the first cause. Your cell phone probably works at home most of the time and it is not like your home’s geography changes. The second cause happens because your phone’s signal is blocked by something between the phone and the tower. That something can be geographical barriers like hills, building materials like concrete and metal, or temporary factors like storms. Cell phone signals are tricky things, which is why moving your phone just a few feet can massively bolster your reception.

What this means is that if you can lessen the number of interferences between your phone and your tower, you can improve your reception. Move outside, especially towards higher places, and remove any clutter which could be blocking your signal. As noted above, even small improvements can turn a terrible reception into a great one.

Wi-Fi Calling

The above solutions may have been good enough five to ten years ago, but there is now a better solution virtually guaranteed to work in the home called Wi-Fi Calling. If you have ever flipped through your phone’s settings, you have likely noticed that option but have never understood what it is nor its value.

Sprint says that Wi-Fi calling “is a service for Android and iOS smartphones providing the ability to make and receive phone calls over a Wi-Fi connection,” and every other major U.S. carrier has this ability. You may not be able to control your phone’s ability to connect to a distant cell phone tower, but you have far more control over your Wi-Fi connection.  

When you are at home, your phone connects to your Wi-Fi connection and sends calls and text through the Internet. When you leave home and are no longer connected to the Wi-Fi network, your cell phone will then use the standard cellular network. This is designed to work automatically, so that you may not even know when you are transitioning from one connection type to the other, or using a signal booster.

It should be noted that some people dislike Wi-Fi calling. Techlicious notes that there can be a slight delay, and you can find plenty of people complaining on the official T-Mobile or other carrier forums about latency issues. It also requires you to have a solid Internet connection. But the quality of service has improved over the years and your connection inside your home should be good enough. Overall, you should emphasize the benefits of Wi-Fi calling to others and also use it yourself as much as possible.

Other Tips

There are other, smaller ways to increase your cell phone’s reception in your daily life. For example, if you are in a crowded spot like a concert or stadium or many people are using the phone due to some major emergency, the massive number of people texting or posting videos on Snapchat can overwhelm the nearest cell tower and lead to poor service. Under those circumstances, you may want to head to a less populated area or just wait. You may also want to take the phone out of its protective case as said case can block the internal antenna. And of course, there is always the option to switch carriers to one which has better national coverage.

But if you want a simple, great way to ensure the best reception possible, then I strongly recommend that you enable Wi-Fi calling. Most people do not use it simply because it is not the default option on their phones, but anyone with a good connection in their homes should be using it to ensure the best reception. 

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Patrick Rapa

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