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I live in Idaho. Sprint advertises that they have 'mammoth coverage' around here, but they're wrong. They don't. Well, they have coverage (except for my house and office) and the 3G/4G speeds are usually complete **** unless you're within sight of a tower.
Data from the towers out in Caldwell haven't worked for over 2 months and Sprint claims that they're working just fine and have recently been updated - apparently they updated to dial-up. I really wonder how they're even selling phones over there right now.
Idaho = Battery life is usually 5 to 10 hours with normal usage.
2 weekends ago I was in Omaha and used my evo a little bit less than normal, but I could get through the whole day and still have 50%+ battery life left. The 3G speeds were also 2x better, as well as service in general.
I think it depends on where you're located and if sprint has maintained/updated their towers. I also think that most of the towers in Nampa/Caldwell (20 mi. out of Boise) are older nextel towers, which are probably complete ****/half working.
Just my theory.
Sounds plausible, but I have no idea scientifically speaking. I could guess but I don't think it would be productive.
My honest suggestion? Post this over at the dslreports.com forums; there were some really knowledgeable people lurking there.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
I agree. In addition to rogue apps/processes, it seems that weak network is #2 on my list of things to check when my batt life is draining too much.
This isn't really a theory, it is fact. If you have bad coverage you can basically watch your battery drain. I could drain mine dead overnight by leaving my phone unplugged and in the basement.. I had 1 bar of roaming service. I now hqve an airave and battery life drains much less overnight.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
teamgreen02 said:
This isn't really a theory, it is fact. If you have bad coverage you can basically watch your battery drain. I could drain mine dead overnight by leaving my phone unplugged and in the basement.. I had 1 bar of roaming service. I now hqve an airave and battery life drains much less overnight.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
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ive had my batter die in 3 hours because of no service. I watched my battery go from 70% to 30% in 1 hour because of no signal. Since I'm not running CM6 the roam control app has been well worth the couple of bucks. No more missed calls and far less battery drain when im in low signal areas.
Poor 3G low signal is the biggest battery problem for Android!
Android (not the Evo but the entire OS) has a very poor system for dealing with Low Signal for 3G and it does NOT automatically switch over to 2G when it's supposed to which CAN and DOES result in greatly increased battery life.
Other phone OS's do this or are supposed to do this but for some reason Google has just not implemented a good system for dealing with this COMMON issue.
I use a program called JuiceDefender (Paid version is best but the free version will prove to you how useful it is) and it is literally the best app I run on my Evo. Overnight I went from my phone dying by 4pm when working at a location with low signal to having it last multiple days in some cases depending on my usage.
Do yourselves a favor, Get this application and if you have your phone rooted you get many extra features out of the full version. Can't speak highly enough of this application.
Tim
teamgreen02 said:
This isn't really a theory, it is fact. If you have bad coverage you can basically watch your battery drain. I could drain mine dead overnight by leaving my phone unplugged and in the basement.. I had 1 bar of roaming service. I now hqve an airave and battery life drains much less overnight.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
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I agree with that and know that when you have 0/1/2 bars it really drains your battery life, however, I get the same battery life if I'm at home all day using it (0/1/2 bars), or if I'm at college and have 5 bars all day and I'm not using it quite as much.
I have fresh 3.3 with the htc kernel 53 fps (and all the latest radios/pri/prl/ect.) and have seen much improved battery life, but it's still the exact same.
I also have an airave at the office (which is out in Caldwell where the data doesn't even work) for the other two people on my plan, and while they have seen slightly less battery drain since we got the airave (for free), it's not a mind-blowing difference, other than the data actually works. They're also running the 2.1 stock, but rooted with unrevoked.
I guess I'm wondering if staying connected to a tower with older tech/Nextel uses more power than if it's connected to a sprint tower.
Hrshycro said:
I think it depends on where you're located and if sprint has maintained/updated their towers. I also think that most of the towers in Nampa/Caldwell (20 mi. out of Boise) are older nextel towers, which are probably complete ****/half working.
