Alright long story short broke my screen, didn't want to buy a new phone, bought a for-parts Z3Z, was ready to swap the battery and screen over to the components then I realized the motherboard is the first thing to come off anyway, so I just swapped the motherboard from my old phone to the rest of the components from the new one. So I did that, yes all cables and everything are connected. But my bluetooth range is like 10 feet through air and won't go through a piece of cardboard or whatever at 1 foot. The GPS takes forever to lock and loses signal every couple minutes for a while.
I assume the antennae for BT and GPS are both on the motherboard that we know was working fine in my old phone (really well actually!), so what's the deal? Any ideas? It's making my phone almost unusable.
Also, wifi seems like MAYBE but not definitely it's been affected... I used to get 2 bars in my car in my garage at least, now I lose the connection the second I close the garage door behind me. It's weird how like all the antennas except the actual cell antenna don't work....
Related
Looking at the results of the xda-developers pool I decided to get an XPeria as it clearly out shined all other phones. I got X1i this Saturday and was shocked about the poor signal strength. I was so looking forward to using this phone and keeping it but was more inclined in sending it back. Now after a couple of days just browsing the developers site which I am used to as I had an artemis before this. I see this was not the last of the problems. There have been mentions of overheating and GPS lag as well as the WIFI being rubbish. I have found the following problems
1. Signals fluctuating and mostly no service when in hand even in some good reception areas. Normally on H when in the carry case but switches to G as soon as held in hand.
2. GPS is frustrating. My artemis used to lock within seconds while having an upto date ephermis file. But even with AGPS and recently downloaded ephermis file, I had to wait over a minute to move off. It locked and then it lost and then it locked again(This was when it was in my hand). Once locked it was stable. It was on Google maps by the way.
Right for these, I have found a temporary solution and we have to work on it to make it a standard solution for all X1. Apparently the signals definitely fluctuate when you touch the lower metallic part on the back which has SE logo on it . The opinion on the forums here is that it may block the signal. I think otherwise as I have covered that area without touching the panel with my hand and there has been no signal drop but as soon as you have the slightest bit of flesh on that area the signal drops at least two bars. This led me to believe that there is an electric conduction or possibly u earth the antennas as they seem to be touching that panel from inside as it has been pointed out before.
So simple test was to put a cling film on that part and then test so I did and walah!! There was no signal drop and it worked flawlessly. I think it’s the same problem with GPS as well.
Now I couldn’t carry on using my phone half mummified. I had to take the cling film off. This is possibly the solution to everyone’s problem but I need someone to suggest either a plastic cover for that area or some sort of coating which does not conduct electricity. I think that will definitely sort the problem.
I think you've got a faulty X1 there mate..
Can you take it back to a store and compare it against another one?
The signal is weak on this compared to some other devices, (it's not as bad as the vario though), however I've never noticed a drop in signal by holding it, so I suspect somethings awry with the one you've got..
GPS signal is very very good with the later radios, what version have you got?
I get a lock within 2 seconds (8 seconds from hard reset or flashed a new rom), and it's very very accurate when it does lock.
My GPS works very well (better than htc cruise) also with previous radio.
So I think you have a fault X1, like say by fards.
I'm with Fards on this, I don't get issues when holding the phone and GPS is snappy.
crabby
Thanks guys. I know it has been discussed a million times before but I have compared the phone with other XPerias and it is the same. There are atleast 4 threads pointing out the same. My X1 would have better signals than my artemis as long as i dont touch the back base. Have you all got silver X1is? If so then can you check if you touch the back panel which i mentioned, if there is any fluctuation in the signals(its not instant it takes about 10 seconds for the phone to show the loss of signals).
I have updated radio to 55 and tried the two new stock roms which are R2A for O2 and 010 generic. The phone still looses signals but not completely when i touch the back panel.
About GPS, it does get a lock very quickly but looses it for a short while when i touch the back.
Anyway if someone else comes accross the same problem then please write here as I am sure there is a solution to be found. I was looking at the following
Clear coating
Antistatic spray coating
I must have missed those threads then.
I have a black x1, and definitely don't get any of those issues.
gps is steady and strong.. monitoring it now... as I type. 6 birds locked standing next to window in house hdop 0.6m which I think is very very good
gsm signal on 2 bars and steady
I had the same issue just once. And even when X1 was in the Brodit car holder.
In my case the soft reset was sufficient to solve the problem. But I guess that you already did that.
fards and pelriog? did you experience any fluctuation when touching the panel?
These are the links to threads
Thread1
Thread2
Thread3
Thread4
Same here, touch back panel, hold for 10 secs and signal drops 1 bar. Currently on 3G network, going from 2 bars to 1.
