Dont get me wrong, Verizon Coverage is unbeatable, but I plan to live in Tijuana Mexico so that I can save some money on rent. The problem is that my phone (and every other phone I had) tries so hard to find verizon signal with no success as obviously there is no vzw towers in Mexico (only partner towers). On the phone menu there is only home only, automatic A, and automatic B. I need a hack so that I can have a "roaming networks only" so that I can freely use my phone without it switching automatically to a 1x one bar or zero bars. How can I do this?? Thank you so much in advance
I'm using their PAYG sim which gives a free 150mb allowance for 90 days, but am only ever able to connect via GPRS (my phone says I am roaming as well for some reason). Is anybody else using this sim and able to receive 3G?
yes indeed.
Three don;t have the 3G coverage of the other networks, and so they use Orange as a backup network when you are in an area that does not have any of their own transmitters. Seems you might be in such an area, which is why it says you are roaming cos you're actually on Orange!
Make sure you are not stuck in 2G only mode of course.....
dial *#*#4636#*#*
select phone information
slide down to the bottom, abnd make sure the first menu box is set to WCDMA preferred, and not GSM only.
Thanks for the information, thought this might be the case but wasn't sure. The phone was already set to WCDMA Preferred so I guess GPRS is the best I'm going to get from Three Mobile for the time being.
Thanks also for letting me know how to access the testing screens, lots of good info there!
no probs, here to help.....when i'm in a good mood and not at work of course
I have a slightly odd requirement, and I wondered if there was any way to fix it:
My carrier has a partnership with a second carrier so we can roam on each others networks for no extra cost.
Where I live, my own carrier only gives me a 2G signal, whereas the other gets 3G. Thing is, I have to physically select the other network. If it's on Automatic, it always "prefers" my own carrier.
This is fine until I'm on the other side of town where the other network gets no signal at all. I then have to manually select my own carrier again!
Is there any way to get it to prefer the other network, or even more ideally, prefer the one that offers the better signal at any given point?
Hi,
a bit of *bump* because I'm struggling with the same issue. I had such option on my previous samsung i780 (oooold) and it worked like a charm.
Currently my mobile operator has 2 roaming partners and if I want to change quickly the preferred order (because in some location it might have better coverage but only there and only for a while) I wold have to switch simcard to the old phone...
Isn't there at even a separate aplication to do that? Does andorid API allow such modification?
Glad I'm not the only one!
Interesting you mention an app to do it... i've not looked actually. If an app can access the list of networks and actually set the phone to use one, then I guess it would be possible. I'll check it out...
to the best of my understanding this is somewhat network option/setting and when suggesting an app I was thinging abount some way to read this setting, modify it and then save/send back to network. It would be a matter of access to the network settings from the API and knowledge how to operate it....
Still investigating this. Looks like the stuff to access the list of networks is in some internal APIs, so a little harder to access. I'll post back when I learn more...
Hey I hope you guys can figure this out have you tried the *#*#4636#*#* command and changed the radio? This will select the most preferred network.. e.g. I'm with Telstra in Australia, the stock radio defaults to 2100MHz but Telstra's HSPA+ is 850Mhz.. so I have to switch to AUS2 radio so it defaults to that every time.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
@Simmo3D
It's not about the radio band but about the service provider itself.
OK, I took the plunge and got one. Checked a few things out, then went for the ICS update (official AT&T, at least for now) before I got too wrapped up in it. Seems I may have forgotten to check out that the data plan worked before the update -- I think I may have had Wi-Fi on all the time. Yeah, it was a dumb mistake.
Now I cannot get any data with any application when outside a Wi-Fi zone. Not even 2G, much less 3G. No connection and no indicator at the top. Phone is working on 3G just fine.
I have AT&T, though it's an old "Smartphone Unlimited" plan. It works just fine on my LG Expo (which is 3G). The phone is supposed to be unlocked (at least until I updated it, don't know if that affected it), but I have no non-AT&T SIM with which to try it. Have made no attempt to root it or load a custom ROM.
Are there some settings somewhere that I have to change to go through my old "wap.cingular" gateway (either rooted or not)? Should I try going to a custom ROM? Back to the original software (link, please, if that's the case)?
I'm going to see if a co-worker's T-Mobile SIM works with it (voice and/or data). But is there anything else I should try? Has AT&T finally caught up with me and my old, cheap, unlimited data plan and my SIM keeps me from connecting?
There should be no issue putting in a SIM from a working phone. If you go to System Settings->About Phone->Status, what is the network status? "Unavailable"? "Unprovisioned"?
Do you have signal, just no data, or do you have no signal?
I have full phone and text service, just no data (though, oddly, it says I have used 9.92KB of data). That occurs both at my home where I connect to my microcell and elsewhere. Of course, at home, I can also use WiFi for data.
