reconrider8
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Has anyone had one or had a chance to use one if so how good did it work? Keep in mind I'm talking about in a car not a house.
cell phone booster
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We operate a trucking company in rural Kansas. We made the switch from permanent phones to hand-held phones in Jan 2013. We installed our first Sleek at that time with good results. After seeing that this would be a viable alternative to the permanent phones, we converted the fleet. Because we had permanent install equipment before, installing the Sleeks was simple. We mounted them to the custom fit brackets previously used for the permanent phones, and used the hard wire kits to connect to the previously run power leads from our old phones. By purchasing an adapter through our local electronics store (SMA to mini UHF) We were able to use our commercial grade NMO mounted antennas. Everything is clean without wires being visible. The performance is comparable to our permanent phones, but audio quality and convenience is vastly improved because of using a Bluetooth headset. This is the main reason we switched as it's illegal to talk on a phone without a headset in a commercial vehicle, and our old phones didn't support this. As a rule, we see 1-2 bar increase in signal strength. As a quick test, my wife and I headed to a town 30 miles away with acouple hills where a handheld phone would loose service. We both have Motorola Droid's. I had one in the Sleek, and the other was 'barefoot." The boosted phone maintained signal the entire trip, (as our permanent phones did# whereas the non-boosted phone dropped signal in the usual hills. Of interest is the non boosted phone went between 3G and 4G while the boosted phone was on average 2 bars better on signal at 4G. I say this because our 5dB dual load antennas were made strictly for cellular and not the frequency that data operates on. We purchased a total of 6, 4 Sleek 3G and 2 4G-V) For a simple solution that seems to perform well for the price, we are pleased with our purchase.
kayn1n32008
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The company that I work for, has over the last 4 years, transitioned from Motorola M800 fix mount phones, to cradles connected to boosters. In this process I have had some battles with our IT department over the external antenna location. We are using Wilson 'Wireless' BDA, with 800MHz high gain antennas, like the Maxrad in the photos in the above reply. I wanted a dual band antenna due to Telus installing 1900MHz service on their rural sites, and have a 800/1900MHz unity/3db gain antenna installed. I was just in the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range, where the 3 Telus 3/4G cell sites are on towers less than 100' tall. While 10-12miles, in mixed Black Spruce/Poplar/Tamarac forest, away from the closest site I have seem my BlackBerry go from full bars in the cradle to no service out of the cradle inside my truck. This was only possible, due to making sure of external antenna location(centre of roof).
While BDA are a sensitive issue, due to the very real potential of interference, if done correctly they are very effective
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reconrider8
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i was just thinking of getting something for my car and was curious as to what it did and what was a good one to use. i have a hotspot app and thats what i use for mobile out in the field and the net is slow at times but then again i have a bad sim card i believe because if i hit 4g then i have no net but once i get back to 3g i have net lol and i was just looking for something that when i did get my sim card fixed may help with speeds with more signal
kayn1n32008
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My company uses Wilson. Later, when I get home I can find the model number for you. If youuse a wireless version, you MUST have adequate isolation between the inside and outside antennas. If you use a cradle, with RF pickup the external antenna MUST be on the roof, otherwise the amp will oscillate and shutdown, becoming useless. Models that do not have AGC, WILL oscillate, causing harmful interference to the cell network.
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kayn1n32008
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I should also add the booster for your needs will be determined by the RF bands that your carrier uses, for 3G I only need 800/1900MHz, if I had a 4G phone then I would also need 2100MHz, a different carrier where I live uses the AWS band... Where I live there is not any service in the 700MHz broadband spectrum... YET... Will see after the spectum auction in January if my Carrier wins any of the 700MHz spectrum for LTE.
I should also add the booster for your needs will be determined by the RF bands that your carrier uses, for 3G I only need 800/1900MHz, if I had a 4G phone then I would also need 2100MHz, a different carrier where I live uses the AWS band... Where I live there is not any service in the 700MHz broadband spectrum... YET... Will see after the spectum auction in January if my Carrier wins any of the 700MHz spectrum for LTE.
reconrider8
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how does a cradle work and can i still pick up my phone to answer and talk?
kayn1n32008
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There are 2 options for insite your vehical:
1 use a cradle, while it can have an antenna, once the phone is removed it is not very effective at picking up the phone (power drops of at the rate of the distance squared) or
2 you can use a cradle with a dipole antenna in the headliner, again while it works it is not the most effective.
The best option is to use a cradle with RF pick up, and a handsfree device ie: Ford SYNC(what I use) or a blue tooth headset of some sort. Ideally you should not be holding your phone to your head while driving anyhow...
There are 2 options for insite your vehical:
1 use a cradle, while it can have an antenna, once the phone is removed it is not very effective at picking up the phone (power drops of at the rate of the distance squared) or
2 you can use a cradle with a dipole antenna in the headliner, again while it works it is not the most effective.
The best option is to use a cradle with RF pick up, and a handsfree device ie: Ford SYNC(what I use) or a blue tooth headset of some sort. Ideally you should not be holding your phone to your head while driving anyhow...
reconrider8
Member
true lol i may look into something later on like i said i want something that will hold a firm signal so i can keep a solid net signal
The phone must remain in the Sleek cradle to work. Wilson has wireless options that supports multiple users, but this works well for a single user. We have SYNC in our F350, and a use a Blue-Ant hands free visor speaker phone in our other vehicles. In the Kenworth trucks we provide our drivers with Blue Parrot headsets. In our application, this has worked well. I wasn't concerned with data transfer, so I used my original NMO dual load antennas. The Wilson antenna might be a better choice if you're concerned about data. Our current antennas are 890 cellular only. The Sleek comes with a mini mag mount antenna, but we already had permanents installed on all our trucks. For the money, it's worked well.
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