Develop Bugs

[Q] 3g everythere but at home????

I have a problem with my Tmobile g2 running 2.2, it is all stock no modifications whatsoever other than handcent and fancy widget.
The problem is I can not connect to 3g or hsdpa network when I am at home. By this I mean the cell tower that provides service when I am at home. I have txt and calling capabilites but I have no data whatsoever. I have to manually switch to 2g or edge to check email or use the browser. I have called tmobile and they keep telling me that the problem is with my phone, however when I am 2 or 3 miles from my house and it goes to any other tower on the planet everything works fine.
I have searched the g2 forum here but could find no answers. I apologize in advance if this has been indeed covered or discussed to death and I have just failed to find it.
I did find the *#*#4636#*#* option and when it is on 2g I can run a ping test and it finds the server just fine, but on 3g it always fails to connect. Again this only occurs of course when I am sitting at home!
Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this or point me in the right direction because leaving it up to tmobile has proven to be fruitless.

It might also be worth mentioning that i replaced the sim card today as well, this too had no effect on this phenomenon.....

My mom's nexus s has the same problem. Only difference is that when i walk out the door i get 3g. Once i walk back in, I get edge...... I think its might be just tmobile frequencies poor ability to pentrate walls.

Sounds like a problem with the 3G network in your area, or just a weak signal there.

I know its not the signal strength, I always have full bars at home Its something to do with the network....

DefiantMenace said:
I know its not the signal strength, I always have full bars at home Its something to do with the network....
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Full bars on 3G or 2G ? If you have full bars on 3G then it sounds like a network problem.

I have the exact same problem, but my building is probably over 100 years old with 300 coats of lead paint on it. It depends on your building. Signals can bounce off of mirrors for example and other materials. The more material the signal has to go through, the more attenuation happens.

I have a similar problem, my G2 can't maintain a consistent connection, I will go from 4 bars of HSPA+ to 4 bars of Edge to nothing (lost connection to network) and it will jump around wildly between these three states (every few minutes). My wife's MyTouch 4G doesn't do this, my G1 did not do this, our kids (dumb) phones have consistent connections.
I know it's some interaction between my phone and the TMO network, I'd say it was a defective phone except the only place it happens is inside my house.
I wish that TMO offered a microcell.

There is no reception problem, I have had the phone working here for awhile and it always has full bars, like I said I can hop in the car and drive a couple miles and it works just fine. Tmobile finally got back to me today and said they are having their Engineers troubleshoot the tower that provides service when I am home. I hope they get this fixed soon, they said 72 hours.......

It's that anti-cellphonereception chemical they put into paint!!

[Q] WiMax repeater?

Folks....
I have read that Radio Shack has some WiMAX repeaters installed before the HTC EVO was rolled out. Anyone here know the make and model number of this repeater? Why is it that we can not buy WiMAX repeaters? You can buy repeaters for 3G. They are all over the place. Some in home units to units that have a big external antenna.
Where I live in Portland Oregon my WiMAX reception in my yard, outside is "fair". If I walk about a block, it quickly turns to good, then excellent. However when I am inside, my WiMAX reception is "poor". I would think by now smart phone WiMAX repeaters would be off the shelf. Is this a legal issue, or has no one developed a repeater for home/business owners?
htc evo owner.
Thanks
jack

+1 on this. But I think they were micro cells and not repeaters.
EVO Sent

The only way this would be necessary is if you think your home network would be to "slow" and you had to use Wimax as the speedier alternative...
as soon as I walk into my house I connect to wifi and have great speeds and save tons of battery life by having a strong consistent signal.

Tuffgong4 said:
The only way this would be necessary is if you think your home network would be to "slow" and you had to use Wimax as the speedier alternative...
as soon as I walk into my house I connect to wifi and have great speeds and save tons of battery life by having a strong consistent signal.
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I believe he meant to use his wimax connection for tethering and the like. If you dont have a home connection, thats why you need a repeater.
It doesnt make sense to use a microcell (i.e. your home internet) to generate a wimax signal (wimax uses so much more battery that its crazy) instead of just hooking up to wifi to begin with.

i'd LOVE to stick a wimax repeater in my car... then all that's left is VPN to my home network and cifs mount my music & video library so apps can natively access them... say hello to my new flawless 2TB-music-and-video-filled Evo machine
might as well mount a small tablet-size lcd in the dashboard and play movies through the HDMI and wiring audio to in-car sound

