boomerbubba

There is nothing lte from Sprint being done in Arizona. Sorry but S4GRU doesn't mention anything about az yet.

Well, there was this.

In my mind his comment is clearly a tongue in cheek reference and not to be condescending.

 

Robert via Samsung Galaxy S-III 32GB using Forum Runner

Yes, that's how I meant to use the common metaphor. If anyone is offended, I am sorry. But the serious matter-of-fact point remains so I don't want this to be a distraction. There have been a few too many cases of sponsors repeating the private detailed data in the public forums. Anyone is welcome to become a sponsor, and if they do they need to be aware of the site's rules. When I need to discuss the privileged data, I try to make my comments in the privileged forums provided for that purpose.

LOL, do you read the things you post before you post them???

Perhaps the idiomatic phrase I used just went over your head? It's in the common vernacular, although originating from a biblical reference. Certain information is reserved for sponsors, that's all. That's why there are special sponsor forums for discussing that stuff.

Okay after i donate ill look it up and let you guys know.

Great. When you do that, the best place to post is in one of the sponsor forums, where the map data can be discussed in detail. Posting confidential sponsor data in this public forum would sort of be casting pearls before swine.

Im not sure if its a new tower, i doubt it as well based on like you said not many new towers. . Sorry for the confusion in first post, i meant more i had never payed much attention to the the water tower before i saw the crew working on it so for all i know it could have been a tower before. Do the pictures help to identify it as sprints?

The easiest way to solve the mystery is to look at the interactive NV project map for that area, zoom in and see if that site is on it.

I plan on donating tomorrow, payday:-) . Even so i imagine this wouldbt be on the maps just yet, maps show completed sites accepted by sprint, which i highly doubt this has been with the crew still present, or all towers schedulded for NV? Either way ill see tomorrow. This site is great, new hobby haha. Just waiting for some funds to show some love.

There also are other S4GRU maps that show all the towers regardless of status.

I sort of doubt that what you saw is a Sprint tower under construction, since there are very few wholly new towers in the NV project, and Sprint is not dong much to expand its tower footprint. The NV project basically uses the existing Sprint towers and refits them with new antennas and radios.

I believe this article focused on coverage, not quality of data performance.

 

Robert via CM9 Kindle Fire using Forum Runner

That's the way I read it, FWIW. I actually have seldom experienced problems with Sprint on its voice coverage or even dropped calls, although I have nothing kind to say about the current state of legacy 3G data.

Hopefully this is even sprints tower.

Just become a sponsor here at S4GRU and you will gain access to the exclusive maps showing exactly where all the Sprint NV towers are. Then you can easily test your own theory about that.

Is there a app or a setting that will show wakelocks? or hung apps that are consuming power?

Try Better Battery Stats

Is there any data we get from an app like RF Tracker or Network Info that can be used to positively ID what tower we are connected to?I know there is the whole issue about different sectors being assigned different BSID, but does the Network ID or System ID give us anyway to determine exactly what tower we are connected to? What info exactly does the System and Network ID provide?

The IDS captured by the apps are from the CDMA network hierarchy. There is no resource we know of here that correlates them in a handy table with the Sprint tower IDs. But with the S4GRU maps in hand as a sort of Rosetta Stone, you know where the towers actually are. So when surveying with the apps to capture the CDMA IDs and the coordinates they squawk -- I prefer CDMA Field Test -- it is usually possible to figure out which tower is which. You might need to deliberately circle around each tower site to log all the BSIDs, which typically are sequentially assigned to the three sectors of each tower.

Each tower usually fits one of two patterns:

• All three sector radios broadcast the actual coordinates of the tower.
  
• Each sector broadcasts unique coordinates that are offset some distance away, and the three points form a triangle around the tower.
  

I wonder if this is what some of those so-called "signal booster" apps are doing under the hood. I have always figured their user payload to be some sort of placebo effect after toggling the connection somehow.

Is this for real? Just read this at XDA in the Sprint GS3 Forum , purporting to be from a Sprint rep. It is supposed to be a new service that can improve your signal if you are at a stationary location, and somehow be related to NV.

 

For those with less than great reception try this!

I'm a sprint rep and got some good info that just launched.

 

Dial *18 from your sprint device.

 

That is the number for "Sprints Cell Tower Enhancement". It will lock on your present location and boost your signal by at least one bar. You will have to do this as you move about to different locations/towers but if you are stationary and having signal issues, it can help

...

 

This tool is part of the "Sprint Network Vision" rollout. This is very new, more details as they come.

Looking for informed reaction and a reality check here.

Edit: From subsequent comments on XDA, whatever this is it does not seem to be new. It sure was new to me.

Any more suggestions? I really don't want to have to exchange my phone for a non s-off one..

I think you should consider yourself fortunate to get any exchange at all. That would be a gift. Does the warranty normally cover rooted and modded phones that stop working? The common sense rule is that folks who mod their phones are at their own risk from that point, especially for software issues.

Because the LTE signal is more fragile and cannot push data on a weak signal like EVDO can.

 

The LTE signal and EVDO signal strength should be the roughly the same at the same distance from the tower (if you are measuring both in RSSI).

 

However, LTE will stop being effective around -95dBm and EVDO will be able to work until approximately -105dBm. So if you are standing in a place with a -100dBm EVDO signal, you would also have a -100dBm LTE signal. But your device will probably not show LTE in your signal indicator because it cannot connect and be useful at that strength.

 

Does that make sense?

 

With LTE 800, the -95dBm threshold will be farther out from the site than LTE 1900, giving more coverage.

