ingenium

Just wanted to say great job on adding EARFCN support to LTE Discovery! Works great on my Nexus 6P, which doesn't have an engineering screen to show that information. I actually just added a pull request to add this functionality to Signal Detector (https://github.com/lordsutch/Signal-Strength-Detector/pull/1/files) because I didn't realize you had implemented it. 

 

Is there any chance you can add the earfcn to the logs? It would be useful to be able to track it. Perhaps have a new log entry when the earfcn changes for a given GCI as well. Sprint has been shuffling their earfcns for B41 lately as they shutdown WiMAX and add more B41 carriers, and also as they've been rolling out 10x10 FDD B25. 

 

Also, are there any public Intents that could be broadcast by other apps to enable/disable settings in LTE Discovery? Specifically, I'd like the ability to turn Crowdsource, Live Notifications, and Site Logging on and off programatically. I'd prefer not to have them running all the time, but if there were public Intents then I could use Tasker to control it and enable those features when I'm driving and/or charging, then disable them afterward. I'm not asking that you make a Tasker plugin for it, just to have a BroadcastReceiver to listen for intents and update the app settings accordingly. 

 

Lastly, is it possible to add the ability to import/export a database of known site locations? Flompholph compiles the data from market specific tracking spreadsheets and makes a site database that can be imported into Signal Check Pro. This allows it to display the name and location of the site (drawn from a "user_note" field), along with showing the user_notes and distance for neighbor cells. It would be nice to have this functionality in LTE Discovery as well, and would allow the actual site location to be shown in the Map tab. 

Anyone know what tools we can do this with?

You could likely use one of the SDR dongles and some sort of converter between the dongle and antenna to shift the frequency down into a range the SDR can tune to. You're better off asking in www.reddit.com/r/rtlsdr they have a pretty active community and I've seen discussion about this sort of thing there before.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

No experience but being Open World probably means you'll be on Movistar, which is one of the smaller carriers there, as opposed to the huge, state run Kölbi (do let us know if you can roam on them).

 

That said, Movistar does seem to have nationwide coverage - here's their coverage map by dBm levels. I would not expect coverage in the red areas.

http://movistar.cr/descubre/movil/cobertura-movil

 

According to Wikipedia they use:

GSM-1800 (GPRS, EDGE)

850/2100 MHz UMTS, HSDPA

1800 MHz LTE

 

So you should expect 3G/HSPA+ in cities at least, if they're anything like Movistar Mexico.

When I was there (pre Open World) I got a SIM for Kolbi from a kiosk in the airport. It was less than $20 and I didn't come close to using my data allotment. I was super impressed with their coverage. Strong HSPA+ even in remote mountainous areas.

 

If you plan to do much traveling through the country and Sprint indeed puts you on a carrier with not great coverage, it might be better to just get a local SIM, especially if you're relying on your phone for navigation. If it's just for casual browsing you'll probably be fine.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

I'm sure it can provide more detailed data, but since root is required to read it, I doubt it's worth the time and effort for Mike to implement. I doubt most people who use signal check have rooted devices.

 

That depends on the devices being used. For Nexus devices, it's easy to root, and you can even still accept OTAs while rooted using FlashFire.

 

Using /dev/smd11 also allows looking up the EARFCN, which is huge! The Nexus 6P for example doesn't have a functioning engineering screen, but using CellMapper I can now finally lookup the EARFCN (I verified it is reporting the correct values). I suspect CA status may also be available. If so, that would certainly be a valuable addition to SCP. I think a decent number of users would root to be able to have the EARFCN and CA status in their SCP logs. Especially those of us without functioning engineering screens.

