hihater

I'm in NJ, and this morning when I woke up I had no service. I can only get spotty service. Roaming most of the time. Even when roaming, my calls/texts have trouble going through and can barely use data. My sister has T-Mobile and she has a good signal, no problems.Thank goodness WiFi is working otherwise my GSIII would be rendered useless lol.

alright, I drove 17 north on Thursday evening (8:20pm) and ran some speed tests. between the Paramus Ikea(where I enter 17 from 4) and the Linwood Avenue exit, I pulled the following speeds (in Mbps):

 

0.85 Down. 0.72 Up. Ping: 98ms

1.37 Down. 0.65 Up. Ping: 115ms

1.11 Down. 0.80 Up. Ping: 89ms

 

not as fast as what was reported earlier in this thread, but still fairly decent. things began to drop off considerably as I moved north of Ho-Ho-Kus.

Those speeds are what I have seen also, around 1 to 1.5MB. You can get 2+MB/s speeds early or late in the day. The other day I was getting 2.3MB/s at 9PM in Saddle Brook.

You were probably on 1xrtt data.

No it was EvdoA. Not sure if these upgrades is part of Network Vision or just a band aid fix. But I have been pleasantly surprised with the better service. I don't see improvements being widespread, just in certain areas, fortunately where I live and work the speeds are much improved.

Sprint's 3G is spotty and sometimes unusable during the day. I usually get 1Mb or higher anytime from 12 AM to 8 AM.

 

I guess it really depends on how much people are connected to the tower at a specific time of the day.

Yes, I've noticed the speeds aren't as fast during the day as it is early in the morning. But it's still way faster, still getting around 1 to 1.5Mbsp instead of over 2Mbps in off peak hours. And not every tower has these speeds. I could go two streets down from my house, and it's slower because it's connecting me to a different tower which may not be upgraded yet. I'm going to run more tests during the week around the area.

I drive route 17 weekly and usually make a stop for gas at a Valero near the Saddle River exit. On Friday evening, my wife and I were driving north on 17 streaming music via Spotify and noticed that the music started getting exceedingly choppy just north of Paramus. By the time we were near Ho-ho-kus, the stream stopped working entirely. At that point I a few speed tests just to make sure it was Sprint and not Spotify. These were done at about 10:00 pm on Friday night starting when I was at that Valero station and ending around the time I passed the Smash Burger in Ramsay.

 

Down: 0.12 Mbps. Up: 0.14 Mbps. Ping: 741 ms.

Down: 0.07 Mbps. Up: 0.55 Mbps. Ping: 361 ms.

Down: 0.09 Mbps. Up: 0.38 Mbps. Ping: 422 ms.

Maybe the towers up in Ramsey have not been upgraded or these extremely slow speeds means the are in the process. I noticed pathetically slow speeds and then like magic the next day it was two to four times faster than normal. I was In Park Ridge on Saturday and saw over 1Mb/s. I saw higher speeds around Clifton, Bergen Town Center in Paramus, on route 17 near Garden Stater Plaza. Definitely no fluke.

I haven't done a speed test in a few weeks. The other day I had painfully slow speeds, ran the speed test and saw 50kbps. The next day to my shock it was over 1Mb/s! I've been noticing significantly faster 3G speeds around Paramus, Clifton, Saddle Brook and neighboring areas. I've measured as fast as 2GB per second on downloads and nearly 1MB per second on uploads. Most of the time it's been hovering around 1 to 1.5MB/s on downloads. These download speeds are at times are 10 times faster than I I normally got in the past lol. This has to be related to Network Vision right? Upgrading the 3G first and then hopefully get LTE soon.

I had awfully slow speeds yesterday in Saddle Brook, NJ. But today to my surprise, my download speeds have doubled/tripled!!! I'm getting 800kbps to 1000kbps, with uploads ranging from 500kbps to 900kbps. They must have upgraded the tower by here, maybe part of Network Vision?

I am not having that problem, just tested it to be sure. The file is received as a JPEG.

Yes if I send it to myself it works fine. But if I send it to someone else, it shows up as a video. Actually I googled this issue and found this is a common problem on Samsung/Android phones.

When I send a picture to someone it sends it as a 5 second video. Anyone notice this?

So nobody really knows whether the Sprint Galaxy 3 would work outside the U.S.? lol

Anyone got a download link for the firmware yet? Or could someone send the file to me when you get it? My phone isn't picking up the update yet.

Can't update yet either. Says it's up to date. Maybe the update is not released yet.

none of those links work.

I've noticed that my SGS III roams more often than my Epic 4G Touch did, but I think this is because the roaming threshold was set to be higher. Signal strength has actually tended to be stronger than on my old phone. I personally think that it's better to roam early than to stay on a native signal that is too weak to be useful. There were far too many occasions with my old phone where data wouldn't work at all because the Sprint signal was too weak. I wouldn't have minded having 1x on Verizon at those points.

In the screenshot I uploaded, it think it shows -82dBm? I am not sure how to read these numbers lol. When I am at home it fluctuates, I can get almost full bars and then it goes to like 2 bars. Once in a while I will get the roaming notification. And then it goes back to Sprint 3G. Where I work I get excellent coverage, full bars and saw the signal as -15dBm. So could be that the antenna on the GS3 is more sensitive? Noticed my GS3 loses wifi connections too.

Is the signal strength less or does it just randomly roam?

 

If it is signal strength related, it is probably antenna related.

 

If it is randomly losing 1900mhz signal, it could be some internal component that is screwed up.

 

It could also be software, kernel, baseband, etc

 

I would get it replaced. Are you within the return window? You should try to get another new phone instead of a refurb warranty replacement. Not that there is anything wrong with a refurb... Just nice to have new... Less possibility of problems.

I've had the phone for about 5 days. It seems like it randomly roams. Bought from Amazon. If I return then I'd probably wait for a different phone, maybe iPhone 5 or something. I went to debug mode, what kind of stats should I be getting signal wise?

Really? My wife had the moment and hated that thing with a passion. She would rather throw it against a wall than use it again.

Yes I despise the Moment as well. It crashes, freezes, can't make or answer calls at times. But at least it doesn't lose the signal. Could be something wrong with my Galaxy SIII? Antenna? How can I check?

It still roams at times. Talked to Sprint and the rep said he remotely performed some troubleshooting on my phone. He said it should fix my roaming issue, but I'm not so sure. About to go back to my Moment lol.

I noticed my Galaxy S3 roams more often than my Samsung Moment. It never roamed on my Moment. Could this be because I had it on LTE/3G and not 3G only? I noticed once I switched back to 3G only, it really hasn't roamed. But I figure, what's the difference is, because it should connect to 3G if there is no 4G. This roaming issue is the one thing making me think about returning the phone.

Just got GS3 today and Google Wallet won't open. Says its not supported. Updated and forced closed and still won't work.

UPDATE: Chatted with Sprint online CS, and they "refreshed" the device. And now it works fine!

When can North Jersey, particularly around the Clifton area expect LTE? Any updates? I know we are part of "round 2", but hoping it will be sooner than later. Sprint should be giving updates instead of keeping everyone in the dark, even in areas where LTE is imminent, they are keeping quiet. Which can hurt them with all this uncertainty.

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