"Mobile Network State" is "Disconnected". "Mobile Network Type" is "UTMS:3." If I turn the data network off and back on, it goes to "connecting" for a while, then back to "disconnected. I did find the location where it specifies the Access Point Names and it is set to "wap.cingular" just like my old phone. But unlike my old phone, the user name and password are "not set". These are uneditable fields.
I also went to the place it allows me to select my network operator and it offered me three different "AT&T" options. Two of the three gave me a message that my SIM does not allow connection to that network. When I try to switch to one of them, I see the data indicator go through Edge, 3G, and 4G, then off.
Only other odd thing I've noted is that the serial number is all zeros. The IMEI is correct, though; and I think that's what matters.
I'm becoming more and more convinced this is a problem with my SIM and the data plan it's tied to. It is from an old EDGE-only Windows Mobile 5 "smart phone" when that meant a device without a touch screen or QWERTY keyboard and a "PDA" was something that had either of those. The "Smart Phone" data plan was half that for a "PDA" but more than for a plain phone, and that's what I'm still paying. I've been buying phones outside of the AT&T system to hang on to that inexpensive, unlimited plan; but I may have reached the end of the line with it. I definitely need to try a SIM from another 4G capable phone,. both AT&T and T-Mobile, to see where I stand.
Tiger Shark said:
I have full phone and text service, just no data (though, oddly, it says I have used 9.92KB of data). That occurs both at my home where I connect to my microcell and elsewhere. Of course, at home, I can also use WiFi for data.
"Mobile Network State" is "Disconnected". "Mobile Network Type" is "UTMS:3." If I turn the data network off and back on, it goes to "connecting" for a while, then back to "disconnected. I did find the location where it specifies the Access Point Names and it is set to "wap.cingular" just like my old phone. But unlike my old phone, the user name and password are "not set". These are uneditable fields.
I also went to the place it allows me to select my network operator and it offered me three different "AT&T" options. Two of the three gave me a message that my SIM does not allow connection to that network. When I try to switch to one of them, I see the data indicator go through Edge, 3G, and 4G, then off.
Only other odd thing I've noted is that the serial number is all zeros. The IMEI is correct, though; and I think that's what matters.
I'm becoming more and more convinced this is a problem with my SIM and the data plan it's tied to. It is from an old EDGE-only Windows Mobile 5 "smart phone" when that meant a device without a touch screen or QWERTY keyboard and a "PDA" was something that had either of those. The "Smart Phone" data plan was half that for a "PDA" but more than for a plain phone, and that's what I'm still paying. I've been buying phones outside of the AT&T system to hang on to that inexpensive, unlimited plan; but I may have reached the end of the line with it. I definitely need to try a SIM from another 4G capable phone,. both AT&T and T-Mobile, to see where I stand.
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Click to collapse
In the Access Point Names make sure that the profile you were talking about is selected. Or from that screen if you hit the menu button it should give you the option of entering your own APN. If you've had data working on another phone I would suggest duplicating the APN settings from it and try making a new profile.
It could be the SIM/plan you're currently on but honestly this sounds exactly like what happens when your APN settings aren't configured correctly.
Turn the phone off, remove the SIM, boot it with no SIM. Go into Access Point Names and remove all the entries. Turn it off, put the SIM back in, turn it back on. If it doesn't autocreate an entry in Access Point Names, or the autocreated entry still doesn't work, take it to an AT&T store and ask them for help.
m1batt1 said:
In the Access Point Names make sure that the profile you were talking about is selected. Or from that screen if you hit the menu button it should give you the option of entering your own APN. If you've had data working on another phone I would suggest duplicating the APN settings from it and try making a new profile.
It could be the SIM/plan you're currently on but honestly this sounds exactly like what happens when your APN settings aren't configured correctly.
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Click to collapse
There was no way to select the plan. So I made a duplicate of it, which did have a select button, selected it, and it now works great. Thanks so much for your help.
roothorick said:
take it to an AT&T store and ask them for help.
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Click to collapse
That would have ben last resort. They would have wanted to "upgrade" my data plan to something that cost more and isn't unlimited.
Your solution might have also worked, but the first one offered led me to a solution, so I never tried yours. I'll keep it in mind, though.
Tiger Shark said:
There was no way to select the plan. So I made a duplicate of it, which did have a select button, selected it, and it now works great. Thanks so much for your help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad it worked out for you!
Sent from my SGH-I927 using xda app-developers app
Hello all,
With this new tmobil global data plan that rolled out, it is really not good in south Texas area. Live on the border and work in Mexico. Cannot get the data from the mexican providers. Called tmobil and said sorry, its you area.
What I am looking to see is:
1. Is there a way to get the mobile network default setup to stick in manual after a re-boot. It always defaults to automatic. I need it on manual because I can still get tmobil in Mexico. It goes in and out but I get it. Otherwise it changes over to moviestar and I will get charged for messaging. Since I have no data connection, I cant use 3rd party apps.
2. Remove or supress the searching for networks popups asking to search for available networks.
If someone can come up with a way to do these, i think it would benefit more people than just me.
Thanks for reading!!
Bob