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@suzanneBloem-qk9qn hi, I take your point. My intentions are to explain and provide some evidence of the reported benefits, so that people don't buy stuff that doesn't give them results purported. It's often easy to accept the views of those with millions of subscribers that don't actually have the technical know-how. If youve watched it, what were your reasons? I'd like to know so can review the 'style' of videos

@chronicsys hi there sorry for late reply and thanks for watching! Yes the patch lead I use is plug in male FME to male SMA. I have an M-F sma adapter which might have been included I can't remember. Most external antenna these days are either sma or n-type

@@Phone_Geek Amazing! Thank you so much. Super helpful. I reckon the rf plugs on the back of your phone are U.FL .... FME is threaded AFAIK.

My stats with my tp link modem without any external antenna: Signal Strength: 100% RSRP: -88dBm RSRQ: -8dB SNR: 18.0dB Can i boost on it with external? Because signal streght already 100% :O

Hi there, those stats are great without external antenna. What sort of speeds are you getting and what LTE band is the router saying? I say this because higher speeds come from higher band like 2100mhz or 2600mhz. It can sometimes be better to have external antenna pointing to a weaker site but supports higher speeds

Hi there, thanks for watching! It gets hard to find them tbh. Search for "TEMS mobile". Bear in mind, mine is the last handset I know of with ports for external antennas. Its now 10yrs old now. There are newer ones but not with option for external antenna. Also, there is the option to patch the OS, but it might brick the phone and at least invalidate warranty. I can find link to details if u want

@@Phone_Geek wow so the galaxy s3 is the last phone with an external antennae port.. I was wondering how Tems got these to connect to 4g since the models of Samsung s3 back then were not 4g capable devices .. People are still selling galaxy s3's on eBay but to go through the challenge of modifying the firmware to TEMS firmware just to use the external antenna port is another hell I may not wanna go through... I'll appreciate it heavily if you do post the link though..thank you

Hi Rupert, do you mean like one of the building cranes at quite a height? If so 3 things. 1. Yes taking outside of the metal box of a cab will definitely help. 2) how high is your router now, I'd think you get great signal anyway... however 3) being at height will massively increase the interference, and while signal will be high, the rf noise will destroy your speed. Let us know bit more about crane, location generally. As for antenna, let us know above first, as situation drives antenna choice

youtube.com/@andrewmcneil?si=DBy9E5NYY1yWPrTn

Thanks , I’ve found your videos more informative to my need. So thank you very much. With your reviews and others on you tube it has help me make an informed decision. I’m looking at the Poynting antenna and the Teltonika RUTX50. I am currently looking for a reliable retailer to purchase these items. The 5G Router has dropped in price considerably since your review. Please reach out if you have any advice on any other suitable products or retailers to contact . Thanks again Ian

@bigeein thanks for the comments! you can buy antennas from poynting directly as I did. They also have deals or contacts with teltonika or did. Solwise and NetXL sell stuff and seem legit. I want to upgrade to a 4x4 mimo router and antenna. Teltonika seem best but more expensive. Worth considering ones with GPS antenna inputs, as synchronisation will be improved depending on your intended use

Hi Richard , thanks again for the information. You are streets ahead with knowledge. I live rural with limited phone signal indoors. Fibre broadband is not an option unfortunately. I’m currently using a 4G router with no external antenna. Which currently provides approx 37mbps. With the router positioned outside approx 53 mbps . I’m confident with an antenna positioned on the chimney with good cable and router this can be improved further to 5G reception and perhaps 60- 80 mbps. The end game is more sturdy wifi for the home. If only I could improve the phone signal indoors. However I will settle for a stronger stable system. I’ll check out the companies you have mentioned. Thank you so much for the advice , videos and support.

Hi there. Yeah I think they are 30mm, have to check though. Not looked at 50mm but suspect it'll have narrower vertical and horizontal beamwidth. Remember its not all about antenna gain. Antenna height, environmental (rural etc), cable quality etc. One negative can be reliance on a single cell site, which if it went out of service means your gone until it returns. As for band 28, I only know of 3UK that uses it for 4G. I wouldn't want to use outside 800-2600. Easiest way is to check (if you can find them) the tech docs and see what vswr is says for 700. Any value > 2 forget it.

