Losing 3g with stock Epic - Epic 4G General

I've got a stock non-rooted Epic and I seem to be constantly losing the 3g signal. It usually happens when I come out of airplane mode. I work in the basement of a hospital where there's no signal so I always put it in airplane mode. When I leave work I take it out of airplane mode and the signal bars come back, but not the 3g icon. If I check under Settings>About Phone>Status it says "connecting" under Network. If I try doing the System Updates, like Firmware, Profile, PRL, or Android, it will sometimes but not always bring back the 3g.
I've called Sprint and they had me go into the Service Menu and Restore the phone with my MSL. It worked the first time but now it doesn't seem to always work. My current PRL is 60674.

Same problem I had with my first epic. I couldn't get the 3G to come back up for over two days. Go get a replacement. The one I have now is flawless(knock on wood) good luck

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EVO gets stuck roaming

At my work I get 0-1 bars of Sprint service, and my phone often roams onto Verizon (we have dozens of Verizon repeaters in our building). The problem is that quite frequently lately it will get stuck in roaming mode and never switch back to a Sprint tower. I have 6 bars of Sprint service at home, but it will remain in roaming mode. I have the newest PRL (60670), and the old PRI (1.34_003).
Anyone else ever experience this? Any idea what I can do to fix it?
I have had this happen in the past as well. What I did was go into settings and change the roaming option to "Sprint Only" which forces the phone to switch back to the Sprint network. Then you can change the roaming option back to "Automatic".
I get this a lot as well. I've started to make a habit of turning on airplane mode, then turning it back off... when it scans for signal it will go back to Sprint.
Sorry if i'm stealing this thread. Is it pretty bad if my phone has to go in roaming to get signal in most my house? I've seen the threads about people getting a airwave because they get dropped calls, but since i have to roam in more than half my house, does it seem possible i could get one from sprint?
And my house is in the middle of town, if you go outside there's 4g, but not inside.
fastamx79 said:
I get this a lot as well. I've started to make a habit of turning on airplane mode, then turning it back off... when it scans for signal it will go back to Sprint.
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Same here, I just toggle airplane mode on and off.
Same thing on my EVO. It'll roam when it should but it won't switch back to Sprint when it should.
I chatted with Sprint asking why this happens. They just said I have free roaming. No reason why.
Yep, My Evo has been doing this as well. Been doing the airplane toggle trick. Thought about just leaving it, but was thinking that it may burn my battery faster? Anyone have any thoughts on that..
My PRL is also 60670, but I have the 1.71_003 PRI.
Guys if you have any type of active data connection the phone will not drop the roaming.
I roam at work too and if i turn on Aonline radio, tjen get in my car and drive, so long as the radio streaming is going iy will never drop the roaming.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Messed with the phone again tonight. Got stuck roaming again. I was not transmitting anything, and even ATK'd everything to make sure. Who knows, not really a big deal, unless I am eating more battery.
v_lestat said:
Guys if you have any type of active data connection the phone will not drop the roaming.
I roam at work too and if i turn on Aonline radio, tjen get in my car and drive, so long as the radio streaming is going iy will never drop the roaming.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
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That makes perfect sense. I sync with my Exchange server at work and the way EAS works is a constant connection between the client and server. One question though. Has your phone switched back to your carrier with no data connection?
Yeah just disable always-on data or cycle airplane mode to make it switch back. As long ad its maintaining a data connection it will wait to switch back from roaming so it doesn't unnecessarily disturb your connection if you're in a poor service area. It shouldn't be using any more battery.
Also, atk is bad.

Data 4g 3g keeps dropping connection.

When I'm on 3g cdma only mode, I can keep a data connection. When I switch to cdma/lte mode, it sometimes takes a while to finally get 4g data. I'll have plenty of signal and in different parts of my County, it acts the same. This started last night. I did a ##72786# and it didn't help. I tried manually updating prl and profile. It didn't help. Today I flashed mf9 full in Odin then did full factory reset and wipe in accounts. Still flaky connection. Tried updating prl and profile and 72786 and still don't have a steady connection. As I type this there isn't any data. The 4g will flash then 3g then no data in under a second. Now 4g just came back but no telling for how long.
Its probably because they are launching 4g in your area and its very spotting. That's why your phone drops signal. Because its trying to switch from 3G to 4G. I would say to stay on just 3G.
Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk 4
Lte is already in my area. It seems to be stable now. Long story short, I changed mode into cdma evdo. Updated profile. Changed back to cdma evdo lte. shut down phone and removed battery. Held power button down for av minute straight. Put battery back in and powered on. It seemed a little more stable but not rock solid. Drove home and 4g is staying on now. Probably a hiccup with the phone last night. I'll run it for 24 hours to see if it's stable again.

