HTC Desire :: Poor Performance In Weak Signal Areas

I have never had any problems at home with either my trusty unlocked N95 or Orange Sony Ericsson T610 (remember them?) so I had no qualms over ordering a nice shiny (dark brown) HTC Desire.

3G coverage is a bit iffy in the area as I'm right on the border of an excellent to good area so I never expected to have super fast data over the air, but I have wifi locally for that anyway.

So you can imagine my disappointment when the first call with the mobile from home cut off quite suddenly. A retry to reconnect failed with a no service message and no signal strength. I then spent the next hour playing around with the settings turning off wifi, data, setting the phone to 3G only (no chance) and then GSM only.

When the phone was working and making a call the audio was not clean and very digital. There was also a chance that mid call you would be cut off for no reason. When it wasn't playing ball at all the signal strength varied from three bars down to zero without moving the phone. Sometimes upon initiating the call it came back immediately with no signal and cutting the call off. Picking the phone up from sitting on the side in sleep mode you were usually presented with a no service message.

Orange were excellent and immediately replaced the phone, a courier arriving at 6:15pm upon reporting the problem at 8:30am that morning. Unfortunately the replacement was exactly the same.

Even worse, my place of work is in a designated poor reception area. There are a number of us on Orange as it is the only network that can at a pinch be picked up inside. My Desire...no signal at all. Moving to a window seat got me two bars but the phone refused to connect or hold a call. The only time it did calling 150 sounded like I was listening to a recording of a Darlek. A Nokia 5300 on Orange alongside was nice and clear, with very good tone by comparison.

By chance another member of staff also had recently signed up with Orange on a Desire (500mins, unlim texts, 500Mb, free phone, 20). In a back to back test both phones were the same. We even tried swapping SIMs. Luckily for him he has no problems with reception when at home so is quite happy with the Desire.

Contacting Orange again I did not get much further. Talking to technical support they were not much help and suggested that they did not warrant the phone to work inside the building and as I could make a continuous call outside then they did not class the phone at fault. This included my problems at home in what is termed an excellent coverage area! When I pointed out that two other phones I owned did work in the very same location I was told that mobile designs differ and positions of antennas vary considerably.

Frustrated I decided the only course of action was to use my right to cancel within 7 days as it was apparent that I was not going to be able to resolve the issue. Even last night it performed perfectly for a couple of calls and then failed miserably an hour later.

As a gadget I was smitten. Even as I handed the package over to the Post Master today I was inwardly screaming �GIVE IT BACK!� Unfortunately I need to be able to make calls on it when I want, not when it wants.

I have only seen a couple of other members note a similar problem on these forums but I have noticed a large number of Nexus problems that sound very similar. I would be interested to hear if anyone else has experienced this or do you all live in 5/5 coverage areas?