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Anyone have connection problems with 4G in Chicago? I'm running Myn's 2.2 and connect to 4G and average 4.5 MBS. However my phone constantly switches back to 3G.
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luderbeck1 said:
Anyone have connection problems with 4G in Chicago? I'm running Myn's 2.2 and connect to 4G and average 4.5 MBS. However my phone constantly switches back to 3G.
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Ive been on 4G all night and this AM... No issues here.. I use it all the time.
It's on and off for me but that's on the road.
Swyped from my HTC EVO 4G via xda app
For chicago it really depends on where you are. Check out clearwire's website for coverage, they list where their towers are. This is what I have figured out, if there are not more than 2 towers around a building it will give you spotty coverage. If you are above the 25th to 30th floors your coverage will be hit or miss. If you are in the loop/financial district your coverage will be very hit or miss due to the size of the high rises general lack of towers. The best bet is if you know anyone with clearwire's 4g ask them. They will know where they best coverage is and where there is none.
For the suburbs, 4g is WAY better, it is seriously night and day. I think the lack of high rises make it easier for 1 tower to cover a larger area more consistantly. Also many of the metra routes and highways (290, 88, 294) have towers along them so usually 4g coverage if pretty good while commuting.
This is my first 4g phone.
I am not sure the 4g is working properly. Need some input.
I have the 4g turned on. This phone seems to flip flop between 3g and 4g connection. It does not seem to hold a steady 4g connection and seems to often be downloading on 3g.
Did I get a dud? Should I try and have it swapped out?
Annoying to be paying a premium for 4g service when more than half the time I am getting 3g download speeds.
If it matters, I live in Las Vegas
I'm having the same problem
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azmtbiker said:
If it matters, I live in Las Vegas
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I live in Vegas, too. If you're trying from inside a house, you'll be lucky to hold a 4G signal. While they've got the valley pretty well covered, it's still not great. Some towers have greater coverage than others. I live in NW and have no 4G until about a half mile from my home.
The only place I know to have solid 4G is on the Strip/Convention Center area. I use it to stream during my shift.
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Just so you know : you are not paying for 4g. It's a premium data charge, which is charged to all subscribers with or without 4g phones. Just thought you should know what your paying for.
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azmtbiker said:
This is my first 4g phone.
I am not sure the 4g is working properly. Need some input.
I have the 4g turned on. This phone seems to flip flop between 3g and 4g connection. It does not seem to hold a steady 4g connection and seems to often be downloading on 3g.
Did I get a dud? Should I try and have it swapped out?
Annoying to be paying a premium for 4g service when more than half the time I am getting 3g download speeds.
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ive noticed the 4g radio is a little finnicky sometimes, however haven't noticed anything coverage related. Using EVO view right now...this thing has a much better 4g antenna. My embedded laptop gets the best though. I'm in Vegas too...and work for clearwire.
Full bar 4G here but I am not in Vegas. It should sleep when not in use but when its switching between 3G and 4G alot, it eats battery. Sprint 4G is notorious for not being great indoors
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Update
Well, after another day without the device hooking up to 4g for crap, I headed down to the sprint store.
Of course at the store, 4g is working. I tell the lady working there what is going on and she seems incredulous of my claim as the 4g currently seems to work.
The lady takes the phone, plugs it in to a cable. After 3 minutes she hands it back to be me and says, "it is now aligned with the towers." I said, so it should work. She says yes. Is this really a real thing??
I will post tomorrow with results of another days use.
Dunno if it is a hardware or software issue but has definitely not been working as it should. Wont even hook up to 4g in the car let alone in a building.
I also live in las Vegas, NW in fact and my GPS lock on is timeless , fast as heck, but for some reason at the Strip, is slow(almost never with the Epic4G) but a few seconds it takes with the ET4G.
The 3G speed varies on what area you're at sadly, sometimes for some reason when im in the parking lot of Paris, I have no connection, and even my phonecalls drop, but the moment i exit, baam! it works, 3G speed is up and down, recenty after updating my Profile and PRL, it has been snappy some what amazinly, and 4G hit and Miss in some areas.
Is fast on my own opinion anyway , for 4G i only get one bar at this very moment, but is still fast.
---------- Post added at 03:10 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:10 AM ----------
Vegasden said:
I live in Vegas, too. If you're trying from inside a house, you'll be lucky to hold a 4G signal. While they've got the valley pretty well covered, it's still not great. Some towers have greater coverage than others. I live in NW and have no 4G until about a half mile from my home.
