Database Users

LA 3G coverage [COOKS/MODS/ROMS PLEASE HELP]

KNOW THIS IS LONG BUT IT IS INTERESTING! JUST GET THROUGH IT!
ON 6 July 2007 I posted:
[I was driving home from work on Vanowen St from North Hollywood, an area which has had 3G coverage for quite a while, while watching some free MobiTV in the LA traffic. My eyes widened with excitement when the phone (running BLACK MAGIC LE) showed full HSDPA reception as a crossed Lindley Ave, then Reseda, then Tampa, and all the way to my place on Winnetka where the HSDPA was still on but at 2-3 bars of reception. HOWEVER, to my great dismay, as soon as I ended the data call, the same ol' "E" was right back up there... forcing WCDMA + going back to where I was apparently getting full 3G reception failed to pick up UMTS... Now, given what little knowledge I have + some educated guessing, I suspect one of the following scenarios as being the culprit of this disgusting event:
A. There could have simply been a glitch in the phone, where it showed the H and 3G symbols instead of the E; HOWEVER, the streaming video on MobiTV was significantly better than anything i've seen on EDGE. Maybe some caching may be responsible for this?
B. Newly activated UMTS towers were able to register my phone when it attempted to continue an existing HSDPA data call, but have yet to be instructed to register idle phones looking for signals.]
Today, after repeating the same process while using speed tests to verify HSDPA speeds, I contacted AT&T and again, luckily, got to someone who knew his sht. He went ahead and listed some UMTS tower locations in my area and along my route home from work (Vanowen St) but stated that the towers were set for PUBLIC activation on 2 August 2007. So theres it is, the official launch date for 3G accross the whole SFV is 8/2/07. NOW, as for me being able to connect to these "unactivated towers": the tech agreed with my theory that while the towers fail to register my phone from a reset and kick it off upon data disconnection, they ARE OBVIOUSLY ACTIVE because I am able to connect to them, but only when entering their range while on an ACTIVE HSDPA connection. So here are my questions for the COOKS/MODS/PROS:
1. Are you aware of what method these towers may be using to screen phones for "testing purposes" (IMEI maybe?)?
2. Is there any way to trick the tower into registering my phone without having to drive to an "active" 3G zone and back?
ANY FEEDBACK WILL REALLY BE APPRECIATED!!!

Thanks very much for the ifo. I have no idea how you connected to HSDPA before it was actually released? Was it that much faster than UMTS?

4G and WiFi Not Compatible?

I had been having problems getting 4G at home and just noticed that if I turn off WiFi, 4G pops right up and as soon as I re-enable WiFi (which connects to my home network) 4G disconnects. Has anyone seen this behavior? When you think about it, it makes perfect sense, and since both are enabled to connect when the other one isn't, the flip-flop is automatic. But it surprised me.

its probably because sprints 4G is based on WIFI. or it just cuts off 4G cus you dont need it anymore

I believe it works the same way as WiFi and EVDO works on older phones. When you turn on WiFi it will use that as your data connection instead of EVDO regardless if it is a crappy WiFi connection.
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Sent via the Sprint HTC EVO

Yeah, it's actually pretty cool, but if you don't know about it, it gets frustrating. I called Sprint customer service and he had me go through the battery out/in routine and go outside and try, etc. So maybe they don't know about it either!
But it makes sense for Sprint, since their data plan is unlimited and they want to avoid network overloading (are you listening AT&T? LOL). The only thing you miss on WiFi are location-based sevices that rely on GPS (navigation, some weather products, etc.).

dkdontforget said:
its probably because sprints 4G is based on WIFI. or it just cuts off 4G cus you dont need it anymore
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WiFi and 802.16e aren't all that similar. LOTS of differences between the protocols.
Maybe there's some isolation problems on your device as Sprint is using their 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings for their 4G network.

