Nexus 1 on 2Degrees - what does an E icon in the signal strength notification bar mean?

Forums › Android › Nexus 1 on 2Degrees - what does an E icon in the signal strength notification bar mean?

lchiu7

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#68795 28-Sep-2010 13:25

I just moved my N1 from VF to 2D. Now I occasionally see an "E" in the notification bar alongside the signal strength meter. I have never seen that before. It sort of suggests to me that I can only make emergency calls but as soon as I call the 2D balance number, the E disappears and I get my balances.

This E occasionally appears after I have lost service and have got it back.

Just wondering.

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coffeebaron

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#385440 28-Sep-2010 13:27

EDGE
Basically a bit faster than 2G, but slower than 3G.
Vodafone jumped this step and went straight to 3G on their network.

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caldazar

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#385450 28-Sep-2010 13:41

EDGE is pretty good with 2Degrees... far better than only having GPRS.

lchiu7

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#385451 28-Sep-2010 13:42

coffeebaron: EDGE
Basically a bit faster than 2G, but slower than 3G.
Vodafone jumped this step and went straight to 3G on their network.

OK - that makes sense. So 2D are deploying both Edge and 3G since most of the time (in Wellington) I get 3G. And I don't want to roam on VF since I am on the broadband plan with 2D.

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raab

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#385470 28-Sep-2010 14:04

no, they're upgrading from edge afaik

richms

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#385530 28-Sep-2010 15:59

You get edge when inside a lot on 2? in auckland, much preferable to the VF GPRS fallback. Its quite usable for mobile sites, and tollerable for smaller full websites. If the bulk of trademe is cached its not unusable on edge, like it is on gprs.

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Linuxluver

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#385576 28-Sep-2010 18:12

lchiu7: I just moved my N1 from VF to 2D. Now I occasionally see an "E" in the notification bar alongside the signal strength meter. I have never seen that before. It sort of suggests to me that I can only make emergency calls but as soon as I call the 2D balance number, the E disappears and I get my balances.

This E occasionally appears after I have lost service and have got it back.

Just wondering.

Edge - It's about 380kbps. Not as fast as 3G, but much faster than 2G. Fast enough you won't really notice for all but the heaviest web content....like streaming video or downloads of large files.

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lchiu7

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#388457 5-Oct-2010 20:36

Or perhaps if you are tethering your phone?

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bronto

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#388520 5-Oct-2010 22:19

Bandwidth is only part of the story though (admittedly a pretty big part). My understanding is EDGE still has pretty high latency, basically the same as GPRS, ie ~500-1000ms vs ~150ms on "3g".

freitasm

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#388523 5-Oct-2010 22:24

raab: no, they're upgrading from edge afaik

No, they are not "upgrading". WCDMA is not an upgrade over GSM, but a completely different networ. Like Vodafone, 2degrees is running both WCDMA and GSM network concurrently.

Linuxluver: Edge - It's about 380kbps. Not as fast as 3G, but much faster than 2G. Fast enough you won't really notice for all but the heaviest web content....like streaming video or downloads of large files.

Actually up to 236Kbps. 380Kbps is the start of WCDMA.

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