(And yes, my W810i gets a way better signal in low coverage areas. However, usually not a problem, since I hardly encounter Vodafone low coverage areas in The Netherlands).
Tested 5 times. Dutch Vodafone X1i, R2 stock ROM & stock radio.
Ok I did the touch the panel thing and my bars increased by one... hmmm perhaps there is another faulty batch out there as I get great signal (touch wood) and my gps is very responsive and accurate...
Silver X1 here.. Been touching it up for about 15 mins now
It does seem to drop by 1 bar when touched, but also drops if i just put my hand really close to the back without actually touching. hmm..
what concerns me more is how it just drops the whole line randomly and gives an x then has to search again. Lost a good few calls from that..
well here ive got no problem at all with signal.
But GPS does suck even though most people everywhere say X1 GPS is awesome.maybe it is just my zone/country.. could that be possible?
uhm.. of course not, their satellytes afetr all.
I have disassembled my X1 myself and found that under lower part of backside (piece that have SE logo) is an antenna of some kind.
The antenna is a thick circuit that ran on top of another piece of plastic that cover the loud speaker.
The circuit only have 2 contacts to the main PCB.
My guess is that the reception site of either GSM or GPS is on that part.(may be bluetooth or WiFi too, but I think that's not it)
I wonder what SE/HTC engineer is thinking, putting antenna on this part of the phone! (covered with my hand everytime I use it!)
The solution is "use bluetooth headset" and "hold your phone upside down" and you will be fine.
Yeah, mine loses a bar when touching the metal case at the back, I've not lost any calls (that I know of) because of this though.
I had a look under the speaker section myself last week, and can confirm the antenna circuit over the speaker section. Underneath there's also what looks like a tiny external antenna socket... we could mod our experias to have a rubber duck aerial? Who's up for walkie talkie lookalike xperia?
lol @ walkie talki and upside down. I think the designers have done a very poor job as far as the antenna location is concerned.
Tumpin does your phone loose all signals when in your hand?
Taking this seriously as suggested in my first post has anyone tried putting a cling film on or to that matter anything to cover that area and holding the phone. I did it with the cling film and there was no drop in the signal. So i think it is just a matter of us using some kind of invisible coating or cover on that area so there is no static conductivity. Look at post #5
I would appreciate if everyone gives there suggestions as well how to deal with it. For the people who took the phone apart you could have put something on the inner side to block the static discharge.
I returned my xperia for the second time for signal problems. The problems started after it was repaired for the crack in my case. After that the signal was very poor. GPS was not working in 90%. I wait for 15 minutes for signal, but the only thing that happend was heating the battery. Also HSDPA have a weak signal. In most times I only can use GPRS. The first time I returned the phone for this problem nothing changed. And this time I had a new crack in my case, so I hope they send me a new one!
Im using a X1a and I find its GSM/3G reception is really poor, I already upgraded the radio to the latest but its still the same poor poor reception. Specially when Im using the metal case I frequently get drop calls on my device
kanthai said:
I have disassembled my X1 myself and found that under lower part of backside (piece that have SE logo) is an antenna of some kind.
The antenna is a thick circuit that ran on top of another piece of plastic that cover the loud speaker.
The circuit only have 2 contacts to the main PCB.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just curious! Any chance that you see what for are the two metal plates contacts from the metal cover of the phone? Those near the SE logo. These two and the other two towards the camera are there for... what? The metal cover is used for something as when you rig in the phone and all four contacts are "online" but what for? Thanks!
I have a black X1i and noticed that reception increased when using it with the keyboard opened in horizontal position.
Same here, I tought it was because I open my metal case that is why reception goes up.
stevencyc said:
I have a black X1i and noticed that reception increased when using it with the keyboard opened in horizontal position.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Background:
I was running the most up to date Paranoid Android rom, working great for weeks.
I went to the east coast (where my phone worked fine), and when I landed in Chicago, I turned off airplane mode and didn't have any data. I thought that was odd, so I tried a factory reset. No change. No big deal, I take another plane to Seattle. Then I only get Edge. The next morning I got 3G/4G for a few hours, then it was intermittent that day, but for the last 3 I haven't gotten any 3G/4G. That's where I am now, although I put on the 4.3 factory image and locked the device. This is what I have tried:
I'm on Straight Talk T-Mobile
1. My wife's T-Mobile post-paid sim card.
2. Cycling airplane, turning phone on and off
3. Flashing CM 10.1 RC3
4. *#*#INFO#*#* and messing with the settings, doing anything and everything I can think of. WCDMA Only, preferred, turning radio on and off, and trying to get to the radio band menu. The radio menu popped up just fine on CM10.1, but crashes on stock 4.3. When I select WCDMA Only, I get zero service at all.