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There's no way your Evo is working off of any Nextel towers. Those are IDEN and your Evo is CDMA...not happening. It's been known for years now that if you have poor/no signal, your battery will drain rapidly as the device will constantly search for a better signal.
anthony67 said:
There's no way your Evo is working off of any Nextel towers. Those are IDEN and your Evo is CDMA...not happening. It's been known for years now that if you have poor/no signal, your battery will drain rapidly as the device will constantly search for a better signal.
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Good to know - How do people get Sprint Phones to work on Boost mobile then? Boost is using nextel towers, or that's what I've read several times.
I agree with that and know that when you have 0/1/2 bars it really drains your battery life, however, I get the same battery life if I'm at home all day using it (0/1/2 bars), or if I'm at college and have 5 bars all day and I'm not using it quite as much.
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Hrshycro said:
Boost is using nextel towers, or that's what I've read several times.
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You're half right. Boost does use nextel towers--For iDen phones. They do use the Sprint network for CDMA phones. Basically boost carries both CDMA and iDen phones.
As for how people get Sprint phones to work with Boost(CDMA)... Hm... Let's just say they do something shady and possibly illegal...They clone ESNs.
started two weeks ago, I could feel that 3g speed was dramatically slower than before. speedtetst shows ~300kbps. I went to sprint store today. There are two EVOs in the store. Interesting thing is: one of them has similiar 3g speed as mine, another one is really fast ~ 1.7Mbps - 2Mbps. watching sprintTV & youtube are really enjoyable. nothing is different from software&hardware. I can't image how come the performance of the devices are way off each other. Is it EVO or Sprint?
I also noticed this in a weird way. Rebooting my Evo will give me significantly different speeds / pings.
Think is had to do more with the towers. Sprint tends to jump from tower to tower quite often, even if the tower is futher away. I get pretty poor speeds in KC, but when I go to Wisconsin, get 3 to 4 times the speeds. So it is possible for two phones right next to each other to have different speeds, if they are on different towers. Look up antennas apps in the market and see what tower you are connected too, and how often it changes towers while you are stationary.
I tried antennas, it did not work well on EVO. Just found that we have partial 4G coverage around bay area. I tested it out today. the speed is pretty amazing inthe range of 3M - 7M bps . Hopefully we could have all coverage of 4G.
werxen said:
I also noticed this in a weird way. Rebooting my Evo will give me significantly different speeds / pings.
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during reboot, I think there are couples of things going on: initializing RF driver/firmwire and re-registration of cell, handshake on the fly to finalize signal/channel/speed rate etc which might result different quality of connection.
Anyone else notice slower data? I used to average 7.2mbps on my Vibrant, I even scored 10mbps on a G2.
Nexus S averages out at 4mbps.... Sometimes 2.5. Highest I've got it to was 5 on a lucky day. My GF has my old Vibrant and she is getting the same download speeds.
Don't know if I should be happy or sad Lol!
Anyone else notice speed slowing down in the last 6 months?
Anderdroid said:
Anyone else notice slower data? I used to average 7.2mbps on my Vibrant, I even scored 10mbps on a G2.
Nexus S averages out at 4mbps.... Sometimes 2.5. Highest I've got it to was 5 on a lucky day. My GF has my old Vibrant and she is getting the same download speeds.
Don't know if I should be happy or sad Lol!
Anyone else notice speed slowing down in the last 6 months?
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HSDPA or HSPA+ makes no difference in the end. Reason we get a performance boost from HSPA+ even though we dont support it is HSPA+ is all in the backend.
which means faster speeds for all. Imagine what the speeds would be without HSPA+
I realize this. But speeds have been slowing down lately.
We do get the boost from HSPA+ but what slows it down is the fact that T-Mobile is getting tons of new customers... The network may get clogged and we could have an AT&T disaster!
Anderdroid said:
I realize this. But speeds have been slowing down lately.
We do get the boost from HSPA+ but what slows it down is the fact that T-Mobile is getting tons of new customers... The network may get clogged and we could have an AT&T disaster!
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hm, i noticed this too, and also, theres at least 20+ people that i know that used to have ATT/Verizon that has jumped over to tmobile in the past month or 2.
I haven't noticed any noticeable difference in average network performance over the past seven months. I haven't been clocking it, though; just speaking from my personal sense of how quickly it was downloading.