WiMax repeater?
gtkansan said:
I believe he meant to use his wimax connection for tethering and the like. If you dont have a home connection, thats why you need a repeater.
It doesn't make sense to use a microcell (i.e. your home internet) to generate a wimax signal (wimax uses so much more battery that its crazy) instead of just hooking up to wifi to begin with.
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No Wifi where I am. It is just the htc evo and a laptop. The sprint map says I am in the best area I can be in. But my phone calls it "fair" outside and "poor" inside.
I called it a repeater, but you can use words like booster, microcell, amplifer, etc.
What I am looking for is something that is common and off the shelf in the 3G world. Some of the 3G repeaters (use you own word here) are small self contained units with a built in antenna. And some can take a external antenna mounted on the roof and RG6 running to the repeater. They come in all sizes and ranges and cost.
I can find correct antennas for 802.16e (2100 -2700Mhz - same as 2.5 -2.7Ghz), but I can not find any WiMax repeaters/amps/boosters, etc. Is it a legal thing? I would think that this stuff would be available.
Anyway, if any one can point me to a unit I would appreciate it. If you know why none seem to being available, maybe you can fill me in.
Thanks everyone for the good info and feedback.
jack

http://www.now-tel.com/eng/product/sub_01.asp
http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/wimax-repeater.html

I go into work on Friday and will take a picture of our WiMAX repeater. They aren't really designed for residential use.

repeater
aimbdd said:
http://www.now-tel.com/eng/product/sub_01.asp
http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/wimax-repeater.html
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What a huge list. All in China or Korea. I have shot off some emails. I'll report back what I find. I hope they do not make me buy 20 of them. I only need one.
jack

mraroid said:
What a huge list. All in China or Korea. I have shot off some emails. I'll report back what I find. I hope they do not make me buy 20 of them. I only need one.
jack
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Hopefully they can help out.

Sprint Signal Strength

Do you have worse data signal reception (and use) with Sprint vs. Verizon indoors?
More often than not, inside a store or restaurant in an 'excellent coverage' area, Sprint's data network is not usable (connection timeouts) where as surfing on Verizon is no problem.
I suspect a combination of Sprint Rev A and possibly cell density / Sprint using lower signal strength.
I didn't get a lot of response in the top Networking thread, so I thought I would post with fellow Sprint/ Evo 4G users.
other sim thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1501051

Hey,
It all comes down to you get what you pay for, sprint has amazing phones with ok at best service sorry if anyone takes offence but its true. When on big red you are paying a lot but you get good phones and strong service its just how it is sadly. Sometimes I have great data in stores others I dont it just depends on the cell tower and how the building is built, but like I said it just comes down to you get what you pay for!
Stevo

While you would think the signal would be similar, since both Sprint and Verizon are CDMA, it's not.
On sprint, there is a tower less than 2 blocks from my house. Outside I get full bars, but the second I step inside my house, I get knocked down to 1 bar. Using the Verizon PRL, I also get full bars outside, but when I step inside, I only lose one bar, and get 5/6 bars consistently. The same thing happens at a few restaurants around town, sprint gets 0 bars inside, but almost full bars as soon as I step outside, but with verizon, the signal stays the same in and out.

Thanks guys. This is exactly my issue. For some reason, in larger market cities, this is less of a problem.
I wish I could find a technical reason. There seems to be a discrepancy too in the quality of data signal with sprint's own towers.
And I don't buy in to the 'you get what you pay for'. My wife and I pay $1800 a year for 'unlimited everything and the first 4G network with enhanced devices that connect to high speed data'

I hope this isn't out of context but it seemed to be the most relavent thread for my issue.
Typically I haven't had many issues with my Sprint server (I'm in the Denver metro area) however over the last few days every call I get on the end voice is choppy, and eventually will cut out. When monitoring my signal it will jump from 3 or 5 bars to zero and then back up again.
I do have a rooted phone, however the ROM I'm using has the stock kernel and the most up to date radio.
I guess my question is, has anyone experienced any issues like this over the past few days? Is it possible that I'm having a hardware issue and need to un-root my phone and take it to the sprint store?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'm not quite sure how to start the problem solving process. Thanks!

IrideAgro said:
Thanks guys. This is exactly my issue. For some reason, in larger market cities, this is less of a problem.
I wish I could find a technical reason. There seems to be a discrepancy too in the quality of data signal with sprint's own towers.
And I don't buy in to the 'you get what you pay for'. My wife and I pay $1800 a year for 'unlimited everything and the first 4G network with enhanced devices that connect to high speed data'
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Thats a lot for that plan. I use to have and switched to the $70 one due to the fact that I barely call land lines anymore. You might want to look into the other plans to save some money.
Now as far as the signal problem...it really depends on the phone, freq, rom, area and the building. I dont have the problems that you have..in face ppl with vw have that problem around me.

edlokien said:
Thats a lot for that plan. I use to have and switched to the $70 one due to the fact that I barely call land lines anymore. You might want to look into the other plans to save some money.
Now as far as the signal problem...it really depends on the phone, freq, rom, area and the building. I dont have the problems that you have..in face ppl with vw have that problem around me.
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Um, Lets see, Family unlimited plan with two Evos (+$20) - with a discount on the line. Use to be under $130/month, now it is at $146/month. So not sure what you are talking about regarding price.
Regarding your signal response, I was looking for something actually technical and informative.

