Hey guys I've have had mine since Friday and was ready to throw in the towel and return this bad boy due to the bad reception at home. My signal strength hovered around -107 to -96 all weekend. Now I am at work and the thing is at  -60. I am sort of puzzled because I work only a couple miles from home.

As means of comparison my work issued BB Tour held about -87 at home and it about -73 at work. Not sure what this all mean as this tests are surely not scientific but it seems that the incredible is a bit touchier with how it pulls signal.

Hope a fix to make it more stable is coming soon. Other than that the thing is well "Incredible"

I have not checked signal quality with the incredible but I can compare to the Motorola droid I took back last week.  I had the droid for almost a month, had poor voice quality. (People actually just hung up because I sounded so bad.   Took it back with Verizon 30 day guarantee.  In the store I called my wife with the demo droid and incredible, she commented that I was much clearer in the incredible  so I made the switch.   Since Thursday  several people have commented that I sound better.  The data speed is also constantly faster than I had on my droid.  I know some people love their droid, and hear people here mention bad quality with incredible, not sure.  But after a month with droid and 5 days with incredible voice and data quality go to the incredible

The telephone part of the Incredible has worked well for me since I got it last Thursday.  The signal strength indicator rarely shows anything.  My five- or six-year-old Palm Treo (also on Verizon) was a heavy, clunky, hard-to-type-on dog, but connected to 3G better!  (And, since it had Windows Mobile -- 5.0 -- it connected much more easily to the office Exchange server!)  I'm using WiFi on the Incredible around town, 'cause the Internet access is better; when I'm connected, though, the Incredible is incredible!

I am new to Verizon, we moved over on Friday April 30, from AT&T. We activated 4 Droid Incredible's on our new account Friday afternoon. They are business phones and  were delivered via FedEx. I did have some connectivity problems when activating. 2 of the phones dropped the activation calls, and we had to call back to complete the activation.

Interestingly the phones don't show much signal in standby (maybe 1 bar), but  as soon as we start to make a call, the bars jump up to 3 or 4. The call quality has varied some, for the most part it has been pretty good, but  the incoming voice sounds distorted at times, however the callers on the other end report great sound.

We love the phones, but  are concerned about the signal & 3G connectivity. One of the reasons we switched to Verizon was to have better coverage. So far it doesn't seem to be better, I hope this is able to be solved via a software tweak soon!

So I also have concluded that the bars are misleading and I can connect at very low signal strength. As someone has noted just the normal act of holding your phone in your palm cuts the signal down a lot. If you don't cover the back, the signal jumps. Great design...

I just bought the INCREDIBLE Sat the 1st,  I love the camera but that's about it so far!  I've had to charge it three times a day just to keep 1/2 the battery life, The signal is very weak at home & most of the areas I travel in.  I'm gonna give it til WED, if I'm not more impressed by then I'm gonna return it & get my Blackberry Curve back out, it has a great signal & battery life & is diff easier to use on the road.  This is the second time I've gave HTC a chance, after this one I'm done!

I went to a Verizon corp store today to complain about signal strength and ask about a range extender for home because my house blocks the signal. As you might expect all the sales guys had Incredibles. It was obvious they had a range extender in the store because my signal jumped to -55 there. I can't even get that WITH my new range extender at home (-65). In the parking lot outside it was -74 and pretty much all over town it's -90. The sales people at VZ of course acted like they had no idea what I was talking about and I have to say that REALLY irritates me no end. I will probably start a trouble ticket with VZ this week while I watch for news of firmware or hardware recalls. VZ and HTC can't ignore the issue for long I hope. The range extender is pretty cool and has no monthly fee which is more than I can say for AT&T. If I cover the hardware there is NO EXCUSE for a monthly fee if I subsidize extending their network even in a small way. AND pay for the electricity to run the thing.

Few days ago (not many, obviously) I have asked the HTC Incredible support team the following:

"I'm a prospective buyer of Incredible.

I'm reading on many forums and review sites that the strength of signal/reception on this device is very poor, with poor 3G and up/down speeds.

This is a major drawback and certainly a dealbraker for many, especially for those that don't have a strong signal anyway where they work or live.

Please reply. I think this is a huge issue.

I have also started a thread on your website's Incredible forum:

community.htc.com/.../1810.aspx

Thanks!"

