kevinkrueger

Judging by what I've skimmed in this thread, it sounds like the G3 is a worthwhile upgrade from the Nexus 5? Any Nexus 5 to G3 upgraders who regret making the move. If so, why?

I'll probably wait until the Nexus 6 announcement, but if they don't ship something smaller than the 5.9" "Shamu" I'm leaning towards the G3.

I'm generally happy with the Nexus 5. My biggest beef is battery life. I'll hand the Nexus 5 down to my wife. She dropped her Evo 4G LTE and messed up the screen and I think she should have a tri-band device, too.

I'm telling you, I have data roamed on VZW using my Sprint SIM card activated on my Ting account with my Nexus 5.  I realize it's not allowed, but it works for me here.  I don't actively use it, because I'm afraid it may trigger something and they will shut me down.  But, for whatever reason, it works for me.  

 

Is it a Verizon authentication error?  I don't know.  Has Ting flagged my account for some reason to allow it?  I don't know.  However, I have never used much data off it.  I don't need to.  I have pulled up google and performed a search.  I have opened S4GRU in Tapatalk.  And I have used SignalCheck Pro to pull info.  I have done this a few times.  Likely just a few MB's.

 

Robert

When I was in North Dakota last summer on Ting, I was able to get 1X data-roaming as well. I asked Ting support about it, and they basically indicated it was an isolated situation. I'm guessing something mis-configured or an edge case of some sort. When I returned to the same location this past summer, no data roaming. Perhaps they patch the holes as they find them. So enjoy it if you get it, but don't count it sticking around. The lack of data roaming is my one complaint about Ting. I'd be willing to pay a premium for a small amount of roaming data the few times I need it each year, mainly just so I can get e-mails.

Edit: Here's the message verbatim from Ting support:

Our policy has not changed where it comes to data roaming. There is roaming pockets that will allow you to connect. You can say its a technical oversight. If you are in an area that will allow you to use data, you will not get charge for roaming.

For what it's worth, OpenDNS discontinued their NXDOMAIN hijacking:

http://www.opendns.com/no-more-ads/

http://blog.opendns.com/2014/05/29/no-more-ads/

Sprint should follow OpenDNS's lead and do the right thing.

Since I have root on my HTC EVO LTE, I worked around this problem with the following steps:

 

1. "adb shell" from my computer (requires android SDK installation and USB connection to PC)

2. mount -o remount,rw /

3. Edit /init.rc (I used vi)

4. Find the end of the "on init" section.  For me it was right after the "#htc sensorhub" lines.  Add the following lines to the end:

    # Hack to force use of google DNS to fix domain/NXDOMAIN hijacking by Sprint
    /system/bin/iptables -t nat -I OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 53 -j DNAT --to-destination 8.8.4.4:53
    /system/bin/iptables -t nat -I OUTPUT -p udp --dport 53 -j DNAT --to-destination 8.8.4.4:53

5. Save and remount / as read-only:  mount -o remount,ro /

Interesting. I had read somewhere else that Sprint redirects port 53 requests to their own DNS servers regardless of the destination IP address, but apparently that's not the case. This might motivate me to root my phone.

I don't like it one bit. I've seen it on multiple towers. The first time I saw it, I thought for sure I had some malware on my phone. It's such a cheap and fishy looking web page. At a minimum, Sprint should make it clearer that this page is affiliated with them, document it on their website, and offer a way to opt out (as many other ISPs which do NXDOMAIN hijacking do).

As further evidence of how shady this site is, the "Make this My Homepage" link at the top of it is broken. It throws a javascript exception.

Oddly, the Sprint copyright message and link to Sprint customer care only appear on the desktop version of the site. These links aren't visible on the mobile version. So there's NO sprint branding that I can see when viewing the mobile version of the site.

After looking through the page source, I found the search-help.sprint.com also goes to the same site. It seems most likely to me that some firm offered Sprint some money to redirect NXDOMAINs to this site. But if Sprint won't own up to this, it's simply open to speculation, I guess. The fact that a sprint.com subdomain goes to this site tells me that Sprint has some involvement in this.

Really weird. Perhaps a tower your phone is connecting to has bad DNS settings? I'd give Sprint a call as I have never heard of this outside using AT&T/TWC/Comast's DNS settings and seeing a spammy page for search results when it can't connect to a website (which is why I use the Google DNS).

Yeah, it's definitely concerning. Could it be a hack of Sprint's infrastructure?

I'm very curious if anyone else can reproduce this. I just tried it on my wife's phone, and got redirected to search-error.com as well. So it's not just my phone, anyway.

Try setting your DNS to the Google DNS servers https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/

 

or to OpenDNS

 

http://wdgfstatus.com/opendns-win7/

 

Or do you mean your phone's browser?

Yeah, this is with Chrome on Android. I don't believe I can change the DNS servers on it without root?

Also, when I connected to my home wifi with my phone, Chrome stopped redirecting NXDOMAINs.

The fact that search-error.com mentions and links to Sprint tells me that this is somehow related to Sprint, whether or not it's Sprint's doing.

I just noticed that Sprint is redirecting my browser to search-error.com for NXDOMAIN results (i.e. if I enter a domain that doesn't exist).

Is this new? I have a few concerns about this:

1. The search-error.com domain is suspicious looking. I generally associate hyphenated domain names with the less savory corners of the Internet.

2. There's no Sprint branding anywhere on the page. The colors don't even match Sprint's branding. The only clue that this might be related to Sprint is that the "Customer Care" link links to Sprint customer care. Edit: I guess there's a small Sprint.com copyright message on the bottom of the page as well.

3. It uses my metered data and exposes me to advertising I didn't ask for.

4. It violates Internet standards.

5. There's no apparent way to opt out

Given how fishy looking the page is, I'm not entirely convinced this is Sprint's doing. My Google searches for search-error.com only turned up one Tweet where someone was complaining to Sprint about this just a few days ago.

I just did a whois on this domain, and it was registered on August 6. It's not even registered in Sprint's name. It's a private "Domains by Proxy" registration.