Have to be careful with yagi. High gain directional sure, but gain is not always the most important consideration. Antenna choice depends on lots of factors. For example in rural hilly terrain I'd say high gain omni. For flatter rural terrain a 2x2 mimo directional antenna with highest gain in 800-2100mhz range is probs better. In suburban areas with 5G I'd suggest a directional 4x4 mimo antenna with high quality short feeder. In- line bandpass filters are a consideration to reduce noise. And in addition, are you after any signal, or just increase in speed? That also impacts choice

@@Phone_Geek Thanks for the answer ! Well in my case, there is quite a good signal, but I would like to maximise the speed and reduce the ping as much as possible. I wanted to buy a lpda antenna first, but were I live (Medellin, Colombia, the city is located in a valley, and the providers' antennas are generally at the bottom, and at the top fiber optic internet isn't available at all) it's very difficult to find it. What nearly everyone use or sell is the Yagi antenna. There are of course some omni available, but they don't give good results most of the time.

Cheers!

An engineering handset is one with additional firmware/different sdk that allows radio engineers to survey networks and evaluate logs etc. You can also unlock samsung phones to display everything. Not got round to doing that on old phone. Invalidates warranty of course

Hi there, thanks for watching. You've certainly got the right ideas. For me at moment I want new install, higher pole with ldr400 down to box of kit which is POE back to house. I also use cat7 from house to my garage/office in different building. But I tell ya, doing the sockets and plugs for a cat7 is a real pita. For you, I'm guessing you do best solution which is antenna and kit at top of pole with POE up to it? You will benefit a lot from that.

Hi. A van is an interesting one as it'd guess it's got to be small, not too obvious. Not done one but can look into it. What price range? I would add it entirely depends on what you're trying to achieve. Do you use the van all over the place and need extra signal in low coverage specifically? Maybe just increase speed, on the move or just when stationary? The solution to your needs drives (pun not intended) what antennas you want

No unfortunately not, they are for use with mobile broadband routers. In theory could could use them with mobiles as I've done in vids but no phone has antenna ports now

Xpol6 is for 1800-2700meg so won't support lte 800 for rural areas and poor coverage areas in general

@@Phone_Geek Yes, there is that - but I'm in a build-up area so the signals are in range.

Hi, an rsrq of -16 is pretty poor, but its more about the CQI being reported to eNodeB that determines speed. But the better way is to do a ftp file transfer using it, as I did for my 5G vid. I have some colleagues at work who's SME is routers and see if any better way to check. I do of course use speedtest too. Do you think the issue is mobile wireless speeds being wrong, or wireless in general I.e. WiFi too?

Hiya, yeah its really odd Richard been using this router for a while now, and as you say my reception figures are not the best, I am right on the edge (rural area) and 1.8 miles from mast, room for improvement for sure, however despite that, the connection has been pretty stable and works well, mounting options are not the best but I’m fully wired cat5 gigabit Ethernet from the router all working perfectly fine… (Don’t use 2.4ghz wifi for speed testing) The built in speed test just keeps reporting speeds that I never ever see with normal downloading, ftp file transfers tests ect, shortest hops, ect,ect.. no matter what its always 10meg for me and no more.. but as I say the built in speed test like just now, gave me a speed test of 27meg 30meg down and always 2meg up.. In the history of speed tests with this router it has seen as high as 80meg which is just patent rubbish.. I just ignore the built in speed test completely now, but these results are just so far out of kilter that I am convinced that there must be foul play going on within the router firmware or software.. It’s baffled me for months and months so when you speed tested with the internal tp-link speed test, I could not resist posting.. It’s become a bit of a bugbear with me… I would love to see you test the theory, but I’m sure you would of noticed the disparity by now.. but we all hit the speed test button as a rough gage of what the connection is doing at the point in time and rarely check it against what the connection speed is really achieving outside of the router at the same time?