Yes, I've definitely noticed a slow down in the past 60 days.
I used to get 3800 to 4400 Kb/s on my N1. Once I switched to the NS, I've never seen faster than about 3000 Kb/s. I posted in a different thread yesterday that I ran some tests with both the N1 and the NS (using the same sim card in both) and found that the N1 no longer goes over 3000 Kb/s.
Conclusion: the service has degraded around here.
But it just occurred to me that I had been "throttled" for being a data pig last November, and the throttling was supposed to last until mid-December. Here's the interesting part, even "throttled" my speeds only declined to about 2800 Kb/s; which means I'm still getting those speeds that I got while "throttled". I wonder if they forgot to "un-throttle" me.
I'll call customer service today and double check. I'll also complain about the drop in speeds.
Is it possible you're being throttled and missed the notification?
I'm in central Florida and can say there has been a big decrease in speed here in the past 3 months. I too came from a Vibrant that my wife now uses and can say the same as the OP.
I think its a mix of things. New customers on high data use handsets utilizing that advertised 4g speed. I also think it being winter time that people are staying inside and using their phones and devices more, much like how gas use in homes goes up in the winter time. There's less to do outside, etc, so you are connecting more through electronic means. Hopefully tmo continues to expand their back haul, and they will have to to achieve those even faster than 21mbps speeds. I think conversely that in the summer you will see your speeds come back.
Sent from my HTC Dream using XDA App
Glad I'm not the only one! Let's hope it's just for the winter! Heh
Wouldn't winter help more? Since having wireless in the home? By your logic it would be worse in the summer because it's nicer weather and people travel more and need mobile data to facebook it up.
If you want to test if the service is slowing down due to many people, test it at least 4 times throughout the day with at least twice at night such as 1am and 3-4am, shouldn't be many people on then.
About 6 months ago I was on T-Mobile at which time I switched to Sprint for yearly updates and a supposedly cheaper plan. When those two things ended up not happening I switched back and I can say without a doubt that my speeds are faster. This could be due to the fact that I had a MT3G before and now have a NS or that when I was on Tmo before their HSPA network was not really available or it could be just that its faster. Either way I'm much happier as with Sprint I was topping out at 1.5mbps on 3G and now on Tmo I'm getting up to around 3.5 some times even closer to 4.
About 20 days ago I started experiencing data slowness. Before I was averaging 3.0-4.0 I called Tmobile multiply times to reset me with the towers. No luck. I have the nexus S and my girl has the vibrant. Now we can barely hit 1.0 its very frustrating I thought I was the only one but after googling and finding this thread I see Im not alone.
I have no complaints here in terms of TMOs speed. With the NS I get about 4-5mb consistently. When I was at best buy playing around with phone the MT4G hit 11mb down, although the average speed was closer to 9mb
jlevy73 said:
I have no complaints here in terms of TMOs speed. With the NS I get about 4-5mb consistently. When I was at best buy playing around with phone the MT4G hit 11mb down, although the average speed was closer to 9mb
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What part of Los Angeles are you in?
It was 3.8 - 4.2 pretty consistently near the Van Nuys Airport for a while, but now it's never more than 3.0.
distortedloop said:
What part of Los Angeles are you in?
It was 3.8 - 4.2 pretty consistently near the Van Nuys Airport for a while, but now it's never more than 3.0.
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I'm in the Hollywood area.
It's area dependent.
Brooklyn
in 18th/68th, I get top speed (up to 9Mbps with N900), average 4-5
in home area (N train Bay Parkway), I also get top speed
in Bay Parkway/86th, the speed is slower (2-3Mbps)
in Downtown (Fulton/Jay, A/C/F/R train station), the speed is barely workable
Manhattan
in Lower Manhattan (both Canal Street and City Hall), the speed it up to 2Mbps
in Midtown (Empire State Building), the speed is much slower (no more than 1Mbps)
in Inwood (A train 207 Street), the speed is good (4-5Mbps)
The speed test was conducted with either MT4 or NS except stated.
mingkee said:
It's area dependent.
