I just got out of the lift in our office building. 12 members of the Allure Media team, plus one random guy from the building, were stuck in the lift for 40 minutes before being saved by Police Rescue. What did we do while we waited for the freedom from our cramped, metal prison? We tested 3G reception.
Our office in Darlinghurst is pretty centrally located, and outside a closed, stuffy confines of an elevator, reception from all the Telcos is pretty cruisy. But inside, there was only one clear winner.
Night Editor Elly is our resident Vodafone customer, and had absolutely no reception whatsoever on her rooted HTC Desire. Lifehacker editor Gus was on a BlackBerry Bold 9700 on Optus, and was constantly fluctuating between 3G and GPRS levels of connectivity – enough to let him tweet, but not much else.
Myself and Seamus were both using iPhone 4s on NextG, and I was sitting between three and four 3G bars consistently.
The lesson learned from this little encounter? Don’t get stuck in an elevator. And don’t let someone barge in at the last minute when the lift is already full. And if you do happen to be stuck in a lift, hope you can get phone service…