IrideAgro said:
Um, Lets see, Family unlimited plan with two Evos (+$20) - with a discount on the line. Use to be under $130/month, now it is at $146/month. So not sure what you are talking about regarding price.
Regarding your signal response, I was looking for something actually technical and informative.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sounds about right Iride. We have a family unlimited plan here as well with an Evo and an iPhone 4s and I think we're somewhere in the $160 range with insurance and everything.
On the technical side I've posted a few times in other threads pertaining to the same issue but haven't heard back.
It seems my service is now only sporadic at home, but I can't confirm that fully just yet. I was downtown (Denver) using my phone yesterday and it seemed just fine, however when I returned home any call I made immediately had a sporadic choppy voice. This is strange to me as I've never had bad signal here until now. That's over 2+ years of living in this same apartment.
Maybe this is something on Sprint's end. This may be a silly question, but when calling for tech support, they can't tell if you've rooted your phone or not right? It would only be if you took it in to get serviced without unrooting?
Hope to figure out something soon...

[Q] External antenna experience?

Hi, after a few attempts at searching for info about the external antenna on the nexus, I think I finally found something... has anyone tried this part:
http://www.telcoantennas.com.au/site/patch-lead-samsung-nexus-s
This is by the same company that makes a Galaxy SII patch lead. I've read all the threads about breaking the internal antenna by using an incorrect connector, but a couple of people mentioned towards the end that they tried this brand and it worked perfectly.
I'd like to try this because when I drive through WI I have very poor / no reception, even though I'm driving down the one corridor (I94/I90/I35) that T-Mobile is supposed to completely cover. Most of the time I can't even get enough signal to send a text. Since google maps can't do routing offline I really would like to boost my signal at least up to 2G all the way through the state, and if I got a good enough signal to stream music that would be even better. Also, it seems like I always hit a snow storm when I go through. I'd rather not be stranded w/o signal if something happened.
Hopefully this + a good (5db or greater) car antenna + a second phone back that I can drill a hole in would make the phone usable on road trips...

I think it's a risk of breaking that port. And besides, what kind of antenna are you going to connect? Isn't roaming offered if you were to NEED cell service? Have you tried flashing other radios from josteink's radio dumps collection? Which radio are you on now?

Don't take the risk, just get the Wilson cradle signal booster. And for maps, you can go into settings and download areas to offline cache.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

bodh said:
I think it's a risk of breaking that port. And besides, what kind of antenna are you going to connect? Isn't roaming offered if you were to NEED cell service? Have you tried flashing other radios from josteink's radio dumps collection? Which radio are you on now?
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I'm on T-Mobile pre-paid. They claim they have service but it doesn't come through. I've tried a couple of radios but this has been the case with other phones for the past 5 years. They just don't have much / any service. (T-mobile prepaid shows IA as having 2G service but they don't actually let you connect, even though they own the company that owns the towers).
JPBeard21 said:
Don't take the risk, just get the Wilson cradle signal booster. And for maps, you can go into settings and download areas to offline cache.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
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I already have the official car dock so I'd rather not dispose of that. I can't download maps to cover the whole route - 400 - 500 miles - but even if I'm in an area I have downloaded I thought it needed networking to actually do the routing...

ChrisAshton84 said:
I already have the official car dock so I'd rather not dispose of that. I can't download maps to cover the whole route - 400 - 500 miles - but even if I'm in an area I have downloaded I thought it needed networking to actually do the routing...
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I can understand not wanting another dock. I don't have one so its hard to know what kind of solutions would work. Wilson makes many different adapters, antennas and amplifiers, check them out.
With maps, I believe you can download more area depending on level of zoom and I also think navigation would work as long as you start in a coverage area, been a long time since I used it and lost coverage. Not sure about rerouting abilities without coverage or cached maps. I would try to at least cache the areas you know have little to no service. You may be better with an offline solution such as Tom Tom, Navigon, or one of the many other ones. Keep us posted, interested to see what you come up with.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Sprint Airave 4

So, I just got this device since the signal in my area is pretty crappy and wanted to do something about it. Installed this, after to a few reboots n all, got it to work and I must say it works pretty well. LTE and voice signal reception are extremely improved.
I attached a couple pictures of the device itself. One photo of the signal strength standing directly in front of it, and one as far as I can get while still being in the house, about 30 yards away (1300 sq ft home, 1 floor). And finally a few speedtest results to show...speed lol.
Best thing about it, is this device is free. Just call Sprint and tell them you want one, and as long as you are in an "airave area" you get it free of charge.

The real question is, because it's the Sprint network, can you carry that device with you everywhere you go? In the Pgh area, you'd need to?

tCizler said:
The real question is, because it's the Sprint network, can you carry that device with you everywhere you go? In the Pgh area, you'd need to?
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What is Pgh? And no you can't carry it everywhere because you actually have to connect to a broadband modern/router. Now, a magic box you can take everywhere to intensify your LTE ONLY, but my main issue was voice being s h i t at home, and the Airave improves voice and LTE both.