 

Robert via Samsung Galaxy S-III 32GB using Forum Runner

Offsetting that a little, considering the total changes effected by NV relative to legacy EVDO, I have read here that the radiated power should be about "20 percent" higher due to the proximity of the radio to the antenna. And presumably there is a similar improvement in the tower's receive strength since the coax losses go away there, too. But if that "20 percent" is a linearly absolute change in wattage, it would only amount to about one decibel. Am I right about interpreting that?

BTW, I will be a natural test subject for all of this theory when LTE finally comes to Austin. At my desk these days, my RSSI dBm levels vary a few decibels up and down from -95.

The forums are here for discussion so it seems a wild waste of time to take offense to said discussion.

Yep.

Robert..I am very concerned about this. Does this mean that Sprint's maps will always be erroneous like this and that LTE will remain just as spotty as wimax currently is (at least until 800 mhz LTE is turned on next year)?? Or do you anticipiate these holes filling in over time, even at 1900 mhz, to eventually more closely mirror Sprint's fantastically conjured up coverage maps? I just am wondering if it's going to get better in the short term or is this the way it's gonna be - extremely spotty LTE a la wimax - until the next gen 800 mhz LTE devices being shipping. Thanks in advance for your input.

You are conflating two different issues: The accuracy of Sprint's maps and the completeness of the coverage to date. The sprint maps are over-optimistic, as Robert has stated and demonstrated matter-of-factly,

But future coverage is not the same as current coverage. I will repeat my comment from the parallel sponsor thread on this very topic:

And let me add a too-obvious observation for the benefit of those just tuning in: Remember that the map reflects the coverage as of yesterday (8/16/2012) and the rollout is still a work in progress. If you eyeball the sites on the total project map next to this one, you can see that the big coverage holes typically include towers that are not complete yet. As I understand the limitations of the CloudRF tool, it might not be possible to display coverage in this area as complete because there would be too many towers.

Not sure what you're trying to prove. I stated that the phone is not capable of connecting to Verizon LTE.

 

Sent with AOSP JB Toro on Forum Runner

Yes. And you also said, "Not sure why it showed up like that, but I would guess it was ehrpd."

That's what I was responding to. I was explaining how LTE could show up on the Netmonitor screen while it also showed a CDMA connection to Verizon. It was all just a reporting anomaly. But Android and Netmonitor are capable of distinguishing between eHRPD and LTE. I believe that he had a Sprint LTE connection.

Hate to burst your bubble, but the phone is incapable to connect to Verizon lte. Not sure why it showed up like that, but I would guess it was ehrpd.

He's looking at a Netmonitor screen that is very misleading. One field on the app screen shows the data type as LTE because there is an LTE connection somewhere. The other fields show CDMA IDs that the phone happens to be connected to at the same time. And further, because of timing issues in the underlying Android API, we can't even be sure that the device is updating all those CDMA data elements concurrently to provide data for an app like Netmonitor to display. The SID, NID and BSID values are not even updated in sync with each other. This is documented as a known issue with the Android API.

Robert,

 

Hello I am brand new to this forum. Supposedly Dallas Fort Worth is covered with 4G LTE and the Sprint map says so where I am located. I am not getting a 4G signal anywhere on my phone. What do I need to do to my Samsung Galaxy SIII to get it to recognize the 4G Signal? I went into the Internet Settings and found Mobile Network. I changed it to LTE/CDMA from the Factory CDMA setting but so far "no dice".

 

Is there an update or reset that you know of that I need to do to received the LTE signal?

 

Also how do I get a forum password to enter this Forum on http://s4gru.com/ind...sites-complete/

 

Thank you

 

Eugene

Welcome.

To see the Sponsor Forum, become a sponsor.

Make sure your GS3 is running the latest update (baseband version L710VPLG8) . The LG8 update has been pushing out for more than two weeks, but still not all devices have received it.

bmoses is referring to CDMA1X 800, not LTE 800.

 

AJ

Oh. Looking back now I see that your are right. It just didn't register with me that anyone would consider CDMA 1x 800 to be "one of the biggest improvements of NV."

lol, amen to that i really hope it does, have 9 lines on my account and a good chunk of them want iPhones, would be a shame if they miss out on one of the biggest improvements of NV

I think they all will be clamoring for iPhone 6 models by the time Sprint's LTE service is ready in the 800 Mhz band. Maybe iPhone 7.

I will probably be looking at a Galaxy S 4 or Galaxy S 5.

Where is this hidden engineering screen?

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

1. Open the phone dialer.
   
2. Dial ##DEBUG#
   
3. In the Lock Code box enter SPRINT
   
4. Tap OK
   
5. Select LTE Engineering
   

Do you have your LTE radio off? Trying running in LTE/CDMA mode and see if you get even better speeds. The network status should change from " EVDO Rev A" to "eHRPD".

I don't think eHRPD per se is supposed to be any faster than EVDO.

Does anyone know if the S3 needs to be cdma/LTE toggled or airplane toggled to pick up its first LTE signal?

 

I thought if I just keep it on the cdma/LTE and request data it will seamlessly go between the two as I drive around. I assume the indicator on the phone will notify me of 4G in a area.

 

I read of forcing it to LTE but that seems silly unless you are just testing.

The toggle reportedly is/was necessary on the older LG2 firmware, but not with the latest LG8 firmware. You do have to make sure that the LTE setting is turned on, though.

Well i meant more of a "boots on the ground" type method but you have a good point. This is a very handy/helpful site and I do appreciate it much.

Monitoring apps by themselves won't do you much good. First, understand that none of them are able to map LTE towers directly. The better ones do log and map CDMA sectors (typically 3 per tower) which may or may not be actual tower locations. (I use the CDMA Field Test app for that.) Even when they are not, they do map coordinates offset some distance around the towers, with sequential BSID values. So if you want to do a boots-on-the-ground survey, you still need S4GRU's map of the actual towers to see where they are. There are several threads discussing this issue here. Just search.