Using HTC Hero on Orange. Love the phone, but suffer from poor reception almost anywhere - even overground in inner London. You'd think this place is totally flooded with coverage, but signal quality (according to the indicator on the display) is often low, and sometimes signal goes completely. Worse in the suburbs.

Used to be on a Motorola V3 Razr on O2 before, and never ever had bad reception anywhere in the UK (except maybe in the tube).

Google shows many people reporting similar issues with the HTC Hero. Great phone, but poor reception. Couldn't quite figure out if this is a problem with the Orange network, the phone hardware, or the phone software.

Given that a firmware upgrade might be round the corner in a few months, I wonder what people think about this issue.

I get excellent reception on mine around here (Watford) and in London on Vodafone. Much better than my old Blackberry and Nokia 5800. There is an update for orange on HTCs site, have you tried that?

Thanks. I'll try that.

Think it's probably Orange though. Anytime I use the phone abroad, it seems to work much better.

The original firmware for the Orange Hero had an absolutely rubbish piece of 'radio software linked to it. I remember getting the phone and considering sending it back because of the signal - even thought I loved all of the other features.

Once I updated the firmware it addressed the issue and dramatically improved reception. I would suggest you update the firmware asap!

I find that my HTC Hero (it's an unbranded, unlocked version with the latest firmware) doesn't get as good 3G reception as my old phone, but the 2G reception is the best I've seen on a phone.

Thanks, everyone. The update is done, and I noticed that it did indeed update the radio software (as shown on phone display). Will see what it does over next few days; so far so good.

Latest firmware for Orange HTC Hero available here:

http://www.htc.com/uk/SupportViewNew...64&news_id=514

Just to wrap this up in case someone with the same issue stumbles over this thread: had the update installed for almost a week now. Reception definitely seems better, and no more permanent and frequent loss of signal and SIM registration.
Excellent.