How to make 4g the dominant signal?

So I have been having this problem with my phone where even in areas I know there is a good 4g signal, my phone keeps wanting to switch to 3g. The only way I have found to force 4g is to make a phone call. Once I do that, 4g kicks back in. Is there any settings I can adjust(I assume this would be one of those hidden menu settings) so that my 4g will be the dominant signal that I get? I don't want 4g only but rather when I am in a 4g area, I just want to make sure I get 4 instead of 3. Rooted 4.4.2 sphL720 stock rom
You can do 2 things to help.
1. You can simply every time you get 3g go into airplane mode wait 10 secs and turn it off, when you reconnect you should get 4G
2. You can download an app called lte discovery and it has an option, where every time you get 3g it'll know and it'll automatically cycle to get 4G
There is also a way to do it through the device in the dialer, not 100% how to do it, but I know it scans more often for 4G but it also consumes more battery
GL ether way
Yeah I tried that airplane mode trick, its easier just to call myself to try to force it. Thanks for the reply I'll check into that other stuff!

Signal sticking

1st time having sprint but not my 1st HTC, me and my wife both have the HTC 10 and both our phones seem to be getting stuck on bad signals, I put us an app called radio switcher to lessen the problem, if we go into an area that has bad signal our phones will carry the 1x signal seemeingly for ever even if we go back in to lte or 3g, sometimes our phones will show no signal at all but we can use the radio switcher and choose LTE only and get 3 bars like instantly then it goes back to nothing if we put it back on auto, we have 3g almost every where here but our phones just love to hang on to 1x for some reason, hers is bone stock mines bootloader unlocked TWRP and latest viper rom
mech_supernova said:
1st time having sprint but not my 1st HTC, me and my wife both have the HTC 10 and both our phones seem to be getting stuck on bad signals, I put us an app called radio switcher to lessen the problem, if we go into an area that has bad signal our phones will carry the 1x signal seemeingly for ever even if we go back in to lte or 3g, sometimes our phones will show no signal at all but we can use the radio switcher and choose LTE only and get 3 bars like instantly then it goes back to nothing if we put it back on auto, we have 3g almost every where here but our phones just love to hang on to 1x for some reason, hers is bone stock mines bootloader unlocked TWRP and latest viper rom
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hmm, what is your location (or the general location where this happens). I have had all the htc one phones on sprint and have never dealt with anything like that. The only phone that would 3g camp that i had was the nexus 5. Send the location if you can. Also, try this, it wipes the phone but you can do it to test to see if it helps. You can reset the network config of the phone by dialing ##786#, click the menu and reset. IT will reboot into recovery to wipe since you have twrp just reboot the phone once twrp opens. It will go through the activation process. On your wifes phone i suggest doing a couple profile and prl updates.
I live in wilkesboro NC

