I went to the Sprint store to have them look at my phone because I get a crappy signal on stock and cm roms. They told me nothing was wrong with my phone. Since the store was empty I tested the signal on the Note 3, Nexus 6, Note 4, One Max, and One M8. The results were:
Note 3 -88 to -93 LTE
all others -110 to -113 LTE
These are the approximate ranges. One difference I noticed is that the Note 3 was the only non-spark phone. The tech suggested that the others needed to be rebooted cause the had been on for a while. He used a screw driver and went through the long process of removing phones from the display so he could reboot them. After all of that the results were the same. This is not exactly a scientific process but all of the phones were in the same spot using the same tower and the SPARK phones were sucking at getting a good LTE signal. Some were switching back and forth between LTE and 3G.
My phone does well when I am close to a tower.
Related
Well, it took me long enough to figure out that the Verizon S4 has its own completely separate set of subforums from the International and AT&T versions.... No wonder I got no responses to my post over there. So, I'm reposting it here:
From yesterday:
My brother and I both got S4s almost 2 weeks ago. He upgraded from an S3. Me from a Rezound. He also has a work phone that is a Verizon Note 2.
We were out at our parents' house over the weekend. Our dad has a RAZR Maxx and a 4G Verizon MiFi for his house. All 5 of these phones/devices are on Verizon.
Both of Dad's devices and my brother's Note 2 were maintaining a steady 4G LTE connection. The Note 2 only showed about 2 bars, but it held it steady and never dropped back to 3G at any time while we were there.
But, both my and my brother's S4s would not hold 4G. We played around with network settings. Changed them from CDMA/LTE to Global, and then back. They would both occasionally switch to 4G for a minute or so, then always switch back to 3G.
I called Verizon tech support and they walked us through things including turning off the phones, pulling the SIMs and letting him push a new PRL to us. Nothing helped, so he told us to go get new SIMs. I did that yesterday and went back out to my dad's and it's still the same. My dad's phone and his MiFi maintain a steady 4G LTE signal and my S4 mostly just stays on 3G.
I also noticed that I went to the movies yesterday and when I was in the theater lobby, which is right in the middle of town, where there is strong 4G signal, my phone had dropped back to 3G there, too.
I'm still within my 14 day return period and I am seriously thinking of returning the S4 and getting a Note 2.
Does anybody have any better suggestions?
*********** then, yesterday ***********
I found a thread on the AC forums where a guy reported the same issue I'm having. He took the SIM out of his Rezound, cut it down, plugged it in, and he said that fixed his 4G reception problem.
I'm going to VZW after work and trying a 3rd SIM. This time, one of the old style, that doesn't support NFC.
*********** then, today ***********
I went to Verizon after work yesterday and got a new non-NFC SIM. Then went back to my dad's house. The SIM does not appear to make any difference. My phone still wanted to switch to 3G and stay there.
But, I did figure out one encouraging thing. I used Battery Monitor Widget to get into the Testing screen. There, I was able to change the phone from "CDMA/LTE (Auto PRL)" to "LTE Only".
After doing that, the phone went into 4G mode and stayed there, and actually worked fine. I turned on my hotspot and connected to it with my tablet and surfed for a while, with no issues.
This tells me that the phone's LTE reception is pretty much just as good as the Note 2 and other devices I mentioned before. It's just a software issue that is switching it to 3G mode when it doesn't need to.
I've had my S4 since VZW released it, and one of my only gripes is that the reception seems to be weaker than almost any other phone. Meaning, it seems to default to the weaker service wherever I am.
It is most obvious at home; on the 3rd floor I get a mix of 3g/4g whereas other phones have solid, constant 4g. The 2nd floor is the same. On the 1st floor I never see 4g, instead it is a mix of 3g and 2g whereas other phones are solid 3g. Sometimes I won't even have data service.
Even when I go out and I am in an area that you might consider a fringe zone it seems my S4 will default to the "lesser" service. And it also seems to take longer to switch up to the "higher" service when moving; for example where all phones will have 1x and then moved to an area where all phones will have either 3g or 4g, my S4 will be the last to switch up, if at all.
Has anyone else noticed this?
Gulanowski said:
I've had my S4 since VZW released it, and one of my only gripes is that the reception seems to be weaker than almost any other phone. Meaning, it seems to default to the weaker service wherever I am.
It is most obvious at home; on the 3rd floor I get a mix of 3g/4g whereas other phones have solid, constant 4g. The 2nd floor is the same. On the 1st floor I never see 4g, instead it is a mix of 3g and 2g whereas other phones are solid 3g. Sometimes I won't even have data service.
Even when I go out and I am in an area that you might consider a fringe zone it seems my S4 will default to the "lesser" service. And it also seems to take longer to switch up to the "higher" service when moving; for example where all phones will have 1x and then moved to an area where all phones will have either 3g or 4g, my S4 will be the last to switch up, if at all.
Has anyone else noticed this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm noticing the EXACT same issues! My other phones (DNA,Rezound,iPhone5,etc) have been much better for both signal and switching.
This is a typical speedtest where i work with S4 vs my One.
As we know from my other thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2451516 the S4 is a complete and total joke when it comes to voice recognition so I swapped it out for the One. The only problem I have with the One as the voice recognition is second to none, is the data speed. Some days it decides it's not going to pick up an LTE signal under any circumstances and some days it does but it seems that the download speed appears to bleed off to almost nothing as seen in this pic. No programs are running at the time I did the speedtest here and both phones ran their speed test separately.
Something is not right.
