Develop Bugs

Strange 4G behavior - beyond speed tests

I have been feeling out my 4G connection for awhile now, and I am still having a strange experience with it. Speed tests always give good results, but actually using 4G for daily tasks is not working out well so far. Often times it loads pages and market or maps slower than with 4G...
I had been having this off and on all week, but I thought it was just my poor 4g connection at home. Anyway, now I'm writing from a mall with a very strong connection. Now I'm noticing when I load a page or open maps/market, it actually disconnects from 4G and loads with 3G for a second or two then switches back..
I've been using fresh, dc, and bugless ROMs, and always with the latest radio. I've had to apply the 4G patch a few times to get 4G working, but once it's up, it behaves the same...
Is it the ROM, my phone, or the nature of 4G in philadelphia?

I'd guess it's the nature of the 4g. It's still a new market. One thing, the bars on your phone only show the connection to the tower, not the connection to the internet. My 4g has been like that in places around Dallas, but closer to the heart of Dallas, I get more consistent connection. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but that just seems to be the nature of technology here on the bleeding edge.
I might add, that for whatever reason, I cannot load my XDA bookmark to the evo 4g page on 4g at all, but it loads fine on 3g or wifi. I have yet to understand that one. Other pages seem to load ok though.

I've also noticed issues on xda, I think it's related to flash. I noticed if I load flash only sites on 4G it never loads or takes a stupid long time... If I cut to 3G it loads fine... On xda, it's the flash ads..

Having the phone process information and display it is much different then just doing a speed test. I'm in Philly also - but only use the 4G for tethering.

rutter9 said:
Having the phone process information and display it is much different then just doing a speed test. I'm in Philly also - but only use the 4G for tethering.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree completely, but the issue is that, on some pages (usually with flash) It loads and displays the information faster on 3G than on 4G... I'm not sure what would cause that. I'll try tethering and see if it's the same... I'll also try 4G when I'm in central philly...

I wonder if flash determines what quality to stream the content at? Like if you use sprint tv on 4g you will get higher quality video but it can be laggy trying to catch up to the stream. When on 3g the quality is a little less but doesn't skip around at all.

I'm having similar issues with my 4G connection. Some pages won't come up. The progress bar loads up to about 50% then either takes a really long time to bring up the page or not at all. All I get is a blank page. The xda forums are one of the sites I'm having problems with also. It loads up fine over 3G and WiFi. I'm currently running the OMJ rom, latest Radio, and the Fresh 4G fix. I'm not sure if the problem lies with my rooted Evo or the 4G network.

rutter9 said:
I wonder if flash determines what quality to stream the content at? Like if you use sprint tv on 4g you will get higher quality video but it can be laggy trying to catch up to the stream. When on 3g the quality is a little less but doesn't skip around at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That makes sense to me. Still, it seems strange that the network or phone one struggles to keep up like that. Ah well, like I said, the nature of things out here on the bleeding edge.

i have experienced similar 4g/3g flipflopping behavior and pisspoor wifi. its like the radio is very slow to get a connection as coming out of the pocket and then while in use it will go to 3g then say it's found a 4g and get on that and back to 3g. sometimes i'll see 4g w/ full strength but am unable to do any internet functions (web browser, pandora, meebo, appbrain all fail indicating no network). by putting it into Airplane mode...count to 3...take it out of airplane mode the radio reconnects and is able to pass data as expected.
i have done full cache, delvikcache, (and the other whatchamacallit) formatting between builds. and cleared the cache after updating the radio (even tho i shouldn't need to for Fresh .3)
i have not fussed with App2SD nor anything Flash related.
not sure if i live/work on the "edge" of coverage or if it's EVO (software or hardware) related. I"m leaning more to the coverage at this point. between testing it more as i move around town and next weeks froyo builds maybe the 4g gods will shine down upon me.

Increase WiMAX_Idle_Sleep(s) setting
I had the same issue and found these instructions which show how to increase WiMAX_Idle_Sleep(s) setting.
hit ##DATA# > Edit mode.
Put in your msl code
Chose WIMAX
Scroll down to Wimax_Idle_Sleep
Change the value from 10 to 300.
Click menu, commit changes and restart the phone.
See ' [GUIDE] Easy way to get MSL without calling Sprint or using CMDA Workshop' to get MSL Code, or just call Sprint and ask for it.

mgshultz said:
I had the same issue and found these instructions which show how to increase WiMAX_Idle_Sleep(s) setting.
hit ##DATA# > Edit mode.
Put in your msl code
Chose WIMAX
Scroll down to Wimax_Idle_Sleep
Change the value from 10 to 300.
Click menu, commit changes and restart the phone.
See ' [GUIDE] Easy way to get MSL without calling Sprint or using CMDA Workshop' to get MSL Code, or just call Sprint and ask for it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I work in Philly and have the 3g 4g connection problems too. Your fix did not work for me. No matter what Rom or fix I've tried I can't keep a stable 4g connection without the stock Rom flashed. Sometimes WiFi tether will work on 4g with a custom Rom but anything else and I have all kinds of connection issues. I don't think its the network because 4g connection cards work just fine.
Edit: my main cause of concern is that simultaneous talk and data. I like to be able to talk and still follow sports scores while working. Sticking to stock for now.