Brooklyn
in 18th/68th, I get top speed (up to 9Mbps with N900), average 4-5
in home area (N train Bay Parkway), I also get top speed
in Bay Parkway/86th, the speed is slower (2-3Mbps)
in Downtown (Fulton/Jay, A/C/F/R train station), the speed is barely workable
Manhattan
in Lower Manhattan (both Canal Street and City Hall), the speed it up to 2Mbps
in Midtown (Empire State Building), the speed is much slower (no more than 1Mbps)
in Inwood (A train 207 Street), the speed is good (4-5Mbps)
The speed test was conducted with either MT4 or NS except stated.
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Wouldn't the MT4G get higher speeds and skew the results since it can access HSPA+ while we can only rid the coattails of it? Since only the MT4G can access the HSPA+ (the G2 can do HSPA, I believe but it cannot do the higher speeds) wouldn't that mean that the number of devices slowing that network was significantly smaller and therefore the amount of throttling due to network bottleneck would be significantly lower. Therefore to make an accurate speed test you would have to use the same type of phone (or to be completely scientific, the same phone).
mingkee said:
It's area dependent.
<snipped>
The speed test was conducted with either MT4 or NS except stated.
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I've always said cell service is like real estate, it's all about location, location, location.
Your point doesn't address the real issue. Sure, in different parts of town with different devices that have different speeds abilities we're going to see different speedtest results. We'll even see different results depending on the time of day in some areas.
The issue is that those of us who were averaging some particular speed, using the same device, in the same location, at the same time-of-day are now seeing reduced speeds.
For me it's a 25% reduction, consistently, on two different devices...
insanemachine said:
Wouldn't winter help more? Since having wireless in the home? By your logic it would be worse in the summer because it's nicer weather and people travel more and need mobile data to facebook it up.
If you want to test if the service is slowing down due to many people, test it at least 4 times throughout the day with at least twice at night such as 1am and 3-4am, shouldn't be many people on then.
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My last speedtest was at 4am lol
jlevy73 said:
I have no complaints here in terms of TMOs speed. With the NS I get about 4-5mb consistently. When I was at best buy playing around with phone the MT4G hit 11mb down, although the average speed was closer to 9mb
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It's as I feared. They're throttling non 4g devices so that the 4g devices get worlds faster. I used to max out at 7.2mbps on Vibrant. I wonder if the G2/MT4g still get 10mbps around here. Damn.
The Nexus S does get HSDPA and benefits from HSPA+. It should be maxing out at 7.2 if MT4g is getting over 7.2.
I mean. I am getting 3-5. Which is still awesome... But. I want my 7.2 back.
Haven't yet seen a poll on this and I am curious to see if this is really affecting as many as it seems, here on XDA.
Edit: It would appear that it is indeed an issue for 9/10 NS4G owners.
I have poor WiFi reception. I had a Hero and Evo, and my GF has a Shift, and all those devices have gotten good Wifi in the bedroom. A desktop and laptop have good reception there too. The NS is hopeless unless I stand near the door and hold it gingerly with two fingers. I ended up adding another AP in another part of the house just to cover the NS.
3G signal acquisition is a little below the average set by the above devices, but not too bad. I have to be in a pretty marginal area not to get 3G, and the Evo and Shift last only a little bit past the NS' range.
I have only just recently acknowledged this as a problem. Since day one my WiFi cuts out and my time without a signal is always high. Not sure if 3G is just poor because of Sprint, but it has also been a huge battery drain.
What's funny is the OTA announcement does not seem to state that they are working on 3g issues. It is a little unclear, but that 5th bullet point seems to say they are addressing 4g radio issues only!
re:
Hopefully they increase its stability as a result of fixing other areas of the radio? Longshot, I know.
Wifi is the suck. I have had less than full strength 1ft away from the router.
