SturgeonGeneral

Just to clarify, what is a "cold boot"?

Power it off, pull the battery, hold the power button for a few seconds. The idea is to drain all power out of the phone circuits.

Reinstall the battery and start it from 'cold'.

It ensures the radios fully reset.

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I've got someone that has an issue with the S4 suddenly not connecting to LTE. Worked from February to just a few days ago, and bam, no LTE connection. The SignalCheck app indicates it's connected to LTE, but it says "Mobile Data: Unregistered". Also, where it says "Provider" for the LTE connection, it says "Unknown (3100), whereas mine says "Sprint (310120).

 

Any ideas? Tried updating profile and PRL, and LTE does come up and the Spark wheel spins when it updates, but then after the update, it disappears again....

 

I'm stumped...

Just for laughs, shut down roaming and move to a different tower. Then try a cold reboot of the phone.

A tower that has been reset may be sending a bogus ECSFB signal while it reinitializes. If a tower like this can be seen by a phone it can cause these sort of symptoms until the tower comes back online.

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I was leaning towards some sort of app incompatibility too.

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Strange.  I didn't need to do that.

My setup went flawlessly and I didn't need to do anything other than follow the on-screen instructions.

Must be something was already set correctly on my account.

I got the update overnight but every time I click on the wifi calling app, it goes into a device self service screen, and then says it can't activate and I need to take the device to the nearest Sprint store. Any ideas? I tried to restart but that didn't work. I also tried clicking on the app with wifi on and off.

 

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Take it to a Sprint store.  I suspect something got boogered up in the install process.

I suspect that since it is using ehrpd, it is also capable of voice/data simultaneously. I'll see for sure when I get home again.

 

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Yes. Verified. I connected to a call and could surf normally. I did notice a bit of audio degradation but it was still comparable to a normal rural call quality.

This should open the door to VoLTE.

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Signal check also indicates that it sheds you off the system completely. No cell connect. LTE disconnected, ehrpd via Wi-Fi takes over.

Seems to me that it is effectively making any wireless network capable of being an Airrave?

I'll have to play with it some more, but I suspect that since it is using ehrpd, it is also capable of voice/data simultaneously.  I'll see for sure when I get home again.

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New Wi-Fi calling icon

Seems to indicate you have set up the current network for the service. Blue and white icon in the systray.

In a call it says "Wi-Fi call".   A similar all blue icon displays above that text.

See image.




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Update received overnight and installed this morning.
Find the app in the app list, run it.

Intro screen,

terms of service screen,

e-signature.

Then you have to turn the toggle on, select and add each Wi-Fi network individually, and assign a 911 address to each of them.  (You can do this by a "current location" button.)

It also adds itself to the connections menu so you don't need to use the app icon.


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Launch doesn't mean anything. Des Moines had enough coverage to launch last month. I'm all but certain it will launch in the next round.

 

BTW, Sprint/Samsung has moved faster in the Central Iowa market than almost any other. Your the envy of all the nation. Save maybe Omaha.

 

Robert

They have kicked some serious butt in Omaha.

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As long as you're steadily streaming data, it doesn't look.  If there is a periodic pause in the data stream, it will check.

Pandora often has gaps and doesn't steady stream and that gives the phone a chance to look.  Other apps may not stop very often.

If your 3g connection is weak or slow, there may not be any gaps for it to pause long enough to look.

As 4G fills in, this will become less of an issue as you will have a more constant 4g high data rate.

Just curious what is happening technically to give me this recurring experience downtown. We've spent 3 or 4 weekends at various events all day at the Iowa Events Center. In general the LTE connection on my Nexus 5 gets bogged down and approaches unusable. If I switch the phone settings to 3G I usually end up with a usable experience. Is this just simply the difference in load of the 4G equipment vs the 3G?

I'd bet 4g you're connecting to a more distant tower and lower strength signal. Also, since band 26 isn't up yet for the most part you're not getting structure penetration quality.

Via 3g you're probably on better signal from a closer tower on a lower frequency with better structure penetration.

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is this the only way or is the l720t written under the battery somewhere?

Without removing the battery - but still under the cover, it is molded into the center plastic of the lower antenna (right of the speaker, below the battery).  It says:  "L720T"

below that it says ">PC+ABS< #1-2"

If you remove the battery it reads:

Model: SPH-L720T

FCC ID: A3LSPHL720T

Sprint may not use them.

http://www.bestyoucanget.com/cellularapn.htm

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This morning, coming off of my airrave in Hawaii, I couldn't get any data, restarted my phone still no data. Switched from CDMA/LTE to CDMA and got data. Just switched it back and it says I'm connected to eHRPD but there's no connection. In the debug it shows under eHRPD engineering that I need to fix APN list. At least there's some progress here in Hawaii for network vision, hopefully rollout is soon http://s4gru.com/public/style_emoticons/#EMO_DIR#/smile.png

In this post you mentioned "In the debug it shows under eHRPD engineering that I need to fix APN list. "

Did this ever go away for you?

A couple of us are seeing it now on our gs4t's and a discussion just started on it in the sph-l720t phone thread.

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Mine does.

No idea why though.

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this post has some links to guides for various phones

 

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/3059-800smr-s4gru-sponsors-prls/

 

as a side note, i randomly got connected to 1x800 again today. i wasn't even in a low 1900 signal spot, was just doing airplane mode searching for LTE and next thing i knew it was connected to 1x800, have been on it since then.

I saw that too.