The only place I know to have solid 4G is on the Strip/Convention Center area. I use it to stream during my shift.
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Exactly lol, but at home NW i also get it too.
Other thing I notice is when it switches from 4g to 3g, the 4g will not turn back on unless it is manually switched on and off.
azmtbiker said:
Well, after another day without the device hooking up to 4g for crap, I headed down to the sprint store.
Of course at the store, 4g is working. I tell the lady working there what is going on and she seems incredulous of my claim as the 4g currently seems to work.
The lady takes the phone, plugs it in to a cable. After 3 minutes she hands it back to be me and says, "it is now aligned with the towers." I said, so it should work. She says yes. Is this really a real thing??
I will post tomorrow with results of another days use.
Dunno if it is a hardware or software issue but has definitely not been working as it should. Wont even hook up to 4g in the car let alone in a building.
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Since it's your first experience with WiMAX, if you're expecting to drive around and keep 4G connected, it ain't gonna happen. Pretty much you have to be stationary and in good coverage area. And take the coverage maps with a grain of salt.
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azmtbiker said:
Other thing I notice is when it switches from 4g to 3g, the 4g will not turn back on unless it is manually switched on and off.
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hmm.. I haven't tried this myself..Only tried 4G and it stayed there no change, I'll do this when im at home, since im at work at the moment.
Though if you can replicate this problem, do it for the Sprint Rep and see if they can exchange it for ya.
Vegasden said:
Since it's your first experience with WiMAX, if you're expecting to drive around and keep 4G connected, it ain't gonna happen. Pretty much you have to be stationary and in good coverage area. And take the coverage maps with a grain of salt.
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this is disappointing to say the least...well many of us have given sprint a fair try...i only wonder how do some ever get use to this...i know for a fact this is not the norm for all carriers while i guess some really do get good coverage with sprint.
Mine does the same exact thing
azmtbiker said:
Other thing I notice is when it switches from 4g to 3g, the 4g will not turn back on unless it is manually switched on and off.
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When I go from one spot to another in the car, the 4g signal is lost and phone reverts to 3g.
I have to toggle 4g off/on to reconnect.
I did the tweaks listed here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1265990
but no help.
Did the tweaks improve this for anyone? Anyone else having this issue?
I was in a sprint store and the woman turned off my 4g switch and told me to not use it because we don't have 4g in my city. She said we only have 3g (crappy towers at that). Is it possible only larger cities have 4g? I've even attempted to find maps of where the 3g towers were in my city to see if I could test the connectivity but there's nothing offered. I'm honestly not sure what to do.
Check out sprint.com they have a map that overlays all there locations with 3g and 4g and what not. short answer to your question is yes. 4g is pretty limited to major US cities and even then not the whole cities. Over time they should get more coverage but we'll see how switching to lte over WiMax plays out.
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I live in the US - Raleigh NC area, they have pretty decent coverage here. But seeing as I just got my phone and Sprint about 3 weeks ago I can't talk about travel at a distance. Stormglove is right, check out sprints web site.
There are like 3 towers with wimax in the whole state of Arizona but Phoenix is the 5th largest city in the nation... Go figure
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I live in Louisville, KY. Apparently there are like 2 WiMax towers here. Connection is pretty poor though, even within range of WiMax I can get repeated connects and disconnects.
I dont get how they can even advertise 4g for Sprint. The amount of towers they currently have deployed probably dont even cover 10% of the usa i bet. Theres 1 tower in my state i beleive and its not even on the sqme island as me :-( they should advertise it as such.. "sprint, slow ass 3g and 4g thats probably not even within distance of a IBM missel" cause there 4g is a fricken joke
Sent From My Epic Touch 3g
I get great 4g in NYC 5MB/sec (in my house which is practically a dead zone for ALL phones >_>{LUCKY ME!!!!}) and 10MB/sec+ outside my house. hopefully LTE shows better results for the rest of sprint users. =(
Epix4G said:
There are like 3 towers with wimax in the whole state of Arizona but Phoenix is the 5th largest city in the nation... Go figure
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Us Mexicans can't build there.. we are not allowed in Arizona... duh!
I would just test it. I live in Prescott, Arizona, and according to sprint.com there isn't a 4g tower for miles and miles. However, on average I get 3 bars of 4g n a connection speed of about 12 mbps. So I would just flip it on every now and then and see
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Well in the case of when i was in Gurnee Ill around thanksgiving they actually lost 4g.
