Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#1

Post by mhb » Sun, Dec 06, 2015, 11:10 PM UTC

Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)
consumerreports.org

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#2

Post by oomkiller » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 4:40 PM UTC

VoLTE is becoming fairly prevalent now. With the new wideband codecs, quality can be quite good.

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#3

Post by jfountain2015 » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 4:40 PM UTC

Cell quality of GSM/CDMA or others isn't good but the article ignores all the Wi-fi calling, FaceTime Audio and VOIP type calls you can make on a smart phone now. I've found that those are substantially better quality than any landline or cell.

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#4

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 4:44 PM UTC

So this was from last year it seems. These days there is "HD Voice" on voice calls on t-mobile. Sounds quite good to my, nominal, ears.

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#5

Post by snuxoll » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

Call quality on any device I've owned with T-Mobile for the past two years since I switched from AT&T has been great, more carriers need to get off their butts and upgrade to HD Voice.

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#6

Post by sbierwagen » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

oomkiller wrote: post #2

VoLTE is becoming fairly prevalent now. With the new wideband codecs, quality can be quite good.

(VoLTE is branded as HD Voice for many phones.)

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#7

Post by feld » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 4:49 PM UTC

oomkiller wrote: post #2

VoLTE is becoming fairly prevalent now. With the new wideband codecs, quality can be quite good.

The problem is that there is no cross-carrier HD voice or VoLTE. If you call someone on another carrier your call quality will be flushed down the toilet.

These idiots refuse to inter-operate. This is why data calling (Facetime audio, Google Hangouts(?), Skype, Whatsapp, etc) is going to crush the cellular industry. It's going to be fragmented and ugly, but at least the call quality won't suck.

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#8

Post by smackfu » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 4:49 PM UTC

snuxoll wrote: post #5

Call quality on any device I've owned with T-Mobile for the past two years since I switched from AT&T has been great, more carriers need to get off their butts and upgrade to HD Voice.

We have AT&T HD Voice here, it's very impressive if you manage to have two people on new iPhones (6 or better).

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#9

Post by LogicX » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 4:49 PM UTC

oomkiller wrote: post #2

VoLTE is becoming fairly prevalent now. With the new wideband codecs, quality can be quite good.

Also you can configure your verizon phone to use voLTE and then google voice supports it, so you can get some voLTE benefits (like using data while on the phone) and voLTE to carriers verizon doesn't yet partner with for voLTE

Re: Voice Quality on Smart Phones Still Sucks (2014)

#10

Post by smackfu » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 4:53 PM UTC

feld wrote: post #7

oomkiller wrote: post #2

VoLTE is becoming fairly prevalent now. With the new wideband codecs, quality can be quite good.

The problem is that there is no cross-carrier HD voice or VoLTE. If you call someone on another carrier your call quality will be flushed down the toilet. These idiots refuse to inter-operate. This is why data calling (Facetime audio, Google Hangouts(?), Skype, Whatsapp, etc) is going to crush the cellular industry. It's going to be fragmented and ugly, but at least the call quality won't suck.

It seems like if you are calling another network, your network should be able to terminate your HD voice call at the edge, and you would still get at least wired telephone quality.