halcyoncmdr

Just so everyone knows, now that I no longer work for the company, I don't have access to direct info about PRL releases anymore. Unless another employee is willing to forward me this information going forward, the updates to the list will be more sparse, and I'm going to have to rely on user reported updates. So... if there's anyone that does work for Sprint that knows how to access CEBU and get me the info to update the PRL and UICC/SIM Compatibility charts, it would be much appreciated.

As more people switch to renewable sources of energy that are not grid-dependent, the costs of maintaining the grid in turn end up on the back of the remaining customers. So the people fleeing the utility because of their increasing rates, are also causing the rates to go up a tiny bit for everyone else that stays. Nowhere near the amount the power company then increases their rates by, but it is a factor (one they love to tout in my area). I'm also in Southern AZ though, so there are a lot of people switching to 100% solar systems. The thing about these though is that you can stay connected to the grid for something like $10/mo so if you produce more power than you can store and use, it goes into the grid; and if you use more power then you pull from that "banked" amount you've provided. That $10/mo is definitely more than enough to cover your "part" of the grid maintenance. If you want to disconnect from the grid entirely, then you can, you then aren't responsible for any maintenance for a service you don't use (tell that to the utilities).

Salesforce was being pushed when I first was hired back in 2007, it's nothing new (although your local or area management may have been pushing it). An advantage I had though was in my state (AZ) we weren't allowed to utilize it (unsure the exact reasons, I'm assuming something about state laws against it). Instead our management made us go back through our last 2 years worth of our store's assisted customers to call back about new promotions and such as they were upgrade eligible. This had to be done manually, no automated system at all. Search Back Office for sales from last 2 years, get spreadsheet, look up account for offers and options, call them; one by one.

So what you're saying is the electrical grid in our country is woefully over-subscribed, nearly on the brink of collapse, and easily disturbed if someone wanted to. The same things that hundreds of people have been warning us about for years (especially since the northeast blackout back in 2003) and the power companies have done little to alleviate the vulnerabilities in the system.

It doesn't though. With Instant-On enabled it uses 15W while "off" waiting for the voice command, and keeping the system in a sleep mode for a faster startup (That's really all it is, it's a sleep mode like your computer). Actually off in standby mode (controller will turn it on, but not "Xbox On") it uses <1W.

I've dropped mine several times (hard enough for the case to come off most of them), and I've had no GPS issues with my G2 personally. This is why I'm more inclined to believe the issue is hardware and related to the contact point with the antenna rather than an issue with software, etc. If it was the software, then most/all of the phones would have the issue. There were reports of GPS issues before KitKat and reports after KitKat. My phone overall is more stable all around after the KitKat update personally. Looking back through my Cerberus logs I don't see any erroneous data points before or after the update, going back to October either. There's a few points slightly off of where I was likely to be at then, but they are all within about 100m of my actual location (meaning I didn't have a GPS lock at the time and it was triangulated instead). Since I don't have my GPS locked on all of the time that's not unusual. Every time I've tried to use a GPS app it works fine.

MAybe a production fail, maybe something caused by a drop or other hard contact. I was seeing posts about poor GPS performance here, yet I never saw an LG G2 come into my store (Top 100 S&R store) for a GPS issue while I was working there.

If you're a bit adventurous you can try and fix it yourself... MAny phones now (the G2 included) have the GPS antenna in the rear housing. You can pop the rear housing off the phone and use a small tool to "pull" up the springs that are on the board itself. These contact springs touch the antenna contacts on the housing, if they don't make good contact you get poor performance. They look like this (this is a Verizon G2 that has different contact points and layout): This is the rear housing of the Sprint LS980, and the contact points it has... There may be more than this, I can't quite remember how many there are, or which ones are GPS specifically since it's been awhile. Many (most) phones do this now, and occasionally some devices the contact points won't be sticking far enough out from the board to make good contact. This can also happen after a phone is dropped, the contact points may get pushed in a bit. There isn't much risk of destroying anything as long as you're careful and don't pull too hard. I used to do this "fix" all the time as a technician, fixed the GPS issues 9/10 times.

The Top Tower tool was just being rolled out in retail in March shortly before I was laid off. It allowed reps to see the top 5 towers you use, the dates the 3G 1900 upgrades were scheduled for or completed, and had an option to notify the customer when their towers were upgraded. So I'd assume the system itself was in development and testing several months before that. Much like how Service Trender is not being integrated into Sprint Zone for ticket notifications.

I use my Kinect every day, but not for games. I use the voice commands almost exclusively (my phone as the remote if I don't want to talk since it has an IR blaster), it logs me in automatically (4 people in the house use the box so no auto-login), it turns off the controller automatically when I set it down for a couple minutes to watch a movie, go to the bathroom, etc. and that saves battery life. I hardly use it for any sort of gaming functions, but it's dramatically changed the way I use the Xbox and how I watch TV and movies. I couldn't imagine using my One without the Kinect to be honest. But that's just how I use the box. A kid may not use any of those voice features and just want to play a game, in that case Kinect isn't really needed in most cases.