Sprint WiFi Calling doesn't work after Nougat Upgrade

My wife and I live up in the foothills of Colorado where there are no Sprint cell towers. There is one cell tower which our Sprint S7 edges can barely pick up that comes and goes and indicates that we are roaming. For a few seconds our phones might see it but then it will go away for minutes, then it will come back only to go away again ... etc. In any event, it was necessary to use Wifi calling when we are at my home. Prior to the Nougat upgrade everything was fine. As soon as we walked into the house our S7 edges would connect, Wifi calling would activate and would be functional. After the Nougat update we have discovered that Wifi calling no longer works unless we can also see that one roaming cell tower. Then Wifi calling turns on, stays on and we can make/receive calls. I emphasize that this behavior occurs with both our phones.
This problem makes all the Sprint stores basically useless. Since they are located where there are towers, Wifi calling works as expected. As a result Sprint has been absolutely no help. I am wondering if anybody else has had problems with Sprint Wifi calling when unable to see a cell tower? If so could you work around the problem? I am open to suggestions. I consider this a bug in the Spring S7 edge firmware.
BTW, I know that when I can make a call, Wifi calling is used because the pop-up "Congratulations you just made a Wifi call" appears. I purposedly have not turned that off to be sure I am not using that one roaming tower. What is interesting is that I only need to be able to see the "R" by the triangle showing cell tower strength (don't need any bars) and then the Wifi calling icon will turn on. At that point I can make a phone call and even if I lose the connection to that one cell tower (i.e. the "R" disappears) the Wifi call will remain active. I can go anywhere in my house and not drop the call. But once I hang up, the Wifi calling icon will gray out with a slash through it, the phone will indicate that there is no network and the phone can only make emergency calls.
If I cannot get a fix to this problem then I might just have to go back to the last Marshmallow firmware and block the update if possible.
just for the hell of it to check, I turned on airplane mode and left it for 5 mins, leaving it on turned wifi on, and wifi calling connected within a few seconds of wifi connecting. I am on the nougat update. I have absolutely no cell signal as that is turned off. I am able to make calls without a problem.
Reboot your phone into recovery and clear cache and try again.
also, you may want to check and make sure "smart switch" is turned off. it's under the connections > wifi > advanced > smart network switch. I haven't tested it, but in theory it might demand you be connected to a cellular network to work and be causing your problem.
nosympathy said:
just for the hell of it to check, I turned on airplane mode and left it for 5 mins, leaving it on turned wifi on, and wifi calling connected within a few seconds of wifi connecting. I am on the nougat update. I have absolutely no cell signal as that is turned off. I am able to make calls without a problem.
Reboot your phone into recovery and clear cache and try again.
also, you may want to check and make sure "smart switch" is turned off. it's under the connections > wifi > advanced > smart network switch. I haven't tested it, but in theory it might demand you be connected to a cellular network to work and be causing your problem.
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Thanks for the suggestions. I tried several things. First I verified that I already had "smart switch" turned off. So I went ahead and turned it back on... no love with that feature either turned on or off. Second, I rebooted as you suggested into recovery and cleared the cache. That also did not fix the problem. Third I tried the same experiment as you and turned on airplane mode. I waited a bit (maybe not the same 5 minutes) and then turned on the Wifi and Wifi calling. Again no love. I even tried to make a call and the phone told me I had to turn off airplane mode. For whatever reason Wifi calling will only activate when the phone can see that one tower and starts roaming. At least I can use your experiment to demonstrate the problem at a Sprint store. I might just try using Odin to flash nougat and start clean and see if I cannot get this to work that way. I really don't want to go back to using the Airave although that was pretty reliable for me.
Paul Ganci said:
Thanks for the suggestions. I tried several things. First I verified that I already had "smart switch" turned off. So I went ahead and turned it back on... no love with that feature either turned on or off. Second, I rebooted as you suggested into recovery and cleared the cache. That also did not fix the problem. Third I tried the same experiment as you and turned on airplane mode. I waited a bit (maybe not the same 5 minutes) and then turned on the Wifi and Wifi calling. Again no love. I even tried to make a call and the phone told me I had to turn off airplane mode. For whatever reason Wifi calling will only activate when the phone can see that one tower and starts roaming. At least I can use your experiment to demonstrate the problem at a Sprint store. I might just try using Odin to flash nougat and start clean and see if I cannot get this to work that way. I really don't want to go back to using the Airave although that was pretty reliable for me.
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So question is, if you go somewhere with signal and wifi you can connect too, turn on airplane mode, leave it on and turn wifi on, does wifi calling work. If not then for sure a reset is in order.
If it does work, then that just tells me the phone isn't really turning everything off with airplane mode on (which is lame) and sprint just goofed up the nougat update and you are the extremely small % that falls victim.