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Update pushed to my phone early this morning. Roughly a twenty minute process in two major steps. It reset my lock screen wallpaper and added a 100% charge notification.

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Gotcha. I was confused myself. For those of you with the tri-band, who had the single band S4, hows your experience so far? I've read the phone is useless if you're not in a market that has all 3 bands.

In the Omaha market we only have B25 fired up so far.  The Tri-Band phone acts effectively like its single band counterpart - which is far from useless.  As the other bands come online or I visit other Spark markets, I'll have access to those bands as well.  Why would you think such a thing?  Isn't it common sense?

 

...when I fall off 4g to 3g I either do not have a data connection or it takes an incredibly long time to "connect."

 

I use signal check and can see the phone sending, but not receiving. Signal strength is great on the shown 1x and ehrpd. Is this part of the ecsfb fall back not working?

 

 

As I understand it, once you fall off lte 4g, ecsfb is no longer relevant as you've already "fallen back" onto the same frequencies as voice.

ecsfb on some newly activated or reset towers can cause confusion and 'crashes' as discussed above in this thread. The problem, whatever it is, only seems to delay or block returns to lte. 3g didn't seem to be affected.

I recall no reports of what you're describing. Drops from lte to 3g always seem to be fast and near transparent.

You may be describing a new problem with unknown causes.

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Kit Kat update: so far so good. Still slight lag when scrolling through my apps. Also a slight concern is it holds on to Band 41 much longer now, before it would switch about -110 now it switches about -118 which by that point the data is almost unusable even though band 25 has a strong stable signal in the same area. I'll keep testing but overall it picks up a stronger band 41 which is a good thing unless the signal is weak.

I didn't know that.

Is signal cutoff really determined in the OS or is that determined in the PRL or elsewhere?

Are there hidden settings that can override that sort of thing?

Does anyone the status of csfb updates in 18503-Scranton pa-trying to avoid s4T problems-lte coverage isn't full yet-thanks

 

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I think you've overreacted.

ecsfb initialization "problems" are tower specific and nothing more than a minor annoyance since they are so easy to overcome with a radio reset I've toy leave the area. 3g still works inside the area of influence.

It generally only effects the limited area inside the coverage range of any given tower once, for 6-72 hours at the time the LTE is first activated. Once the tower is up and running after that time frame, that tower's primary coverage area is done with problems unless there is a technical failure later.

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I did more testing and what you said is happening to my Samsung S4T (I had a EVO LTE as my previous phone btw). My phone S4T easily switches to 4G when I leave coverage areas but certain towers seem to stop my phone from scanning LTE connections. I've only identified 3 so far in my metro area. I have to toggle like you said to reconnect to LTE but only when I'm near those towers.

If it's an initialization problem, it should go away at the affected towers within a few days and it should then act normally around that location.

If it doesn't go away within a week, and if your market is officially "launched", then you should be able to start calling and filing help tickets that will cause the local maintainers to come out and see what's going on.

Lincoln and Omaha should both launch before May, but until that happens, we're not officially getting a signal and can't do anything productive about problems and outages.

I don't know if your market has a similar thread, but this is what our tracking thread looks like:

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/4711-nebraska-iowa-market-spreadsheets-and-maps/

My phone will not automatically switch to LTE when it drops to 3G whatsoever. I have to toggle airplane to get back to 4G. I've waited more than a half hour to see if it would automatically switch once I'm in a LTE area. The BSR timer is at 5 so that's not it. Can it be a eCSFB issue because it seems to happen on a tower where I've had LTE with my EVO LTE but not with the S4T, but I don't know if that would prevent it from connecting to LTE once I'm in a LTE area. Anyone?

eCSFB issues would be a good place to start.  They *definitely* affect the Tri-Band S4.

Omaha is in the middle of a flurry of new LTE tower activations so I'll start with what I am seeing.  When a tower here is activated for LTE, there is some sort of eCSFB initialization process that occurs.

That process takes anywhere from 6-72 hours.  During that time, if my S4 Galaxy Tri-Band sees one of those towers, it will seem to "crash out" my LTE connection.

I use "crash" for lack of a better term because from the user's point of view, it acts like the LTE comms software in the phone stops working and needs to be reset.

I have to do one of the resets (namely A. disable / reenable radios via airplane mode or B. a phone reboot or C. a PRL update) in order to get it to search for an LTE connection again.  If it still sees the same tower, it will crash again.

Once I leave the coverage area of the initializing tower, the phone reverts to normal and will again pick up the other towers that have completed the initialization process.

If you have a tower that failed this process near where you are having the problem, or if there are a lot of towers being set up in the area, you could easily see this problem for weeks until the towers are completely online.

There may be a way to overcome this on "LTE only" mode but I haven't had the opportunity (or pressing need) to try it out yet since I just found the LTE only setting last week and have only encountered one new tower in my travels since then and didn't have time to stop and play with it.

Having said that, how long has this tower been causing you problems?  The longest time I have seen here is over a long weekend - 72 hours.  I haven't proven it, but I suspect a couple towers around here have also been reset once or twice since their initial setup.

I'm not familiar with the EVO LTE.  Is it tri-band?  Does it have some sort of SVLTE where it doesn't rely on the eCSFB system?

Hope this helps.

Anyone else get their rebate declined?

 

https://www.sprintrebates.com/

Another development.  Without me having had a chance to do anything yet, I get another email today saying my rebate has now been approved.

Someone must have realized the mistake.  Good news.