Signal, 3G, 4G Network Tweaks

I have flashed all the latest radios and do so every so often when I flash a new rom. I just tried out Ava V10 rom and in the changelog it says 3G and 4G performance tweaks and tower preference tweaks. We'll in my area (suburb of chicago) I actually noticed a decent increase in reception and 4G/3G speeds.
I was wondering if it was anyway possible to take these tweaks and apply them to another rom? Thanks

bump
also find another thread on another site discussing these tweaks
http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/htc-evo-4g/125678-htc-evo-msl-hacks-tweaks.html

nothin on tower tweaks?

Bumpity Bump

resurrecting the dead?! LoL

Evil Dead
I'm interested in the topic because my 4G speeds while tethering are low (30-80KB/sec) even though I have full bars of 4G. I'm in West Palm Beach, FL. I know higher speeds are possible! When I tether in 3G I get 15-80KB/sec.
I tried the guide here with no change in speeds.
I followed this guide as well but my settings were already at 0 (for the port) and 0.0.0.0 (for the proxy address).
When you type ##3282# there is a menu for "WiMAX", even a sub-menu named "bandwidth", I figured maybe something was possible...

More Links
I found this here which is entitled "Boost your WiMax 4G Speeds..." It has 2 tricks you can use. Post #1 and #7
Here are the default ##data# settings in case you screw something up.

4G Constant Scan - connect/disconnect

I have tried to search but it doesn't like to include 4G (to short to be included) in the search box so forgive me if I wasn't bright enough to find this somewhere else.
My EVO will scan for 4G service. It then says connecting to Sprint, then flashes disconnected and scans again only to say connecting to sprint. Rinse and Repeat this process over and over. I have had this issue both on clean installs of fresh rom and currently on Koni's elite series rom. Anyone have this issue as well/and or know of a solution.
I do have a 4G MAC address so I would think that I should be able to connect.
Thanks in advance for the help

wvjw said:
I have tried to search but it doesn't like to include 4G (to short to be included) in the search box so forgive me if I wasn't bright enough to find this somewhere else.
My EVO will scan for 4G service. It then says connecting to Sprint, then flashes disconnected and scans again only to say connecting to sprint. Rinse and Repeat this process over and over. I have had this issue both on clean installs of fresh rom and currently on Koni's elite series rom. Anyone have this issue as well/and or know of a solution.
I do have a 4G MAC address so I would think that I should be able to connect.
Thanks in advance for the help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well for one are you in a strong 4G coverage area?
Try shutting off your phone, pull the battery for a minute or two and restart your phone. (If you call Sprint and tell them this issue - this step will be the first one they tell you to execute)
Also you can try updating your profile and PRL, When I am having weak signals under 4G/3G - I update my profile & PRL and it always seems to fix the signal issue...
hope this helps
JS3

this happens to me when trying to connect to a 4g signal from my apartment. it will say "scanning... connecting... obtaining IP address/disconnected/scanning...connecting..." (sometimes the "obtaining ip address" does not appear) yet if i try to connect in other parts of town it connects fine. wimax sucks as far as connectivity, so until more towers appear and the signal is better there's probably no way to fix your issue. ive tried every inch of my house, and of course by the windows is slightly better. if you can manage to get a "poor" or "fair" 4g connection you'll probably end up with slower speeds than 3g anyway. it's really misleading because the software indicates the phone is trying to connect even though the signal isn't good enough to maintain a connection. clear and sprint coverage maps indicate my address and neighborhood as "best" 4g coverage too, so i have little hope of this ever improving. there is a thread for updating your ##data# values to get the phone to connect sooner and stay connected longer which i think probably helps, but not enough for me (nothing you do on your end can improve the tower signal) and even if it did, like i said you're connecting at "poor" or "fair" signal and your data speeds will often remain slower than 3g.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

I am good coverage areas, my work where I am now can get it in buildings and comically my home is exactly on the line of in-home/on-street. Tried pulling the battery to same results, I think I have current PRL 60675 PRI 1.90_003. Not sure what you mean for the profile though.
Thanks for the tips.