Not sure if it is this phone or Sprints cup and string network but I constantly get random periods of no internet/data throughput. Mainly on 4g. Going through one right now. 4g connects but there is just zero data tranfered. All webpages time out etc. Now on Sprints totally awesome dialup on vitamins 3g network.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk
For me, all the above. Call me pessimistic but I'm kinda doubting that software will fix a poor radio. Has anyone ever actually experienced an update solving a bad radio? I was actually considering getting a new evo 4g with the extended battery and call it a day. As more days pass by, it seems my network performance gets worse. The times where I'm not getting any data throughput are getting longer. It was annoying for awhile but now this really pissing me off! Cycling airplane mode and rebooting the phone is getting to the point where it doesn't fix anything. Its a waste of time. Like many other people are saying, I love the phone but using it for its main purpose, a phone, it is utterly horrible! Most of the time I have very little signal on the tower, if any at all. I keep saying I'm not going to buy Samsung phones anymore but I still do and continue to get burned by them.
Weird. Now that you mention it I thought the same thing. It just gets worse.
When I first got this phone I could sit on 4g all day long and the internet was just there. 3g too. 100% reliable network activity. Then about a month ago the random periods of no data throughput started happening. First it was both 3g and 4g, now it is just 4g. The 3g speeds are a joke. You can't stream **** with this phone on 3g without skipping and buffering. 4g streams fine but you still have to worry about the data throughput hitting a 2hr or longer brick wall of uselessness.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk
Luckily i keep my galaxy tab with me because my nexus will show no bars and no data when my tab will be close to full. I just end up using my tab for most of my data use.
Sent from my SPH-P100 using XDA App
If the next update comes and it doesn't fix anything, then we should be allowed to have the device replaced.
My guess is that it is a combination of our crappy radios and sprint is still having wide spread data issues. My gf has my epic and even though she gets more signal and less data loss than I do, she's still experiencing network issues. About an hour ago, I just got a bunch of responses from her that were morning and afternoon and they came in all at once. I sent an email and a text in both stock SMS and Google voice a little while ago and haven't heard anything back yet. Sprint must know they're having network issues. It seems like it has been going on for three weeks now and today is really bad. There are times that I think dial up is faster than the speeds I'm getting when it does work.
Woohoo. Just got 4g data throughput back. Only down for 4 and 1/2 hours today. All good till tomorrows outage. *eyeroll*
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk
I noticed I just got 3g back.
3G and 4G are great! only WiFi needs to be touched up. I use 3G at the home (averaging 2,000 kbps DL) so WiFi isn't needed unless I'm downloading huge ROMs or other files.
Still, I prefer having a working WiFi for friend's houses and other locations.
Moved into a new house last year around the same time my phone at the time, the droid maxx, got kit kat....initially thought kitkat killed battery life on the phone and as a result i eventually sold it and got a g2, tried out a couple other phones as well, but they were smaller battery phones, s5, m8, x etc...ended up staying on a g2 until the note 4. The note 4 battery was so bad i thought i had a defective unit and had verizon swap it...same issuse. I then swapped the note 4 for a turbo and im STILL dead by 5pm even with this things massive battery.
Finally occurred to me, its likely my location since it started with the maxx when i moved here.
Called verizon on it suspecting i may be dead center between two towers and the phones are constanrly switching between them, killing the battery quickly. On the phone with them they had me check the mobile data battery bar for breaks, which i hadnt noticed before because the break color is barely different than the non break color, but WOW, CONSTANT BREAKS throughout the bar.
Verizon says they are i"nvestigating", sending an engineer to my location to test etc, but i have little faith in them so thought i would ask here if anyone knows of a way to resolve this bouncing between towers?
Also, put the phone on my tylt charger last night (it was at 8% and I had already fully charged it again mid-day) around midnight, at 7am it had only managed to get 60% charge due to this issue.
Any thoughts, ideas how to resolve? I already use wifi all the time at home, with no effect on battery (as again, it seems to be the bouncing between towers thats killing it, not lte usage).
I'm 100% convinced its a tower bounce causing this, my 4g LTE signal bounces between 95dbm and 108dbm or so...stays on 4g most of the time, but bounces constantly from tower to tower.
Thanks in advance!
Dang, that must be a pretty heavy power draw. My TYLT gives me the illusion of my turbo charged. Seems faster than a normal charger.
Sent from my XT1254
Try downloading LTE discovery from the play store. It's supposed to lock you on a tower when you're not getting signal, and its worked well to do that for me on multiple devices. I don't know if it will lock to a specific tower though, I feel like radio auto-switching would take precedence. I don't know if just turning off LTE would help either.