Thanksgiving 2010 they had 4g while i was down there, Thanksgiving 2011 they no longer had 4g the week i was down there...
Strange...
i get 4g in philadelphia... although as i go about town i'd say reception is spotty at best. if i'm in a good spot 4g blazes. if i'm in a car or certain areas, it's nil.
on another note, i think wimax is more or less dead on the water? there will be no more or few towers invested in by sprint since they want to be on lte by 2013. i could be recalling this info inaccurately; also since they piggyback off clear's wimax that doesn't mean clear will cease expanding their market - but i'm not sure about any of this, so take this post as speculation.
The Odom Project said:
I would just test it. I live in Prescott, Arizona, and according to sprint.com there isn't a 4g tower for miles and miles. However, on average I get 3 bars of 4g n a connection speed of about 12 mbps. So I would just flip it on every now and then and see
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I love that area and try to get up to oak creek canyon at least 3 or 4 times a year in summer
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Just go to clear.com and check the coverage map to see tower locations for your area since sprint is using them for their 4g coverage
raj7065 said:
Just go to clear.com and check the coverage map to see tower locations for your area since sprint is using them for their 4g coverage
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I wonder how accurate that map is, as i supposedly have 4g.
But its sparatic at best...
Although i suppose sparatic means coverage in that area.
I would consider sprint's 4g more limited in market area's meaning most major markets but not all. Im just outside nashville, tn (not a major market) and its here & have been since june of 2010 but coverage is more spotty than anything. I work in a all glass building and its up and down like a roller coaster trying to get it to stay connected vs switching to 3g. In my home it wont even connect to 4g but not a big deal to me. Personally i would have done some research to see which area's its in b/c paying $10 for premium data isnt quite getting your money's worth in a non 4g area.
To the comment about not covering more than 10 percent of the country. It is probably a lot less than that even. But, since 80 percent of our country lives in urban environments it doesn't matter.
You won't get any type of 4G when your cruising down I-70 in BFE. But, it works fine in St. Louis or Kansas City. Even on a bigger carrier you have a similar problem.
i drove around every corner on my town rockford illinois and lte is strong everywhere accept when i get close to home but as soon as i cross a street it goes to 3g. Is there a app or way to connect to certain towers because i don't this will get fixed by sprint it seems to be this phone format have a lte only option just cdma/lte. i could literally go one block and have full bars lte but soon as i head home it goes from 4g full bars to 3g. a app or something i could flash to just have lte would be great. Because 3g is not usable in rockford just to slow.
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bonebeatz1234 said:
i drove around every corner on my town rockford illinois and lte is strong everywhere accept when i get close to home but as soon as i cross a street it goes to 3g. Is there a app or way to connect to certain towers because i don't this will get fixed by sprint it seems to be this phone format have a lte only option just cdma/lte. i could literally go one block and have full bars lte but soon as i head home it goes from 4g full bars to 3g. a app or something i could flash to just have lte would be great. Because 3g is not usable in rockford just to slow.
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Not to be facetious, but once you get to your house, don't you have wifi? Seems like it would be a non-issue to me. :/
bonebeatz1234 said:
i drove around every corner on my town rockford illinois and lte is strong everywhere accept when i get close to home but as soon as i cross a street it goes to 3g. Is there a app or way to connect to certain towers because i don't this will get fixed by sprint it seems to be this phone format have a lte only option just cdma/lte. i could literally go one block and have full bars lte but soon as i head home it goes from 4g full bars to 3g. a app or something i could flash to just have lte would be great. Because 3g is not usable in rockford just to slow.
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I don't know of any option to make it lte only. Also just cause u have full signal doesn't mean you're not on the edges of it. That's your phones signal not lte signal. Same thing happens to me in Baltimore with LTE. I'll have full signal and lose lte connection.
Sent from Galaxy SIII
bonebeatz1234 said:
i drove around every corner on my town rockford illinois and lte is strong everywhere accept when i get close to home but as soon as i cross a street it goes to 3g. Is there a app or way to connect to certain towers because i don't this will get fixed by sprint it seems to be this phone format have a lte only option just cdma/lte. i could literally go one block and have full bars lte but soon as i head home it goes from 4g full bars to 3g. a app or something i could flash to just have lte would be great. Because 3g is not usable in rockford just to slow.
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First, understand that LTE service has not been officially launched in Rockford. It is still under development. Full network buildout will probably continue even after the local market is officially launched.