@rfxtuber interesting and rather disturbing/disappointing, since the test says its an Ookla Speedtest one I think? I'll investigate it some more. Thanks

That would be great if you could cast your beady eye on the subject, but as you know due to different masts, setups, equipment, network providers, tariffs there are many many moving parts here as you well know, and I am nowhere near skilled in analysis/data metrics as you, but I have settled on two possibilities that could be going on, I just can’t test or prove it. The TP-link router internal speed test maybe (inadvertently) bypassing any hidden or unknown sim/network throttling at the hardware level or the built in speed test is artificially boosting the speed tests over the real speeds (rounding errors, deliberate?) and then of course there is user error, bad antennae setup and whatnot. Finally I have also noticed the rabbit ears antenna that comes with the TP-link seem to be just as good as any external antenna in my case… yet another oddity?… If you do find any anomalies worth reporting it would be most welcome and interesting….thanks for your replies Richard...

Hi again Richard.. Just a quick note.. I discovered what was causing these speed test issues with the tp-link mr-600.. you will never guess what was causing me so much confusion with speed tests..and this is repeatable with your model i will presume... It was an errant setting in the QoS settings... within the QoS settings panel it was set to 10mbps (Download) and the upload was set to 2mbps with a device in the local network set to 85% priority.. if you set those settings and then do external speedtest at speed test websites you will observe the speed test permanently stuck at 10mbps and the upload permanently stuck at 2mbps but if you do an internal speediest on the MR-600 it will speed test to what ever your connection is actually receiving, not being throttled by the QoS settings... Hence massive confusion and WTF moments for months!!! Try it yourself... and you will see the effect yourself... I hear you ask.. of course you had QoS enabled.. well.. no it was a setting that was enabled during testing months ago and i had forgot to to disable it... it is very much worthy of note.. Try it yourself.. Very much worthy of note!!!! @@Phone_Geek

Just search ebay for something like "Directional LPDA Outdoor Antenna". They all appeared same so I got anyone from uk. As long as covers 800-2600 MHz with gain around 12dBi. As for cable..I'd suggest watching my video all about them, cost vs benefit. In a rural environment, 5m the middle quality one, but 10m I'd deffo use higher quality. Lmr400 I think it was

@@Phone_Geek cheers Richard, I'm working my way through your videos as you can tell 😂.

@@Phone_Geek would be great to PM you, do you have a social media site, Twitter, FB, website?

What I would suggest is: 1) check out cellmapper.net to find best operator, mast and lte band. Best isnt necessarily closest, as you know terrain you are probs best, unless you PM me your town/village 2) check operator with lte band 20 (LTE800) or even LTE700 (band 28). The operators use these for better coverage at expensive of lower capacity. Trees have a massive impact on coverage, done professional investigations number of times. 3) check the antenna specs of your omni that its gain is good at these lower frequencys. 4) have antenna on pole high as can with quality cables. 5) consider a decent quality omni like the poynting omni292 or omni293. I've used these professionally

@@Phone_Geek stuck, how do I DM on RUclips and I'm in IT Infrastructure 😂

@@MrFrobbo use richedwards.phonegeek@gmail.com

Hi, the phone is a Samsung s3 with engineering firmware edited for use with ascom tems (surveying tool). It was one of latest phones which had hidden antenna ports inside.. just had to drill a hole through and have correct cable. I dont know of more recent phone with accessible antenna ports unfortunately. There are decent apps around to measure signal, the non expert one being netmonitor lite. Doing a vid on them at mo.

@@Phone_Geek thanks for the update, appreciated. Cant seem to find Net Monitor Lite on Google Play. I'm using a combination of Network Cell Info Lite, Network Signal Info & Cell Mapper. Trouble is no external antenna to test different scenarios, and lack of band control. Look forward to the vid 💪👍

Yes all antennas always in same place. Lot of multipath and no direct line of sight, so shows benefit of mimo a lot. Totally right about need for omni on a narrowboat, high gain colinear might help. On other hand, www.cellmapper.net shows mast locations so a directional could come in handy on the odd occasion. And yeah typical in-building penetration losses are what kills signal particularly at higher frequency bands. Just make sure your antenna provides good gain at 800mhz, as this is the band used by operators in rural locations