4g network and 3g network both will shut off when enabling wifi. Why have 2 forms of data going at the same time? Its not gunna use both to double your speeds.
You wont lose any GPS features. Turn on wifi and load up Google Maps, it will find your location exact.
When making calls and sending text it uses 1x so you will still receive everything except for MMS. Maybe they fixed it to where you can receive them even when on wifi with the Evo, not 100% sure.

4g and WiFi are both data only connections. You don't need two data connections simultaneously so it is smart enough to auto disable one to save battery. It would also cause routing problems.

Every phone does this LOL When you switch on Wifi they turn off 2g,3g,4g etc because you can't use 2 data connections at the same time.
I'm curious why you would want 4g and wifi on at the same time?

I thought this was pretty common knowledge (on any Android phone)... And I also thought it was done for battery conservation reasons as much as anything else. WiFi's a simpler point to point connection and from what I understand it sucks less power than 3G or 4G which is constantly checking for additional cell towers in case you've moved, etc.
If you're at home or at work w/a stable WiFi connection you should be able to preserve more battery power by using it, within the settings you can even set it so the phone doesn't revert to 3G when it goes to sleep (the default setting IIRC), otherwise it does this and only jumps back to WiFi when you wake it ('till you're out of range anyway).

I agree with all the comments. And if the Sprint Customer Service guys had said, "Hey, you idiot...it's supposed to do that," then I wouldn't have posted. But the fact that he was as stumped as I was prompted me to post (we all know that Sprint gets all it's info from reading these forums...LOL).

[Q] 4G Wireless Hotspot Success

How have people been fairing with this?
So far from work, my connection appears iffy at best. I can turn off and on the 4g to get one or two successful page requests through. I have a Clear Wimaxx Spot that I use at the same location (that I turn off before activating 4g on phone) with no connection issues. Also, my 4g only reports 1 bar. My distance from the tower is < .5 miles. I'll post an update when I try it from home.
Anybody know how to check 4G signal strength (other than generic bar readout) from the device? I've seen the signal strength in "about phone" area but am guessing it's dedicated to 3G - I could be wrong.
I'm hoping to drop my Clear Spot but so far, doesn't look like that's going to happen.

The hotspot app has worked great for me in 3G mode, but there's no 4G coverage here to try with that.

I'm also having the same issue. I'm in an area with excellent 4G coverage, but only getting 1 bar. Earlier I was getting spammed "4G has been disconnected" in the notification bar. I had to restart the phone to fix the issue.
Sent from my Samsung Epic 4G™

I've been getting the 4g disconnected message also.
I'm using a clear spot which should be running off of the same tower. I consistently get their best reception (throttled at 600kbps) from the same location. I've tried turning it off in case it's getting in the way already if anyone is wondering.
My 4G icon on the Epic typically reads from 0-1 bar. I'm under .5 miles and my entire area reads "indoor" 4g on sprints map.
I couldn't find any information on the strength of the 4g radio in this thing. If anyone has that info I'd appreciate it. I believe Samsung touts it as being 20% more connective than other devices...but that might just be 3g.

Hi, I am located in the downtown of a city with 4g enabled and I can turn it on and with a speed test confirm 4g is turned on (3Mb down). When I connect I get about 3 bars and can surf some web pages but it always eventually gives me "4g disconnected" I haven't been able to complete any download over 10ish megabytes on 4g because 4g disconnects and the download fails. i might call the sprint store later, but it seems like this would be software fixable.

WiFi vs. 4G and 3G

Sorry if this is common knowledge and I'm just sllloooowww....but I have discovered something with my EVO that was driving me nuts!
When you connect to a WiFi network the phone will automatically drop your other data connections (3G or 4G). If you are connected to WiFi and turn on 4G the phone will not connect to 4G and instead will show a status similar to this:
turning on->scanning->disconnected
or
turning on->scanning->connecting to spring ->getting IP address -> connected ->disconnected
All of this was quite irritating when I was assuming that my 4G wasn't working properly. It was pretty embarrassing to learn (through many trials and errors) that I hadn't correctly associated the 4G connection 'issues' with the presence of a WiFi connection.
Hopefully some of you who are experiencing 4G 'issues' are just suffering from this same ignorance.
P.S Please don't take this as an opportunity to rip on myself or others for being ignorant, thank you.

