Hey, I have an USA T-Mobile Vibrant.
It is rooted and running the Vibrant edition of Darky's 9.3 Final ROM.
I am also using the latest overstock kernal and the honeycomb 2.0 theme from the I9000 forums.
Enough background info. This isn't really a problem as much as my curiosity.
My phone almost constantly is switching back and forth between 3G (UMTS) and H (HSDPA) on my data connection.
It doesn't seem to affect battery life or service too much (though H might be faster), so I'm not worried; but does anyone know what the deal is with this?
Thanks ahead of time!!!
Sent from my Vibrant using XDA App
Mine has been doing this lately as well. It's only been happening since I installed my current ROM (Trigger 2.7).
Noticed this just now as well...might have something to do with the mods to show H or 3G.
I wonder if it has anything to do with signal strength. I know that shouldn't make a difference but I can't think of any other reason.
Sdobron said:
Noticed this just now as well...might have something to do with the mods to show H or 3G.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would agree, but I went to my settings/ phone info/ signal page and the reason it was changing was because it was physically switching between UMTS and HSDPA.
Why? I have no idea.
I do live in a T-Mobile 4G enabled area, though I am not on their so called "4G plan".
I did notice that it did not have this switching problem on Bionix Frost-u2.
So, if anyone has some insight, please help us all understand
CrazyCharlie said:
I wonder if it has anything to do with signal strength. I know that shouldn't make a difference but I can't think of any other reason.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was just watching my signal strength change and it doesn't seemed tied to the change from 3G to H.
For example, it would be around 67dBm and be on UMTS. Raise to up to around 75dBm and be on UMTS. Then it would switch to HSDPA and still be at 75dBm or sometimes lower down to 69-72dBm and still be on HSDPA.
So with that type of cross-over stats, I would be skeptical of that solution.
HSDPA is a temporary data link. If it was on continously the phone would have very poor battery life.
When network server has a data packet for your phone it 'pages' up your HSDPA capability. Your phone can also request HSPA to initiate a data transmission.
The HSPA paging process is similar to receiving and initiating a voice call.
If no more packets have qued at their server or received from your phone after some period of time it will revert to normal 3G battery saver cycling. It has to be re-paged up to reinitiate HSPA data link. The wake up HSPA function does add some initial delay.
So is there a way to force it to stay on HSPA while tethered, for example? (Or always)
Hey, so today I was riding the train back from work and its kind of insane on the signal part for the phone because it jumps through thousands of towers and internet is really crappy on my train line. Funny thing is I lost HSDPA signal and when I got off the train to an area I know I have reception in and got home it was still "stuck" with the upload arrow green, and refused to load pages. I turned it on and off (data connection) and it got back to normal. Shouldn't it do that automatically? is that a known bug or do I have a falty device? its brand new and this is the second time it has ever happened to me with it...
yes, it should go back automatically but since it was trying to hop so many towers it may have gotten confused and freezes. just reset it.
If it happens continuously then it maybe a issue but if happens the odd time I would not worry about.
Well it didn't happen until now and I've had the phone for over a week. Talked to a rep and she "refreshed" my connection and connected me to a different APN. I have also disabled "fast dormancy" (FD) which is an option that causes the phone to "pause" connections when nothing uses them which is only available on GS2 and some carriers don't support. My carrier doesn't. My thought is that this causes the device to keep its data connection dormant after trying to awake it. The upload arrow stays on implying that the phone is waiting for a response from the network which doesnt happen since it doesnt support FD which causes the connection to freeze. Reseting the connection fixes this. In any case, I've read in this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1132399 that the problem is solved by doing these two actions - changing APNs and disabling FD. If anyone else has an insight on this I'd love to hear it. I'll report here with tommorow's upcome.
Im sitting here fiddling with my vibrant and I notice that whenever I have a low cell signal, my status bar indicates "H" (3.5g/4g?) and whenever I have a good cell signal, three or more bars, it throttles down to "E" (2g?), and the connection is slow as molasses...I have an unlimited data plan with family that allows for 2gb of "high speed" data before it throttles, but ive barely used only ~200mb of it in the past few weeks, mostly just listening to music on Slacker or Pandora occasionally. I noticed this at first when using Slacker while on the road; it would slow down and buffer very often when the data signal status was on "E", so I decided to do a bit of research...is this normal that im throttling down to Edge when I get a good cell signal?
If it helps any, im running ICS Passion v12 (went back from v13 because I lost headset button functionality)
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated
edit - just to update, I did abit more research that lead me to the t-mo coverage check site thing, and it looks like the area I live in has spots where theres only 2g coverage (conveniently, theyre right in my neighborhood). I also did some driving around today and noticed 4g speeds were working fine in some areas when I had a good cell signal, so I guess that's that.
