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I'm risking starting up another signal strength thread, but I figured this info was useful for anyone looking to return their Evo 3D or any other phone in Massachusetts.
I finally decided I had better try swapping out my Evo 3D at Best Buy in case there was something wrong with the radio. Reception in Eastern Massachusetts has been horrible with it. Far worse than my Moment or my wife's Epic.
When I tried to swap the phone out, they told me I owed $22 in taxes. Turns out that July 1st, Massachusetts taxes you on the full $699 and not the price you pay. So if you bought on the 24th and replace in store after July 1st, there is nothing Best Buy can do to avoid the tax.
I decided to switch back to the original phone because after loading a signal dbm widget onto both phones and the reps' personal evo 3d, they all had similarly crappy signals.
A few questions though:
1) It doesn't seem like signal is always bad. Just much more prone to dropping out. Anyone else experienced this?
2) Is it possible that the case is killing the signal? I have the platinum series case from best buy which looks slick but if it's killing the signal I'll get rid of it.
3) I noticed that bluetooth seems to have a significant negative effect on the dbm of the phone signal. Is this normal for a phone, bad design, bad luck or chance?
4) I struggle to get 4G to stay connected in Boston. It loses the connection then goes into 4G! mode and refuses to connect for more than a few seconds. Is this normal?
5) To what extent can HTC improve signal performance by software updates? Samsung was able to do this for the Moment, but they were starting with a lemon of a phone to begin with...
Anyway, bad signal or not, if you are messing around with phones in Massachusetts, be sure to sneak over the border to New Hampshire before returning it or you'll piss away $20+.
I'm having signal issues too gets really annoying esp with 4g hope its just a bug that can be fixed
I am in the worcester area and my signal is terrible everywhere I go. With my 4g it was fine, 3d absolutely sucks. I am on my second phone now and both have been horrible. I have been in the city where I used to have great signal but get nothing now. I also had no signal on the mass pike in auburn and was roaming.
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I noticed today, after changing the roaming mode from automatic to sprint only, that I was dropping in and out of service every few minutes. This had never happened previously as I always have a consistent signal in this area both with the Evo3D as well as the Evo4G. I am hoping a radio update will fix this...
I'll try it this week when I am in New York City and see if it improves. Maybe it just isn't using all the towers in this area or something.
I had the same exact problem with mine but then i loaded a custom prl (00001) and now it's rock solid signal and i haven't roamed yet. Highly recommend by me.
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Hope & change at work!
davec1234 said:
Hope & change at work!
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The economy may be in the crapper but the .gov has to get it's chips.
I'm in the Lawrence/lowell area, reception isn't that bad. Thanx for the heads up in that tax law, didn't know about that. ****ed up is what it is.
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codee said:
I had the same exact problem with mine but then i loaded a custom prl (00001) and now it's rock solid signal and i haven't roamed yet. Highly recommend by me.
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OMG, with that prl you are roaming all the time.
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Well i have really good signal strength in s.fla...i will see wen i visit my fam around Boston to see...but ive always had good reception so maybe its just your area
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Of course MA lawmakers passed the revised taxes bill. They had to find a way to hike their pay and they figured some weird tax would fill the void.
Yeah, I live in Beverly, Ma and my 3g has been total $hit lately.... +/- 1/2 meg down..... I usually leave it on WiFi @ home....
Sent from my 3VO
Even with full bars my signal would cut out and roam come back and do it again
dmora01 said:
OMG, with that prl you are roaming all the time.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk
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My phone doesn't show roaming and it still locks onto my airave... I'll check my sprint.com acct to be sure though.
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I get pretty good service its just happens that everytime I hold my phone in landscape mode the signal drops. When I go back to portrait I get full bars. Anybody else experiencing this
My ''xDU4L C0R3 SH00T3Rx'' shot you down in 3D!
I live Cape Cod, and drive all over MA and RI, and my signal and 3G is horrible. I exchanged mine for a new one and no change in service. My old Evo 4G got 120 to 140 kbs and this one gets 22 to 70, occasionally 94... Something is wrong with the phone, not the service... I may just buy another Evo 4G from eBay since I gave mine to my nephew, and keep this phone until they find a fix...
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Framingham
I'm in Framingham right now, getting 2 bars on the 4g meter. Speedtest shows 7617 down and 1435 up.
3G sucks for me too. It's not quite 'deal breaker' material, but combined with some other pet peeves of mine I'm leaning towards bringing it back and waiting for the SGS2....cuz if I'm going to have a **** radio I might as well have an unlocked bootloader and CM8 guaranteed.
