saywhatman

I'm going to SF next week with a Nexus 5.  When I visited last year, CSFB wasn't working in SF.  Has there been any progress on CSFB in the city proper?

Not really unfortunately. There's been some progress in the Richmond district, but the city proper is pretty stagnant still, with 3G clusters still not being accepted for e/CSFB usage. 

I see. Thank you for clarifying.  

 

Having said that, i'm shocked that people would even consider all that baseband work when one could easily achieve the same thing through *#*#4636#*#* and selecting 'LTE only' in the 'Phone Information' tab.

 

I dealt with missed calls, but once the text messaging became unreliable I had to revert back to the Sprint compatible radio settings...

Just putting the phone in LTE Only mode will not allow it to scan for B41 and B26 on the newer basebands. Only the older basebands will scan for these frequencies w/o a PRL update. 

I have also found some elusive B41 in Chicago after repeated profile/prl upgrades!







I'm afraid to reboot!

As a side note, I didn't notice when it switched. I'm indoors in a building with quite good B25 penetration, and I was on WiFi. MikeJeep, I went back to B25, but I'll try and send you a diagnostic when I get back on to B41. 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
 

In terms of capacity, yes. In terms of speed, no. 

Would two 5X5 LTEs be almost as good as one 10x10?

When it's really bad the connection just times out and no data services work. Other times it will will get to sub 100kbps speeds with several hundred milliseconds of latency which is very frustrating to try to do anything on. Trust me I wouldn't be complaining if it maintained greater than 2mbps with sub 150ms latency. Switching to 3g didn't help much when the connection was timing out on LTE, it was dial up speed at best. I suspect that the backhaul was saturated at that point, me thinks 100mbps isn't quite enough to feed a 4g accepted site.

More likely the air link is saturated or there are interference problems. Each sector of 5x5Mhz spectrum has a 37.5Mbps maximum throughput shared between all the users connected to that sector. 37.5Mbps * 3 Sectors + 3.1Mbps (EVDO) * 3 Sectors is only a bit more than 100Mbps. 

Chicago area here. A network scan reveals CLEAR and 311-870 PLMN on my Nexus 5. I can see a confirmed B41 site from my window. I can't access B41 normally, but without a SIM, connecting to CLEAR both put me on B41 with an EARFCN of 40056. For some reason, sometimes on 311-870 I can connect to 41, but other times I get B4 with a T-Mobile PLMN. Not sure what's happening there

This mainly affects Samsung markets. In the majority of Alcatel Lucent and Ericsson markets, everything works just fine, even on 4G only (purple) towers.

 

 

 

You sites do not need to be 3G/4F CSFB to be in place.

Ah, good to know. Thanks! 

I posted about the Nexus 5 being "stuck" on 3G before when close to an active LTE tower. Happened again today, and I don't believe it was a "scanning" timer issue, because I stayed in the same spot having lunch for about an hour and the phone never kicked over to LTE until I toggled airplane mode.   Seems like a real issue that hopefully will get resolved at some point. 

It's probably a eCSFB issue. 4G only towers (purple ones on the sponsor maps) are not hooked up correctly to communicate with the 3G side of the network in non-incumbent markets, so in order to preserve calls and texts going to the phone, tri-band phones (which don't have SVLTE), park on 1x/3G. Robert wrote an article on the wall about it that explains better than me. 

Has anyone noticed faster data in sf and Oakland ?

I haven't been to SF recently, but there have been huge advances in Oakland. I'm back here for winter break and its like night and day compared to where it was when I left 3 months ago. There are still a lot of dead spots, but things seem much better.

You have to re-register your device with the 2-step service each time you do a rom reinstall to receive a new password to log in to Google. You can't use a verification code. 

on 800 can we get the almost 2mb speeds that 3g advertises or are we stuck with only 1x speeds

On 1x 800 CDMA, there will be only 1X data speeds, yes. Once 800 LTE is rolled out, you'll be getting LTE speeds with a compatible handset.

Actually a few tri band phones will have access to it next week. Including the Samsung Galaxy Mini, Mega and also the HTC ONE Max.

Really? I was under the impression that none of those phones did. Sprint Press Release

Wimax is getting converted.  Some of Sprint Spark is most likely active in SF because of existing Wimax sites. Did anyone with data card/modem find any Sprint Spark in SF?  

But it doesn't really matter, since no tri-band phones will have access to the network until an OTA update comes out in 2014. A good amount of downtown is covered in 2.6 Ghz. 

Of course, YMMV. Currently indoors with a -95dbm LTE signal I get 2.17 down and 3.57 up on the South side of Chicago. 

Thanks for the input. I appreciate it. It is tempting to wait to see how Sprint is going to handle the Nexus 5. If I can buy it from Google and use it on Sprint's network, then I will buy it because I have very little to lose. I guess my hesitation wasn't about whether the network would be built. I have looked at all the maps and definitely see the progress. I was worried about the quality of the service once the rollout is complete. I live in an area that has 4G coverage via sensorly and also is triangulated by 3 towers on the map. I would have expected 3G service to improve with these upgrades, but that has not been the case.   Is this a correct assumption? I fully realize I may be wrong about this,which is why I'm asking. THe whole reason behnid my orignal post is that I assumed that the LTE service would be as slow (relatively, obviously) as the 3G service I currently getting. If this is not the case and I am expecting too much in terms of 3G service improvement, I'll go out and get an LTE phone tomorrow (or Friday).

I think you're expecting a bit too much from 3G improvements. 4G LTE enhancements, especially with up and coming tri-band deployment will really be where the improvement is at. Also, judging by the sponsor maps, all of the improvements in Madison have been 4G only, meaning that the new 3G panels and RRUs have not been accepted for activation yet, probably for interference concerns with legacy Motorola equipment, so the 3G improvements might not be as large yet as they will be. 

Frankly, the 3G improvement with Network Vision has been small, at least in the Chicago area. Voice is about the same, and data is somewhat faster, but one of Sprint's issues has been backhaul speed, and once the backhaul is improved, 4G LTE becomes available, so 3G data becomes almost irrelevant.  The real payoffs so far in Chicagoland have been 800 voice and 1900 LTE, both of which are imminent in SE Wisconsin. I am holding my breath for 800 LTE, which should dramatically improve coverage and in-building reception.  Don't know the specs of the Nexus 5, so I am not sure what bands it covers.  That's why I mentioned the new iPhones (that, and the fact that you have an old iPhone), because I know that they will cover both 800 and 1900 voice and data.  My recommendation somewhat pains me, because I am an Android bigot, but we are still several weeks away from any Android that will cover 800/1900.

The FCC documentation for the LGD820 (which is rumored to be the Nexus 5) has it listed as capable of using all three LTE bands on Sprint (B25 800, B26 1900 and B41 2600). The LG G2, as well will offer triband coverage on Sprint. If you can wait, the release date of the Nexus 5 should be in mid-October. I think I'm dropping my HTC One off on ebay and grabbing one of these guys to take advantage of the huge amounts of 2600 being deployed in Chicagoland right now

 

Yeah you Are correct but it also has EVDO 0n 800mhz (dont think sprint is putting EVDO Rev. A on 800mhz though). Frequinecies: 

 

Frequencies and Data Type

LTE: Band 25 (1900MHz); CDMA 1x/EVDO Rev A, 800/850/1900MHz

 

Holy bump batman!

How can I tell if my LTE EVO is picking up a 800 signal? I have the signalcheck lite app will this tell me?

Yes, signalcheck will show 1X800 in the 1X portion of the signal display. If you have the pro version, it will also notify you when it detects an 800SMR signal.