 

Screenshot showing some of the data available: https://plus.google.com/+IvanZupan/posts/3aXM3Y6QCC2

 

EDIT: I watched that interface while CellMapper was running, and it appears to be issuing a standard modem AT command ("AT$QCRSRP?"). It looks like it returns a list of neighboring cells and their EARFCN:

root@angler:/ # dd if=/dev/smd11 bs=10000 count=100                            

$QCRSRP: 018,8763,"-095.20",117,8763,"-090.50",025,8763,"-099.20",000,8665,"000.00",000,8665,"000.00",057,40056,"-140.00",000,40056,"000.00"

OK
AT$QCRSRP?
$QCRSRP: 117,8763,"-092.50",018,8763,"-095.80",025,8763,"-102.70",465,8665,"-097.70",223,8665,"-107.60",000,8665,"000.00",000,8665,"000.00",156,40056,"-102.90"

OK
AT$QCRSRP?
$QCRSRP: 117,8763,"-092.40",018,8763,"-094.80",025,8763,"-109.60",465,8665,"-097.70",223,8665,"-107.60",000,8665,"000.00",000,8665,"000.00",156,40056,"-102.90"

OK
AT$QCRSRP?
$QCRSRP: 117,8763,"-092.40",018,8763,"-095.80",025,8763,"-100.50",465,8665,"-097.70",223,8665,"-107.60",000,8665,"000.00",000,8665,"000.00",156,40056,"-102.90"

OK
AT$QCRSRP?
$QCRSRP: 117,8763,"-092.50",018,8763,"-094.70",025,8763,"-108.00",465,8665,"-097.70",223,8665,"-107.60",000,8665,"000.00",000,8665,"000.00",156,40056,"-102.90"

OK
AT$QCRSRP?
$QCRSRP: 117,8763,"-092.70",018,8763,"-094.40",025,8763,"-108.20",465,8665,"-097.70",223,8665,"-107.60",000,8665,"000.00",000,8665,"000.00",156,40056,"-102.90"

OK
AT$QCRSRP?
$QCRSRP: 117,8763,"-092.60",018,8763,"-095.70",025,8763,"-107.80",465,8665,"-097.70",223,8665,"-107.60",000,8665,"000.00",000,8665,"000.00",156,40056,"-102.90"

OK
AT$QCRSRP?
$QCRSRP: 117,8763,"-092.90",018,8763,"-094.00",025,8763,"-099.50",465,8665,"-097.70",223,8665,"-107.60",000,8665,"000.00",000,8665,"000.00",156,40056,"-102.90"

OK
AT$QCRSRP?
$QCRSRP: 117,8763,"-092.50",018,8763,"-094.70",025,8763,"-099.90",465,8665,"-097.70",223,8665,"-107.60",000,8665,"000.00",000,8665,"000.00",156,40056,"-102.90"

OK
AT$QCRSRP?
$QCRSRP: 117,8763,"-093.80",018,8763,"-094.30",025,8763,"-101.30",465,8665,"-097.70",223,8665,"-107.60",000,8665,"000.00",000,8665,"000.00",156,40056,"-102.90"

OK
AT$QCRSRP?
$QCRSRP: 117,8763,"-093.50",018,8763,"-095.50",025,8763,"-097.40",465,8665,"-097.70",223,8665,"-107.60",000,8665,"000.00",000,8665,"000.00",156,40056,"-102.90"

OK
AT$QCRSRP?
$QCRSRP: 117,8763,"-092.90",018,8763,"-093.30",025,8763,"-101.80",465,8665,"-097.70",223,8665,"-107.60",000,8665,"000.00",000,8665,"000.00",156,40056,"-102.90"

OK
AT$QCRSRP?
$QCRSRP: 117,8763,"-094.00",018,8763,"-094.30",025,8763,"-108.80",465,8665,"-097.70",223,8665,"-107.60",000,8665,"000.00",000,8665,"000.00",156,40056,"-102.90"

OK
AT$QCRSRP?
$QCRSRP: 117,8763,"-092.90",018,8763,"-095.00",025,8763,"-096.00",465,8665,"-097.70",223,8665,"-107.60",000,8665,"000.00",000,8665,"000.00",156,40056,"-102.90"

OK
^C0+28 records in
0+28 records out
2501 bytes transferred in 34.785 secs (71 bytes/sec)

Each response appears to be PCI, EARFCN, RSRP, PCI, EARFCN, RSRP, PCI, EARFCN, RSRP, etc. I THINK the first one in the list is the site that it's currently connected to. This should be pretty easy to add into SCP. Now, the question is if there are other modem commands that would return CA status... The full list of AT commands can be found at the bottom of this post, including the Qualcomm specific additions: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=53508236&postcount=268 There may be new commands that have been added since that was posted.

