SureCall Fusion2Go Cell Phone Signal Booster Kit Anyone Compare???

[ericjkelly]

Hey friends!

Saw this on sale @ amazon.


SureCall Fusion2Go Cell Phone Signal Booster Kit


Has anyone tested it? For less than $300 could it compete with Weboost 4G-M/X or Max Signal.

Is it for real? Anyone use it and can report?

 

[John Moore]

I am not familiar with that model, but I can offer a bit of advice. I have a lot of background in radio (and that's what we are talking about here).

I have used a Wilson amplifier in the past that is around the same price, and that connected directly to the phone. Then I tried a Wilson amplifier which used an inside antenna, like the SureCall, and it did not work. Now, I use a Wilson Sleek which is a bit less expensive. It also has an inside antenna, but that antenna is held in contact with the phone - the Sleek is a phone cradle with integral amp.

The amplifier needs to pick up a signal from your cell phone, amplify it, and send it out the antenna (which you really want to put on your roof for best results). It also picks up the signal from the cell tower, amplifies it and sends it to your phone.

There are two ways to do this. The old way, which was most likely to work, was to hook up the amplifier to the antenna connector on your device. That is what I did with the first Wilson amplifier, and it worked.

The other way is for the amplifier to have an antenna in the car and one outside. The one in the car communicates with your phone and the one outside the car communicates with the cell tower. This is a *difficult* job for the amplifier - it is receiving and transmitting on the same frequency. When I tried this with the Wilson equivalent of the SureCall, it did not work. It interfered with itself. I tried various tricks, but it would not work and I sent it back.

The Wilson sleek, as I said, does work. The change is not dramatic, but with modern cellular systems, a very small change in signal strength makes the difference between it working and it not working - especially for LTE data. High data rate signals have a very sharp drop off in bit error rate with signal strength (BER vs dB). It is also pretty hard to see the effect of an amplifier, since the voice and data signals are actually separate, so who knows what the "bars" really mean. YMMV.

Here is an Amazon link to a Sleek. WARNING: you have to buy the right model - it has to be one compatible with your cell phone carrier. I don't know if the one at the link will work for you, but at least you can see what it is and what it costs. It is a lot less expensive than the SureCall.