Hi mate, thanks for the comments, appreciated. To get benefit of 5G you'll want a 4x4 mimo, assuming you live in suburban or urban environment, not rural. Having 2x 2x2mimo antenna i wouldn't suggest 1) it'd cost more and 2) a 4x4 is still 4x antennas in same housing, and having 2 cross polarised antenna with space diversity doesn't make sense. Specifically the directional antenna in this vid.. as a comparison you'd want 4x individual antennas and getting decent performance will need a lot of playing round with, as well as being a bit ugly! I'd either have a 4g router as per vid, or have a 5g router with 4x4 mimo, best setup with high quality cables

Hmm OK let me look further. But need some info first. That antenna is designed more for higher frequencys whereas lower freq performance is poor. More rural areas use LTE800 or LTE700, so the antenna gives you not much. To get idea of what performance is, download netmonitor lite (if you have Android phone) and let me know the rsrq, snr and eNodeb ID. Worth moving direction of device to get best value of snr. Good will be say 5+, bad will be less than 1. Better snr means faster speeds

@@Phone_Geek thanks for the quick reply. I'll check this when I get home. It's very frustrating especially when the mast is under 500m away and it's a rather high hill and I'm at the bottom.

Hi there, you mean in terms of azimuth? Local site is a streetworks at about 210deg. Lots of multipath.

Hi there, I got them off ebay. Search for Log Periodics, high gain, 4G5G that sort of thing. Lots on ebay as long as it covers 800-2700 should be fine

Thanks! I did a video on cable types. I'm hoping to make a full new setup soon

Thanks! Glad you liked it. And the monitors! 3 for work, 3 for trading

Hi there thanks for watching! The antenna you mention is an omni-directional covers all bands and tech from 2G to 5G. The 41 version means its 4x4 mimo, so your router needs to have 4-ports to get main benefit

Hi Paul thanks for watching! Often its best I know a bit more on your current setup, eg are you rural or suburban, do you have standard router located in your lounge etc and are thinking of using an external antenna? You are definitely further down the line in looking for the serving mast and checking against cell mapper. however what you should do is do a survey using an app like netmonitor lite (android only). This will give you the eNodeB of your current mast and you can search for that in cellmapper. I get so many questions like this i've doing a vid on it. You could also do with checking what freq band the tests show, along with these: rsrp and rsrq. signal level and quality essentially.

@@Phone_Geek Hi Richard. Thanks for getting back to me, I live in a rural area and I suppose I have a standard 4G router its a tplink 4g Deco system and has 2 outlets for external ariels. I live in a bungalow so its in the loft to get abetter signal. unfortunately I dont have an android device so cant use netmonitor but I will do another field test and see what the rsrp and rsrq values are along with signal level . I still have the original huawei router but I went with tp link so I could get wifi around the house. I will let you know the results if thats ok with you

@Paul Cartlidge cool. Not sure what apple give you.. getting the eNodeb ID is most important.

@@Phone_Geek Hi Richard, well the field test didnt provide much info apart from a UARFCN 10612 and a cell id 8077979 which when i enter in cellmapper nothing happens . I now have some enode id numbers :33177,3864,50314,10911BUT i dont know what I am doing wr Anyway ong but none of them show up on cellmapper. I put the number in the search tower and click on it but then nothing happens lol. the thing is the 33177 tower has 12 cells in it but none of the number I have! anyway I have mithered you enough thank you for your input I am ust frustrated I cant get to the bottom of it .

@Paul Cartlidge no problem, I could probs work it out. You can email me direct if give the village etc of where u are. Richedwards.phonegeek@gmail.com

Hmm I'm thinking Welsh valleys by any chance? Few things to start, first thing it's poss an omni might be best, but Id need more info on your property and current solution. Main things in your circumstance is a short cable or a low loss cable like lmr400. A long cable run can introduce more loss than the antenna gain. Get antenna high as poss, consider an external weatherproof box close to antenna outside. Also make no assumptions on best mast. Get an app like netmonitor lite and survey your property. Note down the eNodeb I'd, rsrp and rsrq values. The best consistent value of rsrq (radio path quality, -10 good -20 bad)'s eNodeb id is best mast. Then lookup against cellmapper.com to see where mast is. That'll confirm best mast.