An update to CellMapper just came out, and it added a new root feature for Qualcomm devices to fetch the band information directly from the modem. No need to deduce it from the GCI. As a result, it also shows the band info for neighbor cells. It works using the "default" device on my Nexus 6P,  /dev/smd11

 

Might be worth investigating to see if this can be used to get more detailed information than what is provided by the Android API. And also to perhaps get around the 1x + LTE bug or stale data. 

So I notice on the announcement it said that it included sprint global roaming. Does this mean if I switched to this plan I can't use open world. Even though I had to reset my iPhone to get it working and then do it again when I got back to the states, once it was working it was pretty awesome to have access to 3G service while traveling abroad. Thanks

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My interpretation is that it's enabled by default, whereas when it was initially announced you had to manually add it to your plan.

 

I doubt this would prevent you from removing it to add open world, but I could be wrong... Or they may change open world to be stackable with global roaming (ie not have to remove it first).

 

For what it's worth, I haven't been able to log into Sprint for the last hour. I keep getting bad gateway saying that the proxy received an invalid response from an upstream server. Site upgrades I'm guessing... But you'd think they'd do this at night like most companies...

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

It would be nice, but for some reason I doubt it will include tethering. They didn’t include tethering when they matched their unlimited family plan last time. But I hope they prove me wrong this time!

 

I wonder what percentage of unlimited data plan users, that have tethering as part of their plan, actually utilize it.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Most probably don't use it much, but it's nice to have in a pinch. I'm rooted with the tethering hack, and I MIGHT use it once every year or 2. And then it's only because I want to use my laptop real quick instead of trying to do something on my comparatively small phone screen and wifi isn't available. So I've used maybe 100MB of tethering over the course of several years. I keep the hack just for piece of mind. Even including 1GB of tethering would be valuable to me, despite the fact that I would rarely use it. The cost to Sprint would be negligible.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

Oh yeah, mid to upper Cal?

37.3544° N, 121.9692° W Cal?

It's considered Northern California.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

They'll need to do non contiguous intraband carrier aggregation. It's LTE release 11 iirc. Intraband contiguous CA #+# is lte release 10. 20+20+20 contiguous CA is release 12.

 

Not exactly sure if the D1 and D2 equipment have the software updates need for now contiguous CA yet.

Are there any Rel 11 devices on Sprint currently? I think the Snapdragon 810 is Rel 10 correct?

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

 

 

Tucson's has no B26 or B41 active, so we finally got our first 10x10 B25 to atleast ease up some congestion finally!

 

I can't get the LTE Engineering page up on my N6P, if you know of a way, let me know!

 

Ninja Edit:

The 6P technically has engineering screens.... They're just useless. They don't display anything other than the PLMN and Serving Cell, which for some reason is always 0. I have my fingers crossed it'll get fixed in the March or April update (the Nexus 6 got them in the mid-March update last year).

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

It seems like an easy thing for their techs to do as they drive around.

 

Sprint does have in house techs that drive around and investigate user reported issues don't they? I know Verizon does anyway.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

Shouldn't it be a pure spectrum thing? I assume each carrier is plugged into every DAS antenna. So then it comes down to the total spectrum utilized and the backhaul, right? Or am I missing something?

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

What carrier?

Based on the presence of the NFC icon, I'm guessing T-Mobile. Could be AT&T tho.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

It initially worked, got unplugged for some unknown amount of time and then didn't work. Port forwarding wouldn't come into play yet as the AirRave literally never sends a packet. The inbound packet counter on the switch interface is zero.

 

I wouldn't think being in a DMZ would affect TCP vs UDP. I also won't put anything into a DMZ due to security concerns.

