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General discussion

Dropped call even with 5 bars? T-Mobile Sony Ericsson T300

Feb 11, 2005 12:50PM PST

I have T-Mobile service. My phone was a Sony Ericsson T300. It worked fine until recently, now it is acting very weird.

I go into areas where I can have even all 5 bars, but instead of the screen saying "T-Mobile" it says "No access". Does anyone know what this means? Sometimes it then jumps back to T-Mobile. I called T-Mobile customer service and even they didn't have an explanation for the "No Access" message with the bars showing. I think this is why I'm getting far more "dropped calls" than I used to.

Anyways, I have three other phenomena that occur:

1) I have several bars of signal strength, but calls do not ring my phone. At other times calls do ring my phone with the same or lower signal strength.

2) I can be in the middle of a call and suddenly I can still hear the caller but he/she can no longer hear me.

3) My screen says "T-Mobile" and shows 4 or 5 bars of signal strength yet I cannot make outgoing calls. This situation is random, about 2/3 of the time I CAN make calls.

T-Mobile says it is not the service and I honestly do think it is the phone because I moved my SIM chip into a different phone (a Samsung R225M) and no longer have any of these problems.

But I want to understand why my phone would suddenly do this and is there anything I can do about it, or is my phone essentially "dead" now? Please let me know, thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Signal
Feb 14, 2005 12:32PM PST

Just a thought, maybe your phone is roaming on an unfriendly network and T-mobile is restricting your access.

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Great thought, but not exactly
Feb 14, 2005 11:48PM PST

I had thought that, but when I moved my SIM card to a different phone (not same brand/model) it said T-Mobile and worked fine in the same spots this phone is saying "no access". So I'm still thinking it's something in the phone. I also asked T-Mobile about that regarding the "No Access" theory and they weren't sure.

But you may be right in that it somehow is getting a signal and not picking up T-Mobile and tries to go into "digital roaming" and finds an 'unfriendly' network'. I have had it successfully (but not recently) 'digital roam' in other areas.

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T300
Feb 18, 2005 12:26PM PST

We had these phones for about 4 weeks - had all of your problems and more. Sent the phones back and got Nokias - no more problems!

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Thanks, will keep in mind
Feb 21, 2005 5:45AM PST

Well I gave up on the T300, sold the camera piece and everything but the phone itself on eBay. Since it works over half the time, I'm just going to keep it as an "emergency spare"....i.e. something to use if my phone ever breaks say for a few days until I get a new phone. Thanks.

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Cell phone software
Feb 27, 2005 11:03AM PST

Don't know if it might be the same or why T-Mobile reps wouldn't have mentioned (though I doubt their credibility in spite of being friendly), but when I was at Sprint PCS I had the same problem with a Motorola phone. Apparently as new cell towers are added or upgraded, it's sort of like going from Windows 98 to XP. Most of the versions don't have problems, but your cell phone might need an internal software update. But it wasn't a plug the phone into a USB port and update, I had to take the phone to a Sprint service center and they did the upgrade for free in about 2 hours. See if that helps (but try to find someone at T-Mobile who actually knows).