I can connect to 4g with a poor/fair signal now, and heres how I did it if anyone cares:
flashed joeykrim's rooted stock sprint rom (5.1 I think)
updated prl through settings menu
updated profile through settings menu
use msl reader app from market to get msl code
go to dialer and type (NOT call) ##DATA#
enter MSL, go to edit mode, tap the first out of the 5 or so menu items
press menu, choose "restore" (phone will reboot or power off)
turn phone back on and enable 4g with phone on window ledge.
somewhere along the line (flashing many many different roms and wiping a lot, trying various kernels and tweaks) I had gotten stuck in the seemingly irreversible 4g/wimax connection/disconnection loop. Now I can at least connect!
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

[GUIDE] Disabling Sprint proxies to improve speed, compatibility, & choice

This guide is solely at your own risk. In particular, in the DATA settings under ##3282#, if you go messing around and changing things willy-nilly there is a potential to majorly screw up your phone. However, even if you follow this guide perfectly, I am providing no guarantee this will not screw up your phone or your service, this is merely a documentation of how I did it for the community's benefit.
What are proxies?
A proxy is a server that acts as an intermediary for network traffic. This can be done for a variety of reasons, including to save on bandwidth. For example, Sprint's proxy rewrites all outbound requests from our phones to request the smaller, mobile version of pages, even if the browser user-agent is set to desktop, and does who knows what else.
Why would I want to disable Sprint's proxies?
Faster speeds: Removing the proxy removes a link in between you and the server you're trying to connect to. There may be more to it than that, but it has been widely reported (though without reliable statistics) that disabling the proxy speeds up your connection. In my case, I found that my 3G speeds went from 450/300 kbps right before disabling proxies to 800/300 kbps right after. 4G speeds did not seem affected.
Fix certain apps: Many apps, particularly streaming apps such as Rdio and Rhapsody don't play well with Sprint's proxies.
Access local websites: If you're trying to access a website hosted on your local network, for example, an intranet, Sprint's proxies will break this.
User agent: You can take back control of your browser user agent and view desktop versions of webpages if you want to.
Is it safe?
People have been doing this for years now, including on the Epic 4G and the Evo original, with no ill effects. Even with proxies disabled, historically you have been able to continue to receive all official Sprint updates.
Great, so how do I disable Sprint's proxies?
Install a terminal application, such as ConnectBot
Use it to open a local terminal window
On the command prompt, type (case-sensitive): getprop ril.MSL
The 6-digit number that is spit out is your phone's MSL, make a note of it
Open up your phone dialer, and type on the keypad ##3282#, which will open up the DATA settings
Choose: Edit
Enter your MSL
Choose: Others
Choose: Multimedia
Observe RTSP Proxy Address and HTTPPD Proxy Address, and confirm they are respectively the Sprint proxies rtsp.vog.sprintpcs.com and pd.vog.sprintpcs.com (If they are not that is interesting, and post it here, and also make a note of it in case you want to go back for some reason)
Replace RTSP Proxy Address and HTTPPD Proxy Address with: 0.0.0.0
Observe RTSP Proxy Port and HTTP PD Proxy Port, and confirm they are respectively 554 and 8085 (Same thing as above if they are not)
Replace RTSP Proxy Port and HTTP PD Proxy Port with 0
Back out of the DATA settings, reboot, and your proxies should now be disabled, try it out and post back any feedback on how it works for your now

Gave it a shot, no joy. Not sure what it was, but sending and receiving data was showing though no progress being made. As soon as I put the settings back, all pages were up and speedtest worked.
It may just be me because we still have a tower down in the area (from tornadoes back in April). Thanks for the writeup.

Speedtest.net app hasn't worked for me at all since I got the phone. But it works on other devices in my house (and theyeasily pull 2,000 kbps+ on 3G). I tried before removing proxies and it just says "Network Communicatoin issues" and it still says it after. I did do this on my Epic and it worked great, so I imagine it'd work great for us here, too! Thanks for posting this, regardless if this fixed my speedtest issue or not.

Does anyone else have a weird issue with Terminal Emulator where when you type in getprop ril.MSL it keeps capitalizing it to getprop rIl.MSL? I can't seem to get around this... so I just used ADB.
Maybe it's the Swype keyboard?

WhiteZero said:
Does anyone else have a weird issue with Terminal Emulator where when you type in getprop ril.MSL it keeps capitalizing it to getprop rIl.MSL? I can't seem to get around this... so I just used ADB.
Maybe it's the Swype keyboard?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's exactly that. I'd install the swype beta.

WhiteZero said:
Does anyone else have a weird issue with Terminal Emulator where when you type in getprop ril.MSL it keeps capitalizing it to getprop rIl.MSL? I can't seem to get around this... so I just used ADB.
Maybe it's the Swype keyboard?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try using a different keyboard instead of swype, it IS a swype issue. I would suggest gingerbread keyboard from the market.
Also speedtest 2.0.5 doesn't work well if it works at all. Try 2.0.3 (click here)

Overstew said:
It's exactly that. I'd install the swype beta.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have to uninstall normal swype before installing the beta correct?