 

I do have an atypical routing setup, but that's not coming into play as the AirRave is completely unresponsive on the network port.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

What I meant was that IPsec ideally doesn't use UDP or TCP, it has it's own type of IP packet that gets encapsulated within a UDP packet when behind NAT. Sprint recommends putting the airave in front of your router actually (perhaps because of this?), but the passthrough performance is awful.

 

What do the status lights on your airave indicate? I'm guessing not all of them are solid green. Does it have a GPS lock? One of them is probably blinking or red, and that should indicate the problem.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

Has anyone heard of an AirRave 2.5 that doesn't communicate properly? It seems to never complete booting up. In almost one month, 0 packets are ever received on that switch interface. Dead box?

Do you have the correct pretty forwarding setup on your router? I personally found that it works more reliably putting it in the DMZ rather than just port forwarding. All it does is setup an IPsec VPN, but putting it in the DMZ means it won't use UDP encapsulation which may explain why that works better.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

How do you force a new PRL on the 5x?

If it's the same as with a Sprint SIM, go to Settings, More (under wireless and networks), cellular networks, carrier settings, update PRL. But I'm not sure if that last option is there on Fi.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

There is still a lot of WiMax love in the Bay Area and I hope it stays that way for a little longer. I have seen crews working on some WiMax towers today, and it look as if Sprint is starting to add new RUU's in the area

Can you get pictures by any chance?

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

Phoenix is really an odd ball. Still no word when the Bay Area goes dark.

I have a wimax phone that I'll be using to check on each of the shutdown dates. It was still up yesterday. It seems likely it'll be shutdown at the end of February though.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

im at camp nelson 40444 zip code tower id LV---- you can check windstream map and it has fiber to it but has nv only upgrade all around it in nicholasville i get lte band 25 and 26 site LV---- still doesnt even have 1x800 im thinking it will never get upgrade cant even get service in the house that good

If it has B26 and 1x1900 then it also has 1x800, unless they specifically turned it off for some reason (too close to other sites?). The standard Sprint PRL has 1x1900 higher in the scan order than 1x800. So it's likely you're just not connecting to it.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

Any idea when the shutdown is for cities not on the list? Such as San Francisco, Oakland, and Sacramento?

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

Is anyone having any memory issues? My phone is using 2 gb of ram just when I boot it up and by the end of the day my phone is so slow and laggy its unusable.

2GB of usage is about where it sits normally. The Nexus 6 was the same. Android (and Linux in general) keeps things in memory (cache) after they're done being used. The reason is so that if you need to run that app again or access that file, it's super quick since it's already in memory. Otherwise unused memory is just wasted. If the memory is needed then it's taken from the cache.

 

On boot a lot of apps run then exit, so the cache is already full. It shouldn't affect performance though.

 

As to why it gets laggy for you... I don't know. I haven't had any issues. It could be a problematic app, or too many apps with background services running. Facebook is notorious for this. Can you sort memory usage by app and see if a culprit stands out?

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

I think it's possible with CDMA Workshop or DFS if the phone is put in the right mode. It doesn't need root. I've been unsuccessful in writing a PRL to the Nexus 6 or 6P, so I'm not sure how well either program works with current Nexus devices. But the correct Qualcomm mode is a boot option in the bootloader. If no one has posted it by tonight I can try to retrieve it from my phone.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

Scratch that, I can't find the proper Windows drivers for the 6P. 

Is that doable on a non-rooted device? If so, let me know how.

I think it's possible with CDMA Workshop or DFS if the phone is put in the right mode. It doesn't need root. I've been unsuccessful in writing a PRL to the Nexus 6 or 6P, so I'm not sure how well either program works with current Nexus devices. But the correct Qualcomm mode is a boot option in the bootloader. If no one has posted it by tonight I can try to retrieve it from my phone.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

How about 5X & Moto X pure?

The 5X should have CA as well, I think the modem is the same as the 6P. The Moto X Pure I think is the previous generation (like the Nexus 6). If it has the Snapdragon 805 then it doesn't have B41 CA.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

em... no B41 CA. Is there a list of devices that support B41 CA?

The 6p does, if you want to stick to the Nexus line. The screen is a tad bit smaller (same resolution though), but I've found it makes one handed use a little easier.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P