I haven't been able to get WiFi calling to work on my Edge since new. UNTIL I upgraded to Nougat. Now it seems to be working fine. Go figure.
nosympathy said:
So question is, if you go somewhere with signal and wifi you can connect too, turn on airplane mode, leave it on and turn wifi on, does wifi calling work. If not then for sure a reset is in order.
If it does work, then that just tells me the phone isn't really turning everything off with airplane mode on (which is lame) and sprint just goofed up the nougat update and you are the extremely small % that falls victim.
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Okay some interesting data. I did exactly this experiment this morning. I drove into my office, connected up to the office WiFi and placed my phone into airplane mode. I then turned on WiFi and WiFi calling. Voila I could make a WiFi call!
However I did not stop there. One of the keys to all this is that the one tower happens to cause "roaming" if my phone was lucky enough to connect to it. So for grins I changed the network mode from automatic to LTE/CDMA (Sprint & Verizon are CDMA). When I was back at the house guess what... WiFi calling now works. Interestingly the phone is in "searching for service" mode which implies that the one cell tower seen from my house is either AT&T or T-Mobile which use GSM. By turning off automatic mode everything worked.
It is kind of a bummer but what seems to fix the issue is to choose Connections->Mobile networks->Network mode->LTE/CDMA. Each time a switch is made from Connections->Mobile networks->Network mode->Automatic back to Connections->Mobile networks->Network mode->LTE/CDMA, etc. the phone has to be rebooted. Unfortunately while traveling in a car Automatic mode is desired and at the house LTE/CDMA is best. Switching back and forth will be a PITA because of the reboot but at least I don't have to go back to the Airave.
I tried to explain this to the Sprint rep. on the phone this evening but he did not understand. Over the weekend I might try a clean install via Odin and see if that improves things. I hate doing that because it takes a fair amount of time to put the phone apps back together. I also have my doubts it will fix anything. IMO something broke with the Nougat upgrade and nothing I do will fix it. And as you point out, I am in that very tiny percentage of people who might actually experience an issue.
Paul Ganci said:
Okay some interesting data. I did exactly this experiment this morning. I drove into my office, connected up to the office WiFi and placed my phone into airplane mode. I then turned on WiFi and WiFi calling. Voila I could make a WiFi call!
However I did not stop there. One of the keys to all this is that the one tower happens to cause "roaming" if my phone was lucky enough to connect to it. So for grins I changed the network mode from automatic to LTE/CDMA (Sprint & Verizon are CDMA). When I was back at the house guess what... WiFi calling now works. Interestingly the phone is in "searching for service" mode which implies that the one cell tower seen from my house is either AT&T or T-Mobile which use GSM. By turning off automatic mode everything worked.
It is kind of a bummer but what seems to fix the issue is to choose Connections->Mobile networks->Network mode->LTE/CDMA. Each time a switch is made from Connections->Mobile networks->Network mode->Automatic back to Connections->Mobile networks->Network mode->LTE/CDMA, etc. the phone has to be rebooted. Unfortunately while traveling in a car Automatic mode is desired and at the house LTE/CDMA is best. Switching back and forth will be a PITA because of the reboot but at least I don't have to go back to the Airave.
I tried to explain this to the Sprint rep. on the phone this evening but he did not understand. Over the weekend I might try a clean install via Odin and see if that improves things. I hate doing that because it takes a fair amount of time to put the phone apps back together. I also have my doubts it will fix anything. IMO something broke with the Nougat upgrade and nothing I do will fix it. And as you point out, I am in that very tiny percentage of people who might actually experience an issue.
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Just out of curiosity have you tried turning your roaming off? Or adjust the settings to not connect?
Sent from Uranus, the only planet with a ring on the inside
izzibew26 said:
Just out of curiosity have you tried turning your roaming off? Or adjust the settings to not connect?
Sent from Uranus, the only planet with a ring on the inside
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Thanks for the idea.
So while my wife and I were having lunch in town this afternoon, I took our phones and toggled LTE/CDMA and Automatic modes. When we arrived at the house with the phones in Automatic mode WiFi calling worked. I think as long as the phones do not roam and connect to that GSM cell tower, WiFi calling seems to work. So I put both our phones into Home only mode (Settings->Connections->Mobile networks->Data roaming->Roaming network->Home only). So far so good. Both our phones have had WiFi calling activated now for several hours so I think the strategy works. Turning roaming on and off is not as painful as changing the network mode. Still the Nougat behavior is very different, I dare say, broken from Marshmallow behavior.
Paul Ganci said:
Thanks for the idea.
So while my wife and I were having lunch in town this afternoon, I took our phones and toggled LTE/CDMA and Automatic modes. When we arrived at the house with the phones in Automatic mode WiFi calling worked. I think as long as the phones do not roam and connect to that GSM cell tower, WiFi calling seems to work. So I put both our phones into Home only mode (Settings->Connections->Mobile networks->Data roaming->Roaming network->Home only). So far so good. Both our phones have had WiFi calling activated now for several hours so I think the strategy works. Turning roaming on and off is not as painful as changing the network mode. Still the Nougat behavior is very different, I dare say, broken from Marshmallow behavior.