Well here in Wisconsin I've been getting pretty consistent signals and 3g. But about 2 hours ago everything failed. Haven't had 3g since and I either have 0 bars or I'm roaming, usually with still only a bar or two. Can somebody think of a cause for this because I'm out of ideas.
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Anyone ever have this issue? The minute I step into my house I start roaming and my text messages get delayed by a few hours. As soon as I walk outside everything is kosher. Frustrating!
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I personally believe this will be resolved in a radio update later on down the road . I to have noticed I can stand in my driveway and get almost full signal yet step into my house and drop to nearly 2 or 3 bars of signal strength . Even at work I step into my office and occassionally jump to roaming from time to time . The most recent PRL update (21080) had a somewhat good impact on my signal when it was released . Its probably best to wait for a radio update to come down the line , I suspect that will be soon .
Scratch this. Found the fix being an airave device.
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SouthernEvo said:
I personally believe this will be resolved in a radio update later on down the road . I to have noticed I can stand in my driveway and get almost full signal yet step into my house and drop to nearly 2 or 3 bars of signal strength . Even at work I step into my office and occassionally jump to roaming from time to time . The most recent PRL update (21080) had a somewhat good impact on my signal when it was released . Its probably best to wait for a radio update to come down the line , I suspect that will be soon .
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I really hope so. I live in the touristy part of orlando florida, and I spend more time roaming than anything.
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I know a co-worker of mine has this problem, however I get excellent reception even in the most remote areas. I only have bad reception in my break room at work (go figure).
Anyway, I heard by reading these forums that if you call Sprint and complain to them about the roaming problem they will give you a free Airave which should help with your problem.
Racer Of All said:
I know a co-worker of mine has this problem, however I get excellent reception even in the most remote areas. I only have bad reception in my break room at work (go figure).
Anyway, I heard by reading these forums that if you call Sprint and complain to them about the roaming problem they will give you a free Airave which should help with your problem.
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Yeah just saw that. Appreciate the help. Only been with sprint going on three weeks now.
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Airave aside, the loss of signal is likely caused by the material your house is built with. Stuco houses have chicken wire wrapped around them, which acts like a faraday cage. The same is true with houses built with metal studs, metal siding, metal roofs, etc. Masonry (brick, stone, cinder block) also decreases the signal drastically. Concrete homes (like ICF) amplify the issue with both the concrete blocking signal and the rebar acting as a faraday.
Night·Fire said:
Airave aside, the loss of signal is likely caused by the material your house is built with. Stuco houses have chicken wire wrapped around them, which acts like a faraday cage. The same is true with houses built with metal studs, metal siding, metal roofs, etc. Masonry (brick, stone, cinder block) also decreases the signal drastically. Concrete homes (like ICF) amplify the issue with both the concrete blocking signal and the rebar acting as a faraday.
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Good to know. It is a stucco house.
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PRL 00001 will help you also...
yep, 00001 prl has solved my 3g signal issues........before my signal in the house was 10%, not it's 60% according to Elixir app......and 5 bars.
I was one of the lucky ones that got vastly improved 3g a week ago. Now, not so much. Speeds are back to the way it used to be... I hope it only means they're still working on things here south of Chicago. Except, 4g speeds are suffering now too. 1mbps for 3g has gone down to 200kbps and 10mbps 4g is now 1mbps.
I too was experiencing extremely too good to be true speeds of about 1500-1800kbps here in upstate NY, and as of late i hang around 150kbps the way its been for the last 9 months. I am also constantly jumping from 3g, 1x to no data what so ever. I hope that just means they are still fixing the issue...
My slight speed increase went away as soon as the evening came and they were back to normal which is unuseable
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Mine did too from 2.7mps to 1.5 mps grr
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U guys sure ur checking ur speeds at the same time of day as you did before? That makes all the difference btw
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Yeah, I've actually checked a few times throughout different times of the days. And I've also gotten 1x in areas i normally don't but with full bars of service. I really didn't notice the difference until today though with the exception of the random 1x service.
Still have improved speeds after the *mystery update* here.
Strange, i've been getting frequent 1x switchovers in houston texas.. I was peaking at 2.2 mbps on 3g
Here near Houston I am having wacky 3g speeds.. Blazing one moment and crawling the next.. Consistent 3g though.
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Maybe they rolled it out to test its work load capacity for data gathering, then reverted back for further analysis? Just a guess. I do envy you guys though. Still get 96 down in these woods.