Thank you for taking the time to right this up. I would have thought this to be common knowledge, but I can see how the cycling of 4g connect disconnect could be confusing.

It will always drop the current connection if you switch it, doesn't matter which carrier you're on. reason you can't connect to 4g (aka WiMax) while on wifi is because they are using the same frequency 802.11. the only difference is that wimax is on 802.11E where as the wifi on the evo can go 802.11B,G,N

ilikepu said:
It will always drop the current connection if you switch it, doesn't matter which carrier you're on. reason you can't connect to 4g (aka WiMax) while on wifi is because they are using the same frequency 802.11. the only difference is that wimax is on 802.11E where as the wifi on the evo can go 802.11B,G,N
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wimax uses the 802.16 protocol which is seperate completely from wifi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX
I'm not sure why they are disabled when wifi is on but my guess is to conserve battery or avoid confusion with data connectivity such as flipping back and forth between radios. Who knows why heh
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

whoops my mistake i read/wrote it wrong

Conservation is Key
slater! said:
I'm not sure why they are disabled when wifi is on but my guess is to conserve battery or avoid confusion with data connectivity such as flipping back and forth between radios. Who knows why heh
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Heh, well once I realized what it was doing it became pretty obvious why they were doing it.
There's no need to keep more than one data connection up on the phone, and obviously the less data that flows over sprint's (or any carrier) airwaves the better for them. When WiFi is connected, it makes sense for the phone to shut down the cellular data to reduce network load. Also, I am not positive about 3G vs. WiFi but I am pretty sure WiFi uses considerably less power than WiMax, so it makes sense from a battery conservation perspective too.
This is actually a common practice on smart phones it seems. I confirmed with my brother that this same thing happens on his Moto Droid with Verizon (when WiFi connects, 3G disconnects).

Babble0n said:
Heh, well once I realized what it was doing it became pretty obvious why they were doing it.
There's no need to keep more than one data connection up on the phone, and obviously the less data that flows over sprint's (or any carrier) airwaves the better for them. When WiFi is connected, it makes sense for the phone to shut down the cellular data to reduce network load. Also, I am not positive about 3G vs. WiFi but I am pretty sure WiFi uses considerably less power than WiMax, so it makes sense from a battery conservation perspective too.
This is actually a common practice on smart phones it seems. I confirmed with my brother that this same thing happens on his Moto Droid with Verizon (when WiFi connects, 3G disconnects).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It has more to do with conserving battery life than taking a load off of Sprint's network. BTW, WiFi tends to use a lot less battery than 3G.

Does an unlocked 4g phone work in Italy(on 3g at least)? Wath the difference between protocols(wikipedia is not clear enough)?

lennynero7 said:
Does an unlocked 4g phone work in Italy(on 3g at least)? Wath the difference between protocols(wikipedia is not clear enough)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You might want to check this:
http://www.ehow.com/how_7675053_tell-cell-phone-work-worldwide.html
Does not provide too much info as far as carriers, but does explain how it works outside of U.S.

4G network issue or my Epic?

In a spot where I get very strong signal, today it will connect but won't actually work. Toggling 4G mode and rebooting have no effect. 3G works normally. Anyone else having this issue? Wish I could test it in another 4G area to narrow it down to the local tower.

Happens to me intermittently. I wondered if it was maybe just maintenance on a tower but that would not account for it showing that 4g was connected, plus my buddy was connected on his Evo at the same time, getting pretty good speeds. Its very curious.
From Epic With Love

Well, at least I know now it wasn't my phone. 4G is back, although weaker than before. 100% uptime doesn't exist in this world, yet.