Living in rural area (USA) x-post sorta (edited for this sub-reddit)
Hi, I live in a rural area I'm looking at xiaomi phones in any one's experience does a certain model tend to have better antennas or signal in rural areas? I am on Cricket wireless (AT&T towers) I also have ran cell mapper for a few days and it seems like the area i'm in the phone only uses band 5 LTE on my property and only LTE band 2 when I am off my property and in town running errands, not sure if that is useful information. I'd like up to date specs and really like the xiaomi but I've heard different reviews and forum post of people saying they got weaker signal with that brand.
Bonus points for good camera, nfc, and flashing/rom community if anyone has model(s) to suggest, the newer the better.
Posted Aug 24, 2019, 12:48 AM UTC
15
I can recommend Xiaomi Mi 9, Mi 9T, Mi 9T Pro or even Mi 8. All of them have good camera, NFC plus community ROMs. Please look only for Global versions of these phones or you won't get any LTE. You can go to www.kimovil.com where you can not only check specs but it also give you additional info about supported LTE bands.
That doesn't answer my question about good signal...
If the phone has Bands 2/5 (the ones you said you use) the speed will be no different than any other phone in the same price/performance range. Your LTE is slow because rural areas get the short end of the stick on good LTE, in the cities it's super congested. You gotta be in a suburban area near a city to get optimized LTE in the US.
You're kind of powerless here. The best you can do is get one of their higher end phones (I suggest a Mi Mix 2S) with maximum LTE support and hope for the best, older flagships will have better signal reception than a cheaper budget phone.
Sorry, I kinda forgot to mention.. these phones are Xiaomi's high end phones. They use the same modems from Qualcomm and similar antennas like Samsung or even iPhone.
Also, the body of these phones is all glass which means overall better reception comparing to metal phones.
I live in Europe, also quite rural area and LTE inside my house is not the best but it's the same on iPhone, Huawei or Xiaomi phone.
Thank you!