In Terminal Emulator:
Menu-> More-> Preferences-> Input method-> Change from "Word-based" to "Character-based".
Problem should be fixed with no need to change Swype.
Edit: Also, click the swype preferences in the lower left of the soft-keyboard and uncheck auto-capitalization.

It's only your problem..... Don't use swype use samsung keyboard and it will work.... Swype is the problem
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium

Ran some speedtest benchmarks before and after.
No appreciable changes in speed for 4g up or down. IN FACT my best 4g run was prior to making any changes and was:
13893kbps down and 1517 kbps up and those 3 consecutive runs were all about the same so I just had an unusually good connection. Otherwise pre change and post change speeds are consistent for 4g
in 3G mode however my speeds prior to proxy change was about 800kbps down and 300kbps up. After proxy changes my 3G speeds are about 1200kbps down (with a high of 1500kbs) and 300kbps up. So no change in upload speeds and a fair change in 3g download speeds.

Working now. Needed a reboot to take hold. 3G seems slightly faster, 4G seems unaffected. No telling for sure, because I get horrid reception in my office.

Seems to work well. I have been getting better speeds since I did this. Thanks

I did this change in the middle of the night almost a week ago. Before I was getting average download speeds of about 500 kbps. After it shot up to 1.2mbps. It also improved the speed of my OGEvo. But, I realized that it only helped during offpeak hours. Once the world wakes up and start to jumble up my bandwidth, my average speeds lower to about 200kbps.

Will this affect ability to receive OTA updates from Sprint? Specifically, PRL, Profile, or firmware updates?

im going to do a few speed tests of before and after, ill post my results

I did this tweak and I saw a huge improvement on 3G speeds! I opened up my Miren browser and went to http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest (HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS SITE) and I got 1.3mbps/300kbps speeds. HUGE improvement over my previous on average speeds of 300-500kbps/100kbps.
Thanks for this, OP!

mmmm ok i just got my results and it didnt help me any.
my speeds went way down actually...
here are the results
i went from an average of 1000 kbps dl before to 650 kbps dl after the proxy edit
and
an average of 300 kbps ul before to 50 kbps ul after the edit.
dowant work for me...

I went from 600k to 1400k dl 700k ul after edit!! Amazing thanks
Sent from my SPH-D710 using XDA Premium App

MoMatt said:
Will this affect ability to receive OTA updates from Sprint? Specifically, PRL, Profile, or firmware updates?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's a negatory.

nabbed said:
That's a negatory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh yeah... going to give it a shot then! 3G speeds have been the suck here for a couple months now.

Why Does the 3g Indicator Lie?

There have been several times I know with 100% certainty that I am on a 1xRTT signal, yet the data indicator never changes... It ALWAYS claims to have 3G service.
Did Samsung do this to make us think the data connection is stronger, or did Sprint do this to make us think they have a big 3G network?
Do any of the ROMs out there address this?

Dalmus said:
There have been several times I know with 100% certainty that I am on a 1xRTT signal, yet the data indicator never changes... It ALWAYS claims to have 3G service.
Did Samsung do this to make us think the data connection is stronger, or did Sprint do this to make us think they have a big 3G network?
Do any of the ROMs out there address this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Neither. 1xRTT is 3G.
But yes, there are ROMS that show you on 1x if you happen to be on it and not EVDO.

The radio informs the ROM when it changes from 3G to 1x. Sprint either made the change or asked Samsung to make the change to ignore that notification and continue displaying 3G. There is actually code in the ROM to handle the 1x notification, it has just been modified to use the 3G icon.
They started doing this with some of their high-end phones starting with Evo. Before Evo their phones dutifully displayed the information the radio was telling it.
"Coincidentally" around that time, Sprint started getting rid of 3G roaming (leaving you with 1x data while roaming, in many areas) from their PRLs to save money.
One might draw the conclusion that Sprint wanted to hide this change from their high-end users.
You can still tell whether it is 1x by installing a ROM that restores the functionality or by going to ##DEBUG# and looking at Data Status.

sfhub said:
You can still tell whether it is 1x by installing a ROM that restores the functionality or by going to ##DEBUG# and looking at Data Status.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK, I just checked mine and it says IP address EVDO: 21.71.100.00. Does it mean I'm here on EVDO?

rimidalvr1966 said:
OK, I just checked mine and it says IP address EVDO: 21.71.100.00. Does it mean I'm here on EVDO?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes.
If it was 1x, it would say 1x instead of EVDO.

sfhub said:
Yes.
If it was 1x, it would say 1x instead of EVDO.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And my Juice Defender says
Data On (Screen)
Screen x1.52
What is this?