5. Cleaning my sim card with rubbing alcohol
What I haven't tried:
1. Flashing a radio.
2. Taking it apart and inspecting the antenna connections.
Does anyone know if there are multiple antennas for the GSM/WCDMA radios? I looked on Ifixit and I don't see much info on the antenna. parts4repair.com shows only 1 antenna. The thing is, I get great signal on Edge, so if it's only one antenna, then I wouldn't expect such a good Edge signal. Also, the Edge/WCDMA signal processor is on the same piece of silicon, so I wouldn't imagine that would be a problem.
My phone has slipped from my lap a bunch of times and has been dropped on carpet quite a bit, never with any visible damage. I'm starting to think that it was damaged when dropped. I know there aren't great crumple zones on this phone.
Does anyone have any other thoughts, or ideas? I would like to try a few more things before I crack it open.
Thanks,
Ders
Update: I have since opened the case and disassbled the phone. I cleaned the contacts for all of the connections that I could find. I also see that the antenna cable attaches to the board that holds the micro USB port. Another plastic piece snaps in above that. This plastic piece has pressure contacts for a fractal antennna that is basically printed on this plastic piece. If I had to guess, the antenna may have been damaged due to flexing when the phone has been dropped. I ordered a new one on eBay and will see if that does the fix.
Another interesting thing that may disprove my theory. When I disconnect the fractal antenna, I still get an Edge signal. If it doesn't fix the problem I'm going to have to hook it up to an oscilloscope and see what kind of signals are being broadcast. That way I can see if it might be the signal processor chip on the motherboard.
Another update. I ended up replacing the USB board, antenna board and antenna cable. Works like a charm. Seems a little slower than my wife's Galaxy S3. But hey, it works now.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk
Yeah, I know the title said GPS, I'll get to it in a bit.
I got a Verizon S5 early on and I have a 64G card that I use for music storage. I Bluetooth a lot to my car in a my 1 hour commute. Almost since I got this thing, the music has skipped semi-randomly. Seems like it did it at a specific spot in the road, but most likely it was just random. Some days were way worse than others. Research indicated this was not an uncommon problem with android. Tried lots of things, but like prayer, who knows if it worked or not. some days maybe yes, some days maybe no. This same memory card worked flawlessly in my AT&T S3.
Then I noticed the GPS was wonky. I got a GPS test program and determined that only pulling the battery out would fix the weak reception, and then only temporarily. This went on for a week, so I called Verizon and a "tech" recommended I do the dreaded factory reset. Did it..nada, nil, zippo.
During the frequent removal of the battery to do a soft reset, I damaged my "KLIX Hard Case" by Empire, so i ordered another one. I used the phone with no case for about a week and had no GPS issues, but did still have BT music issues when played from the SD card.
I got the new case 3 days ago, snapped it on and the next day noticed GPS was out again. I kept removing the case, slowly snapping it down and confirmed GPS went away only when the case was all the way on. During this testing process, the power button finally quit working. A reboot via battery removal revealed it was hardware related (couldn't turn the $#@ phone on). I gave it a thought, and opened the back and pressed on the plastic near the power button and it started working. I then, after some experimentation and a few beers to get my fortitude up, placed the phone, screen down on a hard flat surface and began pressing down on the plastic near the power button with some force. I heard something snap into place.
No more issues so far, with BT music or GPS with or without the case installed. Pretty sure GPS is fixed, but need another week to verify BT music.
My best theory so far is that because the phones chassis is made of plastic, and the buttons and antenna are in that plastic chassis, and the main board sandwiches between the screen and the chassis, that the very rigid tight fitting phone case was slightly deforming the chassis, causing it to bow upward slightly, aggravating an already bad contact situation between the mainboard and the chassis. I other words, the phone case was squeezing them apart. There is a possibility, that I will not pursue, that the main board was not snapped down properly at the factory. Since there are many touch only connections (antenna, buttons, card slots) between the main board and the chassis, A poor snap fit would make this a possibility. You can see how the phone is assembled here in this tear down pic.
http://www.techinsights.com/uploadedImages/Public_Website/Content_-_Primary/Teardowncom/Media_Resources/Marketing/Samsung_Galaxy_S5/Si36811-teardown-8.jpg
Anyway, I thought I'd post this for folks trying to track down a similar problem. Hope this helps someone. Don't crack your screen on my account. :crying:
EDIT: Bluetooth music is dropping out again, both from the card and the internal storage on the phone. So bad this afternoon, I turned it off, It was fine this morning, so none of this fixes BT streaming. GPS still works though.
So i bought 2 nexus 4's a couple of months ago (cracked digitizers) and replaced the front frame/assembly with some i bought on Ebay.