Today I've received the following laughable reply, with poor grammar and phrasing:

"Dear (Me), I can understand the importance of having 3G on the HTC Incredible. We have not heard of the issue with the 3G not being on the HTC Incredible. We have many Agents here with this device and I can tell you everyone here has great 3G service, and this is due to researching the Applications from the Market before downloading them. Some Applications are corrupt and can cause poor Network service. If this happens to a device we have the Carrier re-provision or reactivate the device for the network. If you have any other questions or concerns please Reply back to this email or give us a call at our HTC Technical Support Line, 1-866-449-8358. I want to thank you for contacting HTC. In order to help improve our service I’d like to invite you to take a survey at survey.htc.com/worldwide, you can also checkout shopamerica.htc.com/.../index.htm for more information. HTC Technical Support http://www.HTC.com http://www.HTCwiki.com http://www.Facebook.com/HTC www.youtube.com/.../HTC www.twitter.com/HTC"

Here is my answer to them:

"Dear Lindsay,

First: I never said the 3G is not present on the Incredible. Please read carefully what I'm writing, don't make me waste my time.

Second: The Internet's Incredible forums and review websites are full of complaints about the poor signal/3G/reception of the Incredible, especially when compared to other smartphones, and in particular to Motorola Droid. I do hope, for your sake and ours, that you do read this forums and reviews. Just denying this problems is not gonna fix them. And blaming it on some faulty Market Apps is purely childish. Let me further explain:

I am an ex Motorola Droid user, and since yesterday an Incredible owner. I have installed on my new Incredible only a small part of the Apps I had on the Droid. I AM experiencing the same signal strength issues as many other users, while the Moto Droid, with the same Apps, and even many more, did not have such signal issues. So, don't blame it on the Apps! And if the Apps are at fault, why is it only the Incredible affected? Again, it must be the phone. And what are we supposed to do? Not use the Market anymore because an App may mess the phone's signal? Again, this is childish.

Therefore, instead of useless excuses, you better take this issue up to the highest level on your chain of command, and take action to fix it ASAP, otherwise I will be just another one of the many returning this device due to poor signal/reception. Can HTC really afford all the bad publicity surrounding this issue? Or isn't there any realistic solution? (I don't expect an answer to the previous two questions.)

I will post our thread of discussion on your Droid Incredible forum at the link below, so it can become public, since it is of general concern.

community.htc.com/.../1810.aspx

Thanks!"

I will keep you posted, guys!

Sounds pretty standard... deny, deny, deny and (hopefully) sound general quarters with the tech dept to address the issue your flat denying even exists. Doubtful you will ever get any official ack but hopefully what can done is being done or will be soon? At the moment I have resorted to Airplane mode at work because it's pointless keeping it struggling for a signal and killing the battery.

It looks like the issue is, as an Aussie noted on phandroid, that normal holding of the phone cuts the signal down tremendously. Here at home, from -70, to -90!!. It is not practical to hold it any way that does not affect the signal-try for yourselves, unless you leave it face down, and use Bluetooth!

That being said, I have been making connection at even weak strengths, but mainly texts and email updates, also a few calls.

Just called HTC-fairly long wait for tech support, and the annoying gushing girl claimed to have heard nothing, but then went to check with her supervisor, and came back and said they had learned of the issue today. I didn't let her walk me through all the stuff that Verizon did already, I just wanted it to be made known that there are issues. If the signal drops so dramatically just by covering the back of the phone with your hand, I don't see how software can solve this.

I have had mine about 3 days and never have more than 2 or 3 bars, however the phone has always worked well.  I have read the bars aren't accurate.  You can check the actual signal strength in dBm  by clicking settings > about phone > Network.  It will give you the actual signal strength.  Since it is measured in a negative number, the lower the number the better.

I have had issues first couple of days with poor 3g and even no 3g. See,s OK now, although nothing special happened like OTA. I notice the 3g lights do not always light even though it is on.

I too ran speed test when the lights are out and it says it is good. I will be keeping an eye out on this. I did ask the verizon guy and he said a fix was coming out for this,

I had an Env2 prior to the Incredible. With them sitting next to each other, the Env2 is showing full signal strength while the Incredible is fluctuating between 1 and 2 bars.

I haven't had a chance to try it out at my work, which typically drops my signal strength on my Env2 down to 2 bars even though it is the heart of Nashville. I will report on that later.

www.htc.com/.../e-mail

HTC is requesting more samples on this issue.  Apparently they are aware of this issue but want to centralize the complaints instead of looking all over the internet.