Trip

Google says to get into Field Test: https://osxdaily.com/2018/05/02/use-field-test-mode-iphone-x-ios/ It might be under Serving Cell Info rather than Serving Cell Measurements but I can't seem to find a picture indicating what is in Serving Cell Info to know for sure. - Trip

First thing I did when I woke up just now was to look at my phone. Still connected to Band 41, but my TAC is now 20243, matching T-Mobile. - Trip

I've seen the T-Mobile TACs change a number of times around here, too. I actually strongly dislike the T-Mobile TAC setup, which looks like a trainwreck to me, just like their GCIs and PCIs. I would be willing to go through the trouble of recompiling my entire database for T-Mobile if they would fix their GCIs, PCIs, and TACs to fit some kind of sane and sensible pattern. I fear that will not be the case. - Trip

This implies that the change in Shentel land may have been an interim change, which cleared the 3xxxx range for moves to the T-Mobile values, and then perhaps the Shentel TACs will change again once they make the move to T-Mobile TACs in this part of the country. - Trip

I'm looking at the MLS data for the past few days and it looks like the TACs may have changed in some areas where T-Mobile's TAC values begin with 3 or 4. For example, in Columbia, SC, it looks like one of T-Mobile's TAC values is 31598. It looks like any Sprint data collected from that area since at least 3/16 now has a TAC value of 31598, rather than the older 4353 value. - Trip

I'm aware of the need to use the .db file. I'm not quite that slow in the head, and have successfully been using the .db file for some time now. I'll try to restart after importing, but I don't think it worked. It just dropped everything I had in it and that was that--like I attempted to then dump the database and found it to be empty again. I thought of that, as I'm beta testing. I compared my standard file against the one on my new phone and they looked the same, but I realized that if it dumps it out wrong, then I don't know how I would check what it's looking for at import. But I've only gotten the corrupt file error a few times, and I'd expect to see it consistently. Was the Stack Overflow link at all relevant? I figure it's a long shot, but that did match the symptom, at least, of what I was seeing. Ack. I don't know why the navigation bar turns out to be light gray, considering most of the app is black. Very annoying. Yes, switching to band-only or dBm-only, either one, works correctly. Just the combo does not. - Trip

I didn't realize Gboard had settings like that. Tried it, dug in, and I do like it. Thanks! - Trip

In SCP it's definitely a light gray, but I don't think it's white either. But it used to be black, and having it not black meant it kept drawing my attention when I had my phone in my car's holder with SCP open. At a stop, I set the bar to auto-hide just so it would stop distracting me from the road. (I keep my phones on such holders so the GPS works properly.) I'm not sure what was happening Saturday in Twitter, but it seems better now. I can't find another app that's doing it. - Trip

Okay, now I'm wondering if there isn't an additional bug of some sort. I realized that my G6 properly showed a black navigation bar when SCP was open, but my G8X on Pie shows a gray one. Similarly, in apps where the status bar turns white, on my G6, the SCP icons would turn gray so I could see them, while on my G8X they remain white and are illegible. - Trip

Okay, so I just tried actually comparing side-by-side with my G6, and this is really puzzling. I'm wondering if it's an SCP bug of some sort; my old phone actually had the same behavior of changing the colors of both the status bar and the navigation bar, but SCP had different colors for its icons depending on the status bar color and had black instead of gray navigation bar color. - Trip

I just tried Nova Launcher and it didn't seem to do anything about any of my complaints, unfortunately. Lots of options for the home screen, but did nothing when actually in apps, which is where the problems arise. - Trip

Not sure where you are, but the Sprint TACs have yet to change in this area. They did change in Shentel land, but the values don't appear to match T-Mobile values at all. - Trip

Whoa! Slow down! If you move those goalposts any faster, they'll fall over and you might hurt yourself. - Trip

When the merger closes and the network is opened, presumably every Sprint user will be able to use B12. - Trip

This morning, my phone roamed on T-Mobile via the 310260 PLMN instead of 311490. But it was still restricted to PCS and did not roam on 700. - Trip