I used 648GB last month according to my router logs, 555GB in March, 396GB in February, 480GB in January, 272GB in December, 210GB in November, 410GB in October, 237GB in September, 135GB in August, 188GB in July, 58GB in June, and 77GB in May. The numbers include combined up/down throughput, and I do not torrent files very often, which can dramatically increase usage as we know. My household usage is going up by about 50-100GB per month. Our usage for the most part has been pretty consistent for the last year. Starting March of last year one roommate began working from home, and we had our speeds increased and Comcast Business Class installed. Now that it has been a year, I find it interesting to go back through and look at our usage increase. In January we had one of my friends and his mother move in since they had a falling out with family and needed a place to stay, they are waiting on disability and SSI to be approved, and we have the room. His mother spends most of the day online since she is disabled and can't do much else, so this explains a spike starting then. In March I also was laid off and so I've been home more overall, online and such, which is likely related to our increase since then. We are not cord cutters, but we do use Netflix and HBO GO quite a bit in addition to the TV itself. If my household usage is going up by this much every month without us actually changing the way we are doing things, think of the average person that doesn't care or pay any attention at all. Many people treat their mobile device as just an extension of their home connection, or as a substitute for a bad home connection in some cases. My home usage is going up seemingly on its own even across months that we haven't made any significant changes in what we are using it for. Imagine if you move my usage across to a mobile network at a fraction of the overall usage, let's say if we took 1% of my home data usage and made it mobile instead. We'd be looking at 6.48GB last month, 5.55GB in March, 3.96GB in February, 4.8GB in January, 2.72GB in December, 2.1GB in November, 4.1GB in October, 2.37GB in September, 1.35GB in August, 1.88GB in July, 5.8GB in June, and 7.7GB in May. Now, this is just 1% of my overall household data usage, but it adds up very quickly and is fairly inconsistent month-to-month. I am knowledgeable of what uses data, and recognize issues with congestion, but even with that knowledge I can't even account for my household usage accurately. Now, think of the average person.

It is basically saying that the algorithms have determined your experience is sub-par and there aren't any known network deficiencies in the area to account for it. Assuming everything is up to date (as new PRLs and software upgrades can fix issues), they suggest taking it into an store (it doesn't specify S&R, but otherwise they likely can't do anything to fix it) to have it checked.

Yeah, not really a good way to phrase that. I don't know the specifics about the Connection Optimizer on the LTE devices, the training I had for it was released before LTE was widespread so it was aimed at WiMax and 3G devices. However, based on what I do know, I imagine the Connection Optimizer has the ability to ignore the built-in LTE scan timer that all of the LTE devices have. This would allow it to directly control the LTE scan of the phone when it knows you are in an area you've had an LTE signal previously. So since we already know that the SCO can turn on/off WiFi and scans based on location info (GPS, AGPS, etc.) it makes sense that it would use that same data to force an LTE scan in areas it knows you've had LTE previously. The phones don't constantly look for an LTE signal. When they are on 3G, they have a timer that determines how long until it scans for an LTE signal again. It varies by device, and can be adjusted temporarily depending on the circumstances. So say for instance the phone normally scans every 30 minutes for an LTE signal. If you have an LTE signal and lose it, the phone may instead scan again after 60 seconds (just in case it was an interference issue that caused the drop and you're back in range). If it fails to find a signal, it may extend that scan out to 5 minutes, then again to 15, and finally back to the base 30 minute interval. The intention is to optimize battery life versus keeping you on 4G as often as possible. A constant 4G scan would end up wasting your battery just like WiFi, Bluetooth, or WiMax scanning will. So they get around this by letting you have 4G enabled, and just occasionally scanning, using as little battery throughout the day as possible. In the real world, this system results in virtually no battery life difference by having LTE enabled versus leaving the phone in a 3G-only mode.

The training information I remember did say it remembers 4G towers (it did not specify WiMax or LTE) to automatically turn on/off 4G when in range. This leads me to believe it was referencing WiMax however... That being said, I can't imagine it not including the ability to ignore the LTE scan timer and instead to scan immediately when in range of a remembered tower.

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/4845-uicc-compatibility-matrix/ The UICC Compatibility Matrix shows what card works in what phones ,and includes the orderable UPC for the corporate Sprint retail system. Third Party, online, etc may use the other corresponding numbers instead.

This can be a fairly common issue with any device that uses a spring-type connection to a GPS antenna in the rear housing (most phones now). I saw it about 2x per week when I was a tech in the store. Pressing really hard on the contact on the back cover or dropping a device can cause that connection to bend slightly away from the housing, so it doesn't make a good connection anymore, reducing performance drastically.

A 1AMP charger is actually really weak now. I believe the charger that comes with the G2 and N5 is 1.8AMP and most Samsung devices now come with 2AMP+ chargers. I have a handful of 2.0 AMP chargers laying around specifically because they can provide the power required to both charge and use a device at the same time. The LG G2 has a 3,000mAh battery, so a 1AMP charger would charge it from dead to full in 3 hours (if the phone was off). Since you likely keep your phone on however, that uses some of the battery while it is charging. Lower signal reception will use more battery, long data sessions will use more battery, any apps that stay running and prevent the phone from entering a sleep state will use more battery, even if the screen is off, just to name a few things. 10-80% charge would be a 70% increase, thus 2,100mA that has gone to the battery. In 6 hours a 1AMP charger would have pushed through 6,000mA, so that means your device used up 3,900mA doing something in that timeframe. Screen on, constant data connections, not sleeping, etc. I'd recommend installing an app that looks at what specific apps are doing with wakelocks, etc. to determine where your root cause is, the built-in Android stuff gives general ideas, but nothing specific. I use BetterBatteryStats personally, it's complex, but if you read a guide first it's amazingly powerful.