They work fine except for the GPS. Both the phones are not connecting to the satellites. I downloaded GPS Status and GPS status and tool kit (or something lie that), tried resetting A-GPS downloading GPD data and nothing works.
I use co-pilot offline GPS and the phone is set to devices only to only use the GPS and not data. Co-pilot never connects with gps.
And both GPs status apps are stuck in "looking for GPS location" eternally. With Fix/Sats always staying a 0/0. I use to get 0/26 or something along the lines, but after resetting A-GPS a couple of times it stays at 0/0.
Since both phones present the same symptoms I started suspecting the front frame/assembly and found this : http://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-4/general/nexus-4-gps-fixing-screen-replacement-t2895111
I wrapped the digitizer IC in foil like the guy did and it changed nothing. so i want to try and find some copper tape and layer up the contact points on the back cover in case the antennas don't make good contact. Do you think this might be the problem?
Also i flashed CM 10 on one of the phone in case it was an android problem, but i get the same results in CM.
Any ideas? this is the only thing that is not working on the phones and I would really like to get them working.
Thanks!
fullpampers said:
So i bought 2 nexus 4's a couple of months ago (cracked digitizers) and replaced the front frame/assembly with some i bought on Ebay.
They work fine except for the GPS. Both the phones are not connecting to the satellites. I downloaded GPS Status and GPS status and tool kit (or something lie that), tried resetting A-GPS downloading GPD data and nothing works.
I use co-pilot offline GPS and the phone is set to devices only to only use the GPS and not data. Co-pilot never connects with gps.
And both GPs status apps are stuck in "looking for GPS location" eternally. With Fix/Sats always staying a 0/0. I use to get 0/26 or something along the lines, but after resetting A-GPS a couple of times it stays at 0/0.
Since both phones present the same symptoms I started suspecting the front frame/assembly and found this : http://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-4/general/nexus-4-gps-fixing-screen-replacement-t2895111
I wrapped the digitizer IC in foil like the guy did and it changed nothing. so i want to try and find some copper tape and layer up the contact points on the back cover in case the antennas don't make good contact. Do you think this might be the problem?
Also i flashed CM 10 on one of the phone in case it was an android problem, but i get the same results in CM.
Any ideas? this is the only thing that is not working on the phones and I would really like to get them working.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have same problem, it gets same number of saletites like my nexus 7 2013 but with low signal and fix makes long time.
slydew said:
I have same problem, it gets same number of saletites like my nexus 7 2013 but with low signal and fix makes long time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It seems it is a grounding problem between the frame, the board and the back cover. Mine is still not working but i had a little success with switching the conductive pads from my old frame assembly. But after a while something must have moved because I am not getting any gps lock anymore. I am waiting on some conductive tape to fix this.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-4/general/nexus-4-gps-fixing-screen-replacement-t2895111/page4
Look in this forum if this seems to be your problem.
Hello friends,
I have a i9500 which is exactly 2 years old and - with this age - ran out of warranty here in Thailand already.
A while ago, from one day to another, my Bluetooth reception dropped dramatically. It was not a slow process of decreasing reception. It was one day ok and the next day very bad.
Usually, you have a range of let's say 5 to 6 meters when you connect to a (in my case) Bluetooth headset. Suddenly, the range dropped to 30 centimeter! Then I realized that the WiFi range also decreased.
So, what to do? First, I changed ROMs, but nothing helped. I did factory reset, wiping, and so on. Nothing helped. I checked the internet and didn't really find answers. One blog talked about faulty Bluetooth chips. So, I went to the Samsung service center. But they only wanted to replace the motherboard which should have cost me around 5300Thai baht, which is around 150Euro or 175USD. Regarding the age of the phone, that was a no go.
So I started to check for a new phone. But somehow, I didn't want to accept that I don't have a choice. Besides that I am on a tight budget, I wanted to find out what is really the reason for this.
Suddenly I ran into a blog which showed some components of the S4 and that the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi antenna(s) are packed under a flap after you remove the back cover. It says something about cleaning the antenna under the flap as a last resort. So....I thought... Bluetooth, Wi-Fi. Sounds like my problem. As I don't have the according tools and skills, I took the phone to a small phone shop. First, the guy didn't want to believe that I ask him to clean the antennas, but he agreed though.
I came back 40 minutes later and we checked everything together.
Result: PROBLEM SOLVED
Back at home I made more tests with my Wi-Fi reception and the range of Bluetooth and I have to say: as good as new!
All this cost me only 300Thai Baht = 8Euro = 10USD
So... Before you throw your S4 away or sell it because you have similar problems, try this small surgery.
I hope this helps some of you guys.
Kind regards
Dirk