Maybe someone unplugged their airrave lol
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david914 said:
I too was experiencing extremely too good to be true speeds of about 1500-1800kbps here in upstate NY, and as of late i hang around 150kbps the way its been for the last 9 months. I am also constantly jumping from 3g, 1x to no data what so ever. I hope that just means they are still fixing the issue...
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I'm in upstate too, it's absolutly insane how much it's been jumping around lately. In Johnstown/Amsterdam area it's not too bad, but out in Schenectady/Rotterdam area it's all over the place, one minute I'm getting almost 2mb's then BAM 2kb/sec(no joke I had a speedtest come up as that).
Drewmungus said:
I'm in upstate too, it's absolutly insane how much it's been jumping around lately. In Johnstown/Amsterdam area it's not too bad, but out in Schenectady/Rotterdam area it's all over the place, one minute I'm getting almost 2mb's then BAM 2kb/sec(no joke I had a speedtest come up as that).
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i am much further south than u r, but maybe there is some hope, about a week ago i thought things were "fixed" i cant take this any more.
How do we know if our phones have updated without us knowing it. Is it a software version or something we can check?
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Improved speeds went away for me too as far as I can tell. One thing I've noticed is 1x in areas I've never had issues in and its not just my phone either. My girlfriend's evo 4g shift (bone stock, still unrooted) is doing the same in the same areas.
4G perfect, standing still it drops to 1x then back to 3g and then eventually to 4g. The strange part is while this happens I have full signal.
So far this has happened in downtown Orlando, FL and over in Conway area (for you other Orlando XDA ppl)
It happens more indoors at my house (until the update, never hit 1x at my house) when signal goes down to 2-3 bars over the past 24hrs. It happened a lot Friday out in the open in an error that I've never dropped below 3G (and even then, very rarely).
Anyone else noticing this in the Orlando area? Sprint says there are no known network issues.
Is it just me or is anybody else having a problem with weak wifi signal on their phones? I know its not my router or connection because on my g note i always had at least 3 bars and speed test always gave me a constant speed of 10-11mbps. But now on my tmobile s3 i barely have a wifi signal shows 1 bar , and my wifi calling even says you are almost out of coverage area. And speed test is only giving me 2-4 mbps??
Anybody else also expirencing this? Any fixes, do you think there is something wrong with my phone, should i pay the restocking fee and return it?
Mine is actually better than gnote i had on att. My wife's gs3, she said wifi speed is faster on gs3 than her previous s2 skyrocket. We are VERY pleased by these awesome phones.
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Same here. Although the speed is amazingly fast, the signal reception is worse than that of my iPhone and iPad. Is there a fix to this? Other than that, this device is exceptional.
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I get good speeds on anything like loading videos and Web pages but when I check the forum it takes is lovely time to open
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Looks good on mine so far. Speedtests gave me 30M on my 50M connection
Well I just rooted my s3 and reset and re connected my wifi. Seems to be doing much better I now get at least 2bars sometimes three and speed test is showing 6-7mbps which is better.
But dang 20mbps you guys have some fast wifi. I'm jealous
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Mine seems fine compared to my other devices (ipad 3, SGSII, iphone4) but I am also rooted not sure if that affects it somehow or not. But no complaints here on signal strength or speed
circuit.007 said:
Is it just me or is anybody else having a problem with weak wifi signal on their phones? I know its not my router or connection because on my g note i always had at least 3 bars and speed test always gave me a constant speed of 10-11mbps. But now on my tmobile s3 i barely have a wifi signal shows 1 bar , and my wifi calling even says you are almost out of coverage area. And speed test is only giving me 2-4 mbps??
Anybody else also expirencing this? Any fixes, do you think there is something wrong with my phone, should i pay the restocking fee and return it?
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The wifi signal isn't so bad that I'd call it weak(my Transformer Prime is WEAK), but it's not so great. Depending on what phone you were using before the gs3, it may seem weak though. I use different devices alot, and the gs3 is not the best or worst when it comes to wifi. The gs2 has great wifi, the Galaxy note soes too. The prime is terrible, and the gs3 is probably slightly better than the sensation in my opinion. I'm upstairs with the router downstairs, and I get 10mbps, but right in front of the router I get 30+. I've also noticed that it can depend on how I'm holding the phone. It never knocks the signal out, but it does weaken it when I'm using it in landscape. Maybe you could move your router to more central location?
resolved
Just curious how reception is for others. As you can see in the pic, I'm in a good area, but it drops constantly. It will show, 6 bars, then drop to none, then 2, then none, then 6 and so on. Even sitting next to my airwaves it does this. A friend of mine has the same issues on his s3. Either we have 2 defective phones or sprint sucks. This phone is great but not sure what's up with my reception. It goes into roaming in town near my sprint store.
