For those of you in the know, I’ve been going through some real grief here in Chicago out at my house with T-Mobile and their coverage. Prior to 21-Jun-10, coverage was GREAT! I had 3G/HSPA+ out at the house and I was fat, dumb and happy as far as signal was concerned.

Honestly, I couldn’t have asked for much better coverage.  Signal strength was consistent, strong (3-4 bars 3g/HSPA/HSPA+, 4-5 bars EDGE), and I rarely dropped a call. Loved it.

Notice the past tense.  LovED. 

In late June, a number of severe storms ran through suburban Chicago.  Since then, T-Mobile coverage at my house has SOOPAHH-sucked. I bounced between couldn’t get a signal AT ALL to every thing in between 3-4 bars of 3G signal. However, no matter what the phone read, placing or receiving a call, surfing the net or sending a text message was hit or miss at BEST.  Honestly, I haven’t really had service at the house at all since 21-Jun-10.

Early this morning, after arriving downtown, I flashed the new Nexus One Korean Radio Image, and O.M.G! Check this out:

2.17Mbps down, 320Kbps up..!

I am in the BCBS-IL building on the lake front, on the 16th floor.  Buildings like this are typically a dead zone for any cell phone, but I was still able to pull in over 2Mbps down.  I think that’s AMAZING, especially since I’ve never been able to have download speeds above 50k/sec here, at my desk, on the 16th floor.  In actual use, I was able to download a 150MB file in under 5 minutes with this radio.

Totally awesome; and totally amazing.  If you have a Nexus One and haven’t downloaded this radio image, you really need to give it a shot. Its universal, and should be able to work on either flavor N1 (T-Mobile or AT&T) here in the States.