@@Phone_Geek Many thanks for the reply. Yes Wales, but not up in 'The Valleys' which are steep sided, more a small valley off a gentle lowland valley! The Poynting xpol 2 antenna I mentioned is an outdoor antenna apparently and has a 5m cable, is that length ok or is a shorter one advisable? I'm using a Smarty SIM in a Huawei mobile router for my data/WiFi solution, but when I used the app you mentioned on my mobile phone I could only get it to analyse my EE SIM in my mobile. So I had to take the Smarty SIM out of my router and put it in my phone to get it to analyse the Smarty signal. I assume that will give me the same data! 😬 Interestingly using cellmaper the signal was bouncing between 3 masts, within a 30 degree field of view from my location, approx 8 miles away. The masts are in the direction that's not blocked by the hills surrounding me, but line of sight to the masts is obscured by a small forested area down the small valley I'm in I did a 5 minute sample on net monitor lite and averaged Rsrq -17dB, Rsrp -109dBm 🙈 Are you thinking directional or omi, or am I doomed to dial up speeds forever? 😂

@bushtuckaman well done for doing that. Ideally you should do for all operators to get best mast best network. Pain to do yes, but worth it. Your situ you have fine margins to improve speed. That rsrq is bad. That value is sent to mast which then decides what bit rate you get. The terrain you describe and speeds is exactly what I expect. The reflections off of the valley are more delayed than say in suburban areas and that causes different fading effects. Another reason for slow speeds is the tech. Are u actually on 4G? If so, likely LTE800 even LTE700. These lower frequencys are used by operators in rural areas as they give more coverage. More cost effective. However lower the freq lower the throughput. So in netmonitor does it show just that?

@bushtuckaman to help more its probs best to email me your village, hamlet name to help more. Check me on LinkedIn if u want. That cable length and type is fine. Ive got a vid on cables and effects. With direct LoS I am surprised dont get better. If masts below you tilt antenna down or v.v. richedwards.phonegeek@gmail.com

@@Phone_Geek Thanks Richard, I'll email you.

Hi Simon, sorry to answer your question with some questions first.. is the router a 4G one or 3's new 5G one? Is she rural/ hamlet or suburban/urban? Are you looking for major improvement on what is ok now or better on what is rubbish currently? These will make me help you

Few questions: what's the router? Where is it located within your property at moment? If indoors then I'd expect your problem if on ground floor, indoors, not close to a window, and with poor general coverage. With external antenna you get advantages, but we'll need to get some info first. You dont need to put on a roof in most circumstances

@@Phone_Geek its a Tp-Link MR6400 LTE 4G 2.4 ghz.. I keep it by window, i use mobile phone app (open signal) tells me where to pointwhat's the brand of those bat shaped antennas your using? I'm UK based so would like to buy from UK not china but if need to i would do, have you got a link for them?

Open signal is terrible, but you have the right idea. Doing a vid on all this at mo.. but check cellmapper.com for mast location and compare with cell data on netmonitor lite if you have Android. The antennas are generic tons people sell on ebay. Use search term 3G 4G Mobile Signal Amplifier Enhanced Receive Logarithmic Antenna 698-2700MHz

Hi there! The huawei looks to have a standard 2 sma antenna ports, which is good. The type of cable ultimately depends on the length and expense. Longer the cable needs to be, the thicker and better it needs to be to avoid too much signal (and speed) loss. You dont want the gain of the antenna offset by a huge cable loss. However the costs increase dramatically with better quality. Overall, in my opinion, up to 5m long the rg58 type is fine. From 5 to 15m then type lmr400. If you need like 30m then lmr600. But, tbh, if needing that length you'd get better and cheaper performance by having the router external near antenna in a housing, with PoE running to it. Hope that helps

And great review btw! Planning to get that v3

@Toni Ilola thanks very much! The cable is the one included, which is 5m of hdf195. That was for testing.. but at home I have an extra 10m of rg95 I think it is, so lots more loss