I'm on sprint running a un-rooted stock rom.
Note this is at the same location for this pic and notice how it goes from green to brown to none. Fluctuates way to much for me being at work in the same spot
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Does call quality or data speed drop too? I read somewhere that the S3 bar indicator scales differently and can not be compared side by side with a different model phone.
Yes really hope you do not have a defective phone and maybe this is a T-Mobile issue.. I live in a very rural area and my Verizon tower is 20 miles away, let's hope this is not the tip of the iceberg on reception for the G3.
So no one has bad reception with this phone? Guess I'll be getting rid of this phone
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phyba said:
So no one has bad reception with this phone? Guess I'll be getting rid of this phone
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Is it dropping calls, or data, or are you just overreacting to a few miscolored bars? I mean, certain spots are going to go into roaming; Sprint isn't everywhere. Does another phone go into roaming at the same spot?
Mine seems to lose signal pretty often. It'll go from full strength or a few bars to the no signal circle with a line through it. Haven't been able to pinpoint why yet.
I will say this signal is not as strong as my iPhone 4s (ATT). I was downtown last night in a Bar. I normally text while I am in there, I could not text last night on my SIII, I get no signal inside. On my iPhone i always could text. Sucks when I'm trying to have girls meet me...
That looks like every Sprint phone I've ever had, to be honest. Mine always do that and I have no idea why. lol
It will roam at the sprint store. Sprint reps can't explain it and I get the "we have never seen this issue before" speech. But I'm going to swap it out. The screen is yellow anyways.
I also roam at home with an airwave. Never had that issue with my evo 3d or photon.
The antenna on this phone can't be that bad can they? I know Sammy has a reputation for horrible reception.
And it does drop calls and texts will have to be resent
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I manage to roam at least 5 times a day. On my moment (SPH M900) Ive barely ever roamed. Also texts seem to fail at sending quite a bit.
phyba said:
Just curious how reception is for others. As you can see in the pic, I'm in a good area, but it drops constantly. It will show, 6 bars, then drop to none, then 2, then none, then 6 and so on. Even sitting next to my airwaves it does this. A friend of mine has the same issues on his s3. Either we have 2 defective phones or sprint sucks. This phone is great but not sure what's up with my reception. It goes into roaming in town near my sprint store.
I'm on sprint running a un-rooted stock rom.
Note this is at the same location for this pic and notice how it goes from green to brown to none. Fluctuates way to much for me being at work in the same spot
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Sprint sucks ....
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My ATT S3 connects just fine! Some buildings it doesn't like but thats pretty normal. Over all its MUCH better than my old Sprint service. 5-7meg down with HSPA+!
Just got my phone today (att) and signal levels seem low when I look a the status bar. for both wifi and 4g. How do you display that screen from OP? I can't seem to find it.
psloan said:
Just got my phone today (att) and signal levels seem low when I look a the status bar. for both wifi and 4g. How do you display that screen from OP? I can't seem to find it.
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It'd under battery setting. Then tap on the graph at the top. It will bring up that screen
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mine is also horrible , just wait for sprints 4g lte
Same thing happens for me, the phone will drop the signal even when I'm on WiFi, never had this problem with the lte.
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to look at your reception status, simply go to "battery" and then hit the "cell standby" bar in the list of battery usage
with Time on of 8h 37m 26s, time without signal is 26%
Mine is about 3-4 dbm lower than my Thunderbolt I have for work, but it displays 1 or 2 less "bars".
Sprint no-charge roaming
This won't fix your connectivity issues, but
In conversation with a Corporate Sprint Rep today, billing dept, I was informed that Sprint doesn't charge for roaming
in the domestic US. I didn't know this.
If phone goes into roaming, perhaps this lightens the impact?
I think this may have something to do with the antenna being on the bottom of the phone where your palm rests. Atleast thats how it is on my Tmo. If I hold the phone just on the top half or not holding it at all then I get more bars and more consistent. Soon as I hold it in particular with my left hand is when I lose signal bars. This only happens in an area where I'm only getting 2 bars.
I also had a sprint s3 (not active now) but never really checked the signal bar since I never lost connection.