boomerbubba

Sprint's position has been that this is a generalized issue and blames Pandora. Interesting that you find similar problems with Slacker.

Are we talking about the same screen that an end-user would typically access via Settings -> About Device .... etc. Or are you talking about some hidden LTE screen reached from the dialer or other means of launching? (There are a couple of hidden LTE utilities that I don't know much about.)

Robert, can you confirm that the GS3 (before this update) is displaying RSRP as the dBm reading on the Settings -> About ... screen?

Well, I can almost talk myself into this adventure. The downside is that after that exciting daytrip -- the Dr. Pepper Museum! -- I would be back in Austin with crummy 3G service. And I would have retired my current Wimax device that actually works in my office. Meanwhile, the Austin LTE rollout seems to be slipping into September, and there is nary a live tower to play with here. (I don't believe it's birds. I suspect that Sprint and Ericsson diverted resources to Houston, DFW, etc, to fight the marketing fires caused by too-high expectations.)

Let's hope they didn't do some really kludgy thing like convert the correct RSRP dBm reading to RSSI internally as an easy workaround to affect the threshold-fallback logic, and that side-effected the dBm and bars display.

Duplicate post

Do you recall for sure how the Settings -> About screen reported dBm before the update? If you are right about the update changing that screen to read CDMA voice strength instead of LTE strength, then this phone may have no way to show a dBm reading for LTE. Unless some third-party developer writes as app to pull it from the Android API, which is not standardized or well documented for this purpose. Just to be sure, maybe somebody else with a GS3 in an LTE market could do some before-and-after tests of this particular screen when applying the update.

I still wonder if Waco wouldn't be a more representative test of LTE coverage because it was designed as a Field Implementation Test area in the first place. When I compare sponsor site maps -- "completed" as of July 22 vs the total project -- a large majority of the towers in Waco seem to have been completed. (By that same comparison, for example in Houston, the towers completed were a thin fraction of the total sites.) Also several months ago there was a theoretical RF coverage map built at S4GRU using the CloudRF tools, and even then the coverage seemed pretty complete. I have almost persuaded myself to pull the trigger on buying the GS3 early just so I could drive up to Waco and test. But I don't have any trustworthy apps that would log LTE signal and connectivity automatically for me as I traversed the area.

Via XDA, from QBking77 purports to show devices connecting to Sprint LTE without being activated first. Just passing this curiosity along.

I am still not convinced that the EVO's so-called "LTE Record" screen lists anything except CDMA base stations that the device logged during the time you had an LTE connection, which may or may not have come from the same physical towers. As for the location of the tower, you apparently are relying on the Netmonitor map screen, which does not necessarily show actual tower locations. Netmonitor is definitely mapping the lat/lon coordinates transmitted by the CDMA sector base stations, and the coordinates for each sector BSID might be offset some distance away from the tower site. It is apparent from your Netmonitor map that phenomenon is occurring here. For example, the points mapped by Netmonitor and labeled 03073 and 03074 are obviously two sectors on a tower that is actually not at either plotted location. (Most likely there is a third sector named either 03072 or 03075, which you did not happen to encounter from your location. The actual tower would be found somewhere within the triangle formed by those three points. If you were an S4GRU sponsor, you would have access to maps showing the actual locations of all the towers, so you could deduce and pinpoint where the actual tower is within that triangle.) So I suggest that from the evidence you captured, you know that you got an LTE connection from one or more towers. But you cannot know where. There is no app known that can directly map LTE towers.

It's all right in the permissions tab shown in the Google Play Store. I could copy them here, but here is a handy link instead: The Android ecosystem is basically set up on the premise that it will allow a lot of intrusions and just have them disclosed before an app is installed. (Unfortunately, these permissions are grouped quite loosely.) It is up to the user to protect himself or not.

Installing the app grants it permissions that could enable reading your phone number and those you connect to, as well as your location, and report them somewhere via an Internet connection over which you have no control. And if the widget is installed, then it runs full time as a service. I choose not to do that, although it is increasingly common as a business model to barter one's private details in exchange for the use of a "free" app. But even the paid "Pro" version has all those permissions.

Yeah, another of the class of apps that I don't like for privacy reasons, even the so-called "Pro" version. I realize that some people don't share my opinion, but I won't install such an app and widget.

After I posted that comment I did find an earlier thread in the Dev subforum, which is not my usual venue to browse. The General subforums have been in disarray for a couple of days because they are trying to reorganize them by carrier as they should have done all along. (Actually the XDA mods started the GS3 subforums separated several weeks ago, then mashed everything together into a big mess and now are trying to sort everything back to separate.)

You need to be stock, or restore to stock, to apply updates like this.

Found a download link for the update.zip at XDA. BTW, LG8 is the correct version. Sprint's original announcement erroneously called it LG4.

It's a little complicated. But then Albert Einstein reportedly said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."

FYI, Sprint's original announcement got the version number wrong. The OTA update is version L710VPLG8 Release notes are the same as previously announced

Does anyone really believe this is a significant cause of delays? I do believe they said it on the conference call. But seriously. There have been birds longer than there have been cell towers. I call shenanigans.

Typically not all users get it immediately. But there are bigger issues confusing everyone. Some users who have got the update say it is named LG8, Not LG4 as the announcement said. So either the update or the announcement is wrong. Sprint has been notified and is investigating

Sprint is trying to get more PR mileage by announcing "cities" rather than the major markets we are tracking. Except for Baltimore, which is its own market, the minor cities announced today are part of the same markets already launched July 15. Sherman-Denison, TX = part of DFW market Gainesville, GA = part of Atlanta market Manhattan/Junction City, KS = part of Kansas City market And relative to S4GRU project projections here, I have to consider the absence of Austin from today's "end of August" list to be slippage.

Some users are now reporting that the actual update being pushed is LG8, not LG4. Sprint may have botched the announcement

This makes me worry that Austin has slipped.

From what I can tell, the XDA community is clueless about this. The update had been announced for about 12 hours with not even a mention there. I just started a thread there.

The signal strength metrics for LTE are different. Read this primer.