I'm not having that trouble with my One. I'd take it back and get another. My LTE is usually around 20Mbps and I've had it as high as 37Mbps.
Something is wrong with your phone. While I wish T-mobile had better coverage, when I am in a good area I am getting fantastic speeds on my One.
Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 4
While I don't have two tmo LTE phones, I did switch from straight talk and my tmo LTE is horribly inconsistent while the ATT LTE signal on the same phone is solid wherever I had reception. It also has a weird issue with speed test in particular where it keeps routing me to a server in Denver or Albuquerque even though the location services work fine.
Tmo hspa isn't great in my area but still more consistent by far. I may just switch back to straight talk even with the cap as I have zero issues on ATTs LTE network and don't stream anything other than music. The phone is by far my favorite, even compared to my friend's N4 (the camera and screen spoil you, and I can't see feeling the need to upgrade for a few years now that I have a camera I'm satisfied with)
edit: t-mo LTE is -103 inside or out, ATT LTE is -88 with excellent and consistent speed (ping is a bit higher at 240 as prepaid often is, but that's fine for everything I do). And it's certainly not an issue of grip, as I actually get better ATT LTE while holding it than setting the phone down
Hello,
I'm new to this thread as I've been a HTC user forever.
I just got my first of many N3's last week and it seems that I have very low signal in a lot of places where I typically get strong signal.
For example on my HTC Evo 4G LTE I always get 5 bars and there was rarely any dropped calls at my home and office.
On the N3 I now typically only have 1-3 bars.
I'm sure its NOT a SPRINT network issue but a phone issue. Does any one else experience this issue? Is there a fix to get better signal?
Here is what I did with the sprint and verizon N3.
Sprint:
Purchased at Best Buy and had low signal issue and returned it.
Purchased at Sprint Store had low signal issue and I still have this phone.
Verizon:
Purchased at Verizon store and had low signal issue . They suggested exchanging the SIM card which I did but didnt change the signal strength.
Exchanged it for a different N3 and still had the same issue so I've returned it.
djscissorhands said:
Hello,
I'm new to this thread as I've been a HTC user forever.
I just got my first of many N3's last week and it seems that I have very low signal in a lot of places where I typically get strong signal.
For example on my HTC Evo 4G LTE I always get 5 bars and there was rarely any dropped calls at my home and office.
On the N3 I now typically only have 1-3 bars.
I'm sure its NOT a SPRINT network issue but a phone issue. Does any one else experience this issue? Is there a fix to get better signal?
Here is what I did with the sprint and verizon N3.
Sprint:
Purchased at Best Buy and had low signal issue and returned it.
Purchased at Sprint Store had low signal issue and I still have this phone.
Verizon:
Purchased at Verizon store and had low signal issue . They suggested exchanging the SIM card which I did but didnt change the signal strength.
Exchanged it for a different N3 and still had the same issue so I've returned it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is it actual signal strength your concerned about or is it bar strength in the notification area? Also you can't compare verizon to sprint signal as a fair comparison as they will be different in different areas. Go into your settings and look at the actual signal strength of both phones. They will be measured in dbm.
i'm concerned with the amount of bars in the notification area which has a direct correlation to the amount of dbm in the settings. the sprint phone fluctuates between -91 dbm and -100 dbm.
I was testing a theory that the lte radio had something to do with it so I just went into settings/mobile network/perferred network mode and switched from "LTE/CDMA" to "CDMA" and the phone rebooted and wham , now i have 5 bars and -69 dbm. Something with the lte is messing with the phone. WTH!!!
That means to get a good signal i have to be in CDMA and only get 3g service. Why is this?
I'm out have no explanation. I have/had that problem too, people at the sprint store tells me its a issue of where the software in the phone isn't recognizing the lte the way it should and that a software fix is coming but no one know when. I was dropping so many calls (89% of them per sprint) on the stock rom I was ready to go back to my note 2, but after flashing a different rom I have only dropped one call since rooting and switching roms .
Bump
Sent from my SM-N900P using xda app-developers app
I don't know if LTE functions on the same frequency as 3g. As a rule from amateur radio, the higher the frequency the transmitter operates on, the shorter distance it travels. 800mhz usually has better penetration of buildings than 3g or 4g if they are on the 1.2ghz+ range. You will need more towers closer together to get better signal overall in the GHz range. Because of cost, I don't think anyone is going to put up more towers in the beginning. Years ago, the guesstimate of putting up a single tower was a million dollars. This is accounting for all costs to go from nothing to a fully functional self standing tower. Costs might be different now but I would say that it's safe to assume that they are putting LTE on existing towers. This is why LTE signal doesn't seem as far reaching as lower frequency technologies. This is as simple of an explanation as I can think of. Until they start widespread rolling out LTE on nextel's 800-900mhz range, and they release phones that take advantage of those bands, you're just going to have to deal with it with what you have as a phone. Spark and ex-nextel LTE transmitters "should" help throughput tremendously once they have the bugs ironed out.
My girlfriend went up to Coloma-ish, Michigan this past weekend. Like always, my T889 Note 2 on T-Mobile stayed on E and G, only picking up 4g and LTE when we went into a large town.
This time I also brought my AM2 with my tablet sim in it. That picked a usable LTE signal very often while the Note was on E. I didn't check to see which band it was on and it seemed to drop LTE after a while, but it was still nice to see and gives me a little more hope about going voip only on it or my LTE Nexus 7 (that decision will likely boil down to slightly smaller with vibration and backup 911 capabilities vs. better device).