swintec

just as a refresher....what does the phone (galaxy s20+ in my case) and signal check show when connected to 5G ultra capacity?

thats the thing, I do not have RCS. Textra (and third party sms apps) do not have the ability for it anyways. When TNX was enabled, I started seeing Sent >> Delivered for SMS..i dont get read/ typing indicators so this is different than RCS. i have just casually wondered what is going on on the network level for this to happen.

i guess maybe i forgot what TNA is. When tmobile first took over is TNA what they put all capable devices on, which made the devices prefer tmobile over sprint network? If so, yes, i had "5G" from the start but it required the anchor band. I never saw n71 (5G-BR 600 in signal check). You have seen n71 from the start, with no anchor band needed? As soon as i made the switch to TNX at the store and got in my car to play around, I started seeing n71 with no anchor band needed so unless they enabled n71 in the 10 minutes i was in the store swapping, i did not have this on TNA. I remembered something else that came with TNX....SMS messages now show Sent >> Delivered in Textra where as before they only showed Sent which has made me wonder what is happening on the network level that tmobile knows this and why sprint could never do it. I do not have RCS.

You get access to 5G-NR which is not (or was not) available on TNA.

my S20+ is still on the january update, any idea what gives? possibly because i am on TNX? i thought tmobile was pretty quick with updates.

i live in southern maine and tmobile coverage is amazing. while i know that doesnt exactly help you, their coverage maps are pretty darn accurate so i would feel confident with whatever they show you for the area you are going to.

is VoNR a thing yet? when connected to n71, if a call happens, the device drops over to band 71 LTE to make the call and then switches back to 5G n71. If I use samsung band selector and lock the device to n71 and do a call, the phone does not switch away from 5G and continues to reflect n71 but i dont have a way to know if that is just the phone not knowing what to show since it is band locked.

is there a way to enable 5G SA on the device in one of the various screens?

well, it does not show them as read. wild guess is that tmobile simply has agreements with the other carriers to give them this info (since it would all be done at the network level, the network knows if the device has received it) which apps like textra is able to utilize, completely independent on RCS?

I just did the swap this evening to TNX just for funsies, at a third party tmobile store. For what its worth, my mobile hotspot still works and running fast speedtest, doesnt seem to show any throttle. not sure if both of those will die overnight. I was disappointed to not see any 5G SA (yet) but what i do see a lot of now is n71 / 5G-NR 600....wtf is that? On the surface it just looks like band 71 is configured to show as 5G now, is this the faux 5G tmobile BS? Before TNX, the phone / signal check would just show Band 71 LTE but again, it seems like they have it configured now to show 5G which is silly. Speeds between the two are about the same which is why I am sort of calling shenanigans on this. Also, with TNX, Textra (which i have used for years) now shows SMS messages as "sent > delivered" prior to this and always on sprint, textra would just show them as sent. What does TNX do here to give the phone this insight now that apparently was never available before?

I have a S20+. On ROAMAHOME right now. My end game is 5G stand alone. In my house for example, the anchor band (band 2) is weak while the 5G signal shows a much better RSRP. so if i lose band 2 i lose 5G which is quite often. For instance, band 2 will show a RSRP of like -118 while 5G value is like -105 or so. If I did not have to be on the anchor band i should have pretty decent 5G service or am i not understanding signal check correctly? From the way I understand it though, if i go for 5G SA, I need TNX and in that case, I get migrated completely over to the TMO system, get a TMO bill, lose roaming on sprint and more importantly lose any USCC roaming. I am also on whatever the plan is that old SERO users were migrated to (Advantage Plus?). This also may bring other various issues. Is TNX really all I can do?

is TNA the same as ROAMAHOME then, or essentially the same just with a tmobile sim? plan stays in the sprint system? can i get 5G stand alone with TNA?

i havent been in a position to roam on USCC at this point since TMobile is so good around here now. I just used samsung band selector on my S20+ and chose band 12 and it picked up and connected to USCC without issues. everything works so maybe in areas that really need it, they left it alone. if you go much north beyond southern maine, if they did not have USCC roaming, no tmobile customer would have service so its kind of a big deal.

i live in southern maine but i only have ROAMAHOME on my acocunt but i am on tmobile all the time. coverage is amazing. maines a big state though so if you plan on going up north, you will probably have a bad time but as long as they still give US Cellular roaming you should be fine.

not sure when it started but i noticed this morning by S20+ is getting a TMo IP address (regular phone not tethering) now instead of Sprint and I also can not run trace routes anymore (used to work sprint), presumably because I am now under tmobiles network policies.