Second, your "bars" display on the GS3 does not reflect the strength of your LTE signal, only the 1x signal used for voice, text, etc.
Third, if you want to understand the Sprint LTE rollout, go to S4GRU.com and read everything.
i asked because on tmobile when i had them you could just turn phone on to hspa only i thought there would be the same for sprint. ALL THE towers in rockford are complete is what sprint told me i should be receiving lte. east side ,westside, south side had lte even the north just the small neighbor hood that i just moved to today doesn't my old house i had lte which is three blocks away.
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The only way to force your Sprint GS3 to LTE only is in the hidden debug menus, for which I think you need your MSL. But when you to that, you are turning off all the other radio functions, so you have no voice or text connectivity.
If you had Sprint LTE service a few blocks away and lost it, and it does not come back by toggling the radio (airplane mode, reboot, etc.) then it may be that you were just on the edge of service in the prior location. What kind of data speeds did you get with LTE there?
It could be that inside your new home the signal is just too weak. If that is the only problem location, the best bet is to us WiFi there.
jswearingen said:
Not to be facetious, but once you get to your house, don't you have wifi? Seems like it would be a non-issue to me. :/
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i just moved no wifi cable not on til next week .
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You could try the app "network" to force lte
with your msl can't you adjust the s/n rx and tx settings ? i did this with my evo 4g and worked like a charm since i had 4g outside my house but not inside.
bonebeatz1234 said:
i just moved no wifi cable not on til next week .
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Ah. Makes sense
Does anybody else have horrible reception problems in week signal areas?
I know how that sounds... but, what I mean is in the city, with the corporate PRL (56xxx) and the LJ7 radio, I get better signals then I ever have with my Moment or S2, roaming or native.
However, when I go out of town into a Cellcom area, I drop to no signal unless I am practically on top of a tower.
My Sprint tablet and S2 get decent roaming signals ( 2-3 bars) while my S3 gets no service, despite multiple combinations of radios and PRL's.
Any ideas? Bad antenna connection? Bad phone?
Thanks!
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I've noticed the signal roams and just flat out drops in certsin areas. Maybe it's just the antenna? I'm in So Cal.
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xTMFxOffshore said:
I've noticed the signal roams and just flat out drops in certsin areas. Maybe it's just the antenna? I'm in So Cal.
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I'm in Wisconsin.
I have also noticed that my phone roams more often than any other Sprint device that I have.
The S2 and S3 should be identical as far which cellular frequencies they listen to... so there shouldn't be any reason that the S2 gets service in 90 percent of the places the S3 doesn't even get roaming service.
I wonder how likely it is that the antenna write somehow got disconnected when I dropped the phone at some point in the past?
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I live in an area that is rated as "Good / Best" for Voice, with solid 3G coverage (per their site map & past phone experience) but do not have LTE available here yet.
I've had the GS3 for < a day and was able to test side by side just moments apart from deactivating my old HTC phone.
I immediately went from a 3 year old phone getting -80dBm to -92dBm on the GS3. I have used the 3G on my HTC phone day in and out here for the entire 3 years of the phone, when suddenly, the GS3 was timing out while trying to download Google Chrome from the Play Store. Web page loads are bursty... hot/cold/hot/cold and SpeedTest.Net App seems to confirm the story...
I could not complete SpeedTest.Net due to "communication issues" nor download anything until I forced the phone to CDMA only. Unfortunately, even though I can now USE the phone, the speeds are still kinda rough:
Pings are ranging 800ms - 1300ms consistently ( I was used to 200ms or less )
Downloads are 30-80kbps, I was used to 350-500k.
Brief Real-world testing of moving through web pages, loading videos and browsing the playstore also lean towards the numbers I'm seeing.
Not sure about what to do. Maybe the HTC EVO 4G LTE would have better signal. It's hard to determine without personally testing, there's a LOT of complaints both ways, on both forums. I'll continue to evaluate and give it a chance to improve. Maybe it was a bad night last night.
The word thing is that I get better speeds and reception on Sprint's network in Milwaukee than I do with my S2.
As soon as I leave the city, or even leave Sprint's network, the S3 becomes prone to LOS while the S2 chugs along happily.
And, as I said before, this is with the same PRL.
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I've been noticing a lot more random LOS, and other signal issues in areas I've had signal before, and good signal at that on both my Photon and iphone. Is there a better PRL or Profile to use that will improve this or is it just something on Samsung's end that is gonna be what it is?