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It's weird and I would bet money something they accidentally broke and such odd and perfect conditions have to be met to make it present itself, they probably had no idea. The sad thing is, this bug probably affects so few people, and most will probably not be tech people and will just get frustrated and switch carriers, and so the bug probably won't ever get fixed, except by accident possibly.
On a side note have you tried changing your location settings to GPS only. If you have it set for a method that looks for towers that might be the issue right there. GPS-LOCATING METHOD-DEVICE ONLY.
Sent from Uranus, the only planet with a ring on the inside
Greyed out apn settings
Need help I rooted my s7 edge sm-g935p sprint it is updated to the latest update and I have my msl code but can not access my apn settings they are greyed out even if I dial data and try to access it that way please help
..
izzibew26 said:
Wrong thread. Right section, wrong thread. There are 2 ways. I'm assuming you're attempting hotspot bypass
Sent from Uranus, the only planet with a ring on the inside
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Click to collapse
Sorry about that can you hook me up with the thread
YES I am trying to bypass have wifi sharing app but tends to make the rooted phone lag
...
I just tried the experiment. That did not work and in fact broke WiFi calling. So far the only solution is to toggle the LTE/CDMA and Automatic network modes where there is a Sprint tower preferably and then turn off roaming as I drive up to the house. Then WiFi calling works without issue. Nice thought though.
Sent from my SM-G935P using XDA-Developers Legacy app
Paul Ganci said:
I just tried the experiment. That did not work and in fact broke WiFi calling. So far the only solution is to toggle the LTE/CDMA and Automatic network modes where there is a Sprint tower preferably and then turn off roaming as I drive up to the house. Then WiFi calling works without issue. Nice thought though.
Sent from my SM-G935P using XDA-Developers Legacy app
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Okay so things get even worse. Today I drove up to the house with roaming turned off and network mode automatic. After parking the car and walking to the end of the driveway to retrieve my garabage can, not only did WiFi calling fail to activate but I could not turn roaming back on. The Settings->Connections->Mobile networks->Data roaming->Roaming network menu is greyed out. IMO, Sprint has hosed up their edition of Nougat. So I will be left with a brick as a phone while I am up here at 8400' at my house. I am quite pissed.
FWIW, what I think happened is I walked to the end of my driveway and lost my WiFi connection. That caused WiFi calling to shut off and now it will not turn back on. At least if I could get roaming turned back on I could try and connect up to that one lonely GSM tower to possibly fix this issue. But I cannot even do that because the Roaming network menu is greyed out. I am going to have to drive into town just to fix this problem. Ugh!
Paul Ganci said:
Okay so things get even worse. Today I drove up to the house with roaming turned off and network mode automatic. After parking the car and walking to the end of the driveway to retrieve my garabage can, not only did WiFi calling fail to activate but I could not turn roaming back on. The Settings->Connections->Mobile networks->Data roaming->Roaming network menu is greyed out. IMO, Sprint has hosed up their edition of Nougat. So I will be left with a brick as a phone while I am up here at 8400' at my house. I am quite pissed.
FWIW, what I think happened is I walked to the end of my driveway and lost my WiFi connection. That caused WiFi calling to shut off and now it will not turn back on. At least if I could get roaming turned back on I could try and connect up to that one lonely GSM tower to possibly fix this issue. But I cannot even do that because the Roaming network menu is greyed out. I am going to have to drive into town just to fix this problem. Ugh!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
try ##72786# in your dialer
Paul Ganci said:
Okay so things get even worse. Today I drove up to the house with roaming turned off and network mode automatic. After parking the car and walking to the end of the driveway to retrieve my garabage can, not only did WiFi calling fail to activate but I could not turn roaming back on. The Settings->Connections->Mobile networks->Data roaming->Roaming network menu is greyed out. IMO, Sprint has hosed up their edition of Nougat. So I will be left with a brick as a phone while I am up here at 8400' at my house. I am quite pissed.
FWIW, what I think happened is I walked to the end of my driveway and lost my WiFi connection. That caused WiFi calling to shut off and now it will not turn back on. At least if I could get roaming turned back on I could try and connect up to that one lonely GSM tower to possibly fix this issue. But I cannot even do that because the Roaming network menu is greyed out. I am going to have to drive into town just to fix this problem. Ugh!
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Click to collapse
Found the fix... Updated the PRL & Profile. I guess the phone lost its mind and could not find it once the WiFi was dropped.
Many retail mobiles have "Wifi Calling" function but not any menu entry to enable , The APP can check the hidden function and enable it if can use.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.widget7.wifi.calling

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