I can guarantee you that the "ticket level" indicator means very little in Service Trender info. Ericsson doesn't really have the ticketing system together very well on the back end, and it offers very little to front line reps. Glance on the other hand has full transcripts of issues and solutions, but few reps are properly trained on all of its uses (and in retail, there is no training at all, and only Leads and above can access it, not even techs).

It is most likely a background APK used by one of the built-in feature testing apps accessed from the dialer codes.

Having a rooted device does not negate any device coverage. Sprint's official policy is that rooted devices are worked on. Custom ROMs however are not covered in store. There is no way to reliably say that a custom ROM did not adversely affect the phone in some way to cause the issue (unlikely, but impossible to prove so policy is built without making techs make that decision). That doesn't mean you won't get a tech that is willing to bend the rule if it is obvious it's not related, but expect issues if you aren't running the latest official software.

The store is not required to give a replacement device. That was where you were incorrect. Being a technician in a store I can't tell you how many times we had people come in demanding a replacement for issues with their device that either did not exist (network issues primarily), issues that were caused by third-party apps (most of them), an issue that was repairable (not requiring a replacement), or a phone that was damaged in some way that negated our ability to work on them (primarily physical or liquid damage). A store is not required to replace a device, and I see it get posted all over the internet that they are required to. The technicians have nearly full control over whether a device gets repaired, replaced, or sent to insurance based on many different criteria, and doing so simply at a customer's request or demand is not on that list. Perhaps I'm a little jaded after 7 years of working in wireless retail sales and support (I did both), but it is extremely helpful when a customer comes in with realistic expectations, not an inflated sense of what will happen based on a poorly worded sentence. These types of statements are the ones that some people take as fact, when they aren't and cling to when told otherwise. I know it's not the way you intended it, but without it being clarified there likely would be someone that would take it as face value and cause an issue in a retail store at some point in the future, something that is easily corrected with proper information.

Service Alerts show up automatically only for numbers that are directly affected. I.E. the tower is a top 5 tower used by the number, or the issue is Market-wide. a Care or TS agent can look up other specific alerts opened, but the output Service Trender uses in Sprint Zone only automatically pulls up the ones directly affecting the top used towers.

This is not entirely true. If it is something that is covered by ESRP, the store will repair the device if possible, or order a replacement. Sometimes, they will have a replacement on hand. Ordered replacements arrive within 3-4 days (usually 2-3). This is limited to 2 free claims per year I believe before there is a deductible of $25 per incident for future claims. Without TEP/ESRP there is a $75 fee for repair/exchange. If it is something that falls under the ERP portion of the TEP coverage (cracked screen, liquid damage, etc.), you must go through Asurion with the $100+ deductible. If there is anything on the device that would cause it to fall under ERP instead of the in-store coverage (even if your issue isn't related) you must go through Asurion.

The phone will stay on the first signal it comes across when scanning through the PRL until it loses that signal, even if another frequency is available, whatever it finds first will be used. The only exception is when you get to the edge of a cell site and it negotiates a transfer to a neighboring site. Most of the PRLs have 800 listed first, then 1900 after that. This is one of the disadvantages of CDMA and the PRLs, the network can't force you to another frequency as it wants like it can with LTE. Once you're on LTE, the network can move you as it sees fit, regardless of what the scan settings in the phone say (unless you actively disable certain bands). In addition, eCSFB only tells your phone to switch back from LTE to 1x of some kind for a phone call. I don't think it specifies what band it looks for, so the phone would quickly scan for the first it remembers seeing last, if that isn't available then it works back through the PRL entries. If eCSFB can force you to a certain band, it makes sense for it to send you to 800 coming out of LTE, as it will be the most likely to exist and give best signal and penetration wherever you are. From there you can migrate off to other sites and frequencies as needed.

The Galaxy Note 2 has an issue with maintaining proper connections to 800MHz signals in some markets (this was discovered after launch as 800MHz signals went online), unlike other devices. Since the network cannot send specific PRLS to specific areas, and it would adversely effect you if you travelled to these areas with a standard PRL, these devices have a customer PRL series until a solution can be found (if one ever is). The I-35 corridor (as with most of the country) is getting 800MHz service, but your phone will not connect to it due to this limitation. Check the current PRL you have on the phone. It should be PRL 2011 for the Note II. The standard current PRLs for other devices are 21100 or 25018 (depending on device type). These PRLs allow 800MHz, but may cause dropped call issues on the Note II. The reason I mention this is that while nearly any other current Sprint device would be able to use this signal to dramatically increase call reception, this particular device can't due to that issue, even though the antenna inside can.