Ever since I've transferred to AT&T I've had laggy data issues. I finally rooted/flashed to AOKP, and while trying to address the issues of no APNs appearing or saving and no signal status in the status bar, I've come to find both AT&T and T-Mobile as Available Networks under some network setting. Am I chasing ghosts here, or is there something actually up?
EDIT: So I really need help troubleshooting the issue. I'll logcat, dump, or whatever necessary. I've been in many cities/areas and this problem persists: if I haven't used data or the phone hasn't been backgrounding traffic, it'll take anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds before a connection is made when I try to access an internet-related function on my phone (even though 3G/H is displayed in the status bar). Out of shear frustration (this has been happening since I got the phone, under stock ROMs and now under AOKP), I tried messing with *#*#info#*#*. I changed WCDMA-preferred to WCDMA-only -- no improvement. Oddly, I also tried GSM-only. Well, great improvement! Even though I only have E, there is absolutely no latency in waiting for a connection -- so pages and other data end up loading faster on Edge than 3G !
I have absolutely no idea why my phone takes forever to make a connection. Under 3G, I see only but a few upstream network activity blips (even under full bars) for as much as 30 seconds, before there is any downstream activity (and when it comes, it comes). Can anyone help???
P.S.: I'm going to try using a friend's SIM later for comparison.
joebobjoe said:
Ever since I've transferred to AT&T I've had laggy data issues. I finally rooted/flashed to AOKP, and while trying to address the issues of no APNs appearing or saving and no signal status in the status bar, I've come to find both AT&T and T-Mobile as Available Networks under some network setting. Am I chasing ghosts here, or is there something actually up?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Because they both share the 1900MHz band I believe.
Red5 said:
Because they both share the 1900MHz band I believe.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd like to know if it shows up for anyone else?
joebobjoe said:
I'd like to know if it shows up for anyone else?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On AOKP it does for me too. Just ignore it.
Red5 said:
On AOKP it does for me too. Just ignore it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
An aside: does your phone stay on 3G and switch to H only under moderate network traffic?
joebobjoe said:
An aside: does your phone stay on 3G and switch to H only under moderate network traffic?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The phone displays 3G because thats what it is... then when data is being processed, it shows H because its using the "what AT&T calls 4G but its really HSPA" side of the network. For just standby time with no data, its going to show 3G because HSDPA is traffic, not standby.
Red5 said:
The phone displays 3G because thats what it is... then when data is being processed, it shows H because its using the "what AT&T calls 4G but its really HSPA" side of the network. For just standby time with no data, its going to show 3G because HSDPA is traffic, not standby.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well that's strange. I'm used to phones displaying what network-level they are capable of. So why would it not just display H for HSPA+ when HSPA+ service is available, instead of only displaying under traffic.
I'm going to go ahead an edit this thread to help troubleshoot what I think to be the main issue.
After some trials I see that the network indicator switches back and forth between 3G and H a few tines before making the connection and transmitting data. Hmmm...
Basically, "4G" will eat your battery alive so the phone idles at 3G and jumps to H+ only when you use data. If you were on a "stock" ATT rom it would always read H+, but this is technically false since when its idle the phone sits in 3G. CM9 and AOKP accurately display it which is why you see the switch.
Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk
I have a HTC Amaze for a phone and the Galaxy S2 is my media player. Sometimes, when I don't feel like carrying around two devices, I put my T-Mobile SIM in the galaxy and use it as my phone. I must say, Edge is not as slow as I remember it being. Maybe speed is contingent on network traffic. If thats the case, instead of using crowded "faux G" networks, I may defer to Edge to save battery life and get good dl/ul rates.
My phone does the same thing. I noticed it sometime ago. When idle 3g. Internet I get H+. This is with both Shostock2 and Phone Bricker. I was curious to know too but just blew it off because it really doesnt make any difference to me as long as Im getting decent speeds. Im not even with ATT anymore. Went with Straight Talk. Which uses ATT towers. Cant beat the price!!
They don't have the correct apns, but that symbol problem is because the phone doesn't use hspa+ passively, only actively. It causes some lag when downloading, but it is faster fit large data. But your problem is due to a supposed imei range with bad modems. Rehash stick, fix the triangle, and return it.
Sent from my GT-I777 using xda premium
When I manually switch between 3g and 2g it drops the signal completely. When i go from lte to 3g it doesn't drop the connection or give me any errors.
This drop is enough that when I'm in a building i almost always have to have 2g forced. If i have 3g and someone calls i usually drop to 2g, but doing so causes the call to drop instead of handing it off.
I've tried to google it and I've seen this a few other times but I've never seen a clear reason why? Does anyone experience this or know a solution? It's done it on different phones over the last few years. All android too.
Someone must know something. I'm on t mobile in central Florida if that helps