Picked mine up Thursday, activated it Friday, and have some initial impressions. Good: PythonFanPA is 100% right, this is a much better RF performer. I would say it's probably 3-5 dB better, at least, than the G6 was. I see more LTE more often, including roaming. I'm currently out in the sticks once again, and where I used to see -106 dBm on Shentel 1X with LTE at -117 dBm or so from US Cellular LTE roaming that would frequently drop, this phone is currently at -102 dBm on Shentel 1X (from a different tower) and -110 dBm on LTE roaming. It's enough to make it usable for tethering in a stable manner, something that always gave me problems in the past. (Nicer to use my phone's unlimited data rather than eat up the 10GB on the hotspot here.) I've been using it for more than two hours now without issue. App performance is far and away faster and better than the G6. I don't think I realized just how sluggish the G6 really was until I had my G8X in-hand. It's pretty impressive. I like the screen a lot more than the old phone, though I can't quite put my finger on why. Perhaps better color gamut? I like the size a lot. It's somewhat taller, but only a touch wider, which makes for a fit in the hand that is consistent with my G6. It is, however, wide enough that it only barely fits in my phone holder in the car--but it fits, which is what's important. Disabling the extra button on the left side of the phone was painless. Shame it can't be remapped to something useful. Home screen now allows for more columns for apps, so I can fit more on a page. Very pleased about this. Much more internal storage. My G6 had like 10GB available or something, so even though I was offloading pictures and whatnot to my SD card, it was still almost always full. Now it has more than 100GB available, which is more breathing room than I should ever need. Bad: I'm missing the power button on the back a lot. I keep trying to press it and there's nothing there, then I have to go hunt for the button on the side. I assume I'll get used to this. The LG default keyboard no longer seems to allow you to long-press for symbols. Given that I use symbols in most of my passwords, this is unacceptable. I've now switched to SwiftKey, at least for now, though it seems less accurate than the LG keyboard it replaced. (If there's a way to turn it on in the LG keyboard, please let me know.) Ugly: I suspect everything else I absolutely abhor about this phone is not exclusive to the G8X and has more to do with general Android 9 having a number of very crappy design choices, which is nothing new for Google. It feels unfair to knock the G8X for them, except that LG does some amount of customization and should be able to fix these issues even if Google makes stupid choices. The notification bar, or whatever it's called, no longer stays a consistent color, so in most apps, it is impossible to see what SCP is doing at a glance. I've tried both the built-in setting to force the color, as well as apps that change the background color, but the former doesn't work most of the time, while with the letter, the color of all the other icons still change with the app in use, so I can't see the clock or anything--so if I use it on an app that would have turned the bar white, then ONLY SCP is visible. What a headache. Similarly, the navigation bar at the bottom used to be black, as it should be, but is now gray. This is certainly unpleasant to look at, but is made worse by the fact that the buttons seem to change color with the apps, so in Twitter, for example, the buttons are the same color as the background and thus cannot be seen. Someone failed to do any amount of testing on this, it would seem. Attempts to fix this have been similarly unsuccessful. The clock has moved to the left, which I knew about, but there is no option to move it back to the right, as far as I can tell. There's plenty of space there to do so, which leaves me puzzled about why it's not available as an option. Moreover, the notch looks ridiculous and there seems to be no option to simply make that entire row of the screen black and move the whole notification bar down to eliminate the notch entirely, which would solve the problem that I don't even have. Again, lousy UI choices and lack of options degrade the user experience. And, of course, still waiting for Mike to see my posts about not being able to import/export with SCP. Hopefully it's an easy fix. Conclusion: If I could have gotten this phone with Android 8, it would be a nearly perfect phone, as it would have fixed all of the "Ugly" items and one of the two "Bad" items. From a hardware and performance perspective, this is a great device, and I would very much recommend it. Unfortunately, as is typical these days of many software projects, each new version removes features, makes absurd and irrational design choices, and makes using the device more difficult and less pleasant, making for a degraded user experience. And, in order to use my RSA Token for work, I can't even root it to replace the OS and fix the issues. Very unfortunate. As I use it more, I may add additional comments. - Trip

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/tmobile-to-increase-network-capacity-and-expand-roaming-for-sprint-customers - Trip

I tried Helium and successfully copied my database over. Whew. I can at least collect data for the trip today and tomorrow. The larger problem of not being able to backup and import remains, but I'm not in the huge hurried panic I had been in before. Thank you so much. As far as database format is concerned, I'll send a PM. Mike, if you want to look at it, let me know. - Trip

I noticed that I'm sometimes seeing other files dumped out with db-shm and db-wal extensions. I wonder if this has anything to do with it? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54051322/database-import-and-export-not-working-in-android-pie/54056779 - Trip

Well, now I'm back to the behavior I had before. Things act like they import but they don't and they wipe out what's in the database already. I'm at a loss. - Trip

Well, on factory reset, I didn't even try importing my log, I went one simpler--I named my home site, exported my log, and then tried to reimport it. I then immediately tried to import it, saying "File corrupt or improperly structured." Must be something to do with the beta I'm on, I guess? - Trip

I really need this working by tomorrow... I'm going to go ahead and factory reset it. *sigh* Hope it works. - Trip

No, it's brand new out of the box. I suppose I could try that... now that I've set everything up. I'll see if Mike has any ideas first. - Trip

Mike, I just updated to the LG G8X and am trying to import my SCP log, and it's telling me it's imported successfully with the number of rows, but then the notes remain blank. Any ideas? EDIT: This is very strange. I named my home site and then tried to export. Though the label appears in the software, it's not dumping out. Attempting to then import my database again, now my note is gone. - Trip

I'm not going to have the second screen, so none of the things in that video really do much for me. - Trip