All Things Android - Apps, Phones, Tablets - Discussion

I just ran Speedtest again on the same server, through the app on my phone itself this time instead of via the computer it's tethered to, but it's not much different: 0.31 Mb/s down, 0.11 Mb/s up, 534 ping. That's on a second run; the first time it actually failed the download test entirely.

I'm reading mixed reviews online; some say the Virgin Mobile version of the Intercept has 1xEV Rev.A, while other sites say it's identical to the Sprint version and uses Rev.0

If I do end up calling customer support, what should I ask? Should I just straight up tell them my test results and ask them if I'm provisioned wrong?

 

Yep. If they don't seem to know what you're talking about, ask them to x-fer you to someone who can can help... possibly a technician. They should be able to look at trouble tickets that are open in your area, previous trouble tickets, and look at network status where you are and see if they can help.

 

I'll try that. I'm not keeping my hopes up, given previous experience with VM customer support, but I'll see.

In the meantime, I've been looking at the LG Optimus V...I can't find one for less than $200 anywhere, and based on eBay listings, I don't think I'll make more than $100 on my Intercept. It'll probably take me a few months to save up that much extra >_<

 

I've dealt with these people before and they got my order to me in about 4 days.... LG VM670 Android Smartphone

 

Wow, that's an awesome price. Thanks for the link!

 

I can attest to the LG Optimus being a pretty snazzy little phone.
I ended up buying the "S" for Sprint after doing some serious phone hunting. I found mine on eBay for $85 shipped in nearly perfect shape.

So far, I'm pretty happy with it. It's leaps and bounds ahead of my old Samsung Moment.

 

Sounds good...IIRC, the Moment is what the Intercept is based on and shares most of the same hardware (a lot of the Intercept mods I find are actually Moment mods)...it was originally even supposed to be called the Moment 2.

 

Alright! CM7 was staying connected to Edge way more often than it needed to and wasnt switching to 3G

so i switched to another Gingerbread ROM (2.3.3) and have much better results! Beats the hell out of my DSL





@Mastershroom: have you tried calling VM about your data speeds yet? those really are too low

 

Which ROM and modem are you using?

 

Simply Honey 3.5 Revolution (RC3.3 Update 1). LINK

With KB5 (the newest modem and what it comes with)

Giving me great speeds and seems stable so far Gingerbread wise

 

Did they sell out of the Optimus V at that link you posted, HAL? The "add to cart" link has now been replaced by a "purchase inquiry" button, and there's no price listed anymore.

Anyway, I got off the phone with VM Customer "Care". After about 45 minutes of conversation (rather, 35 minutes of being on hold and transferring and 10 minutes of actual talk), the gist of what I've been told through unintelligible Indian accents is that nothing can possibly be wrong on their end, and that I must live in the sticks with no signal, never mind the fact that my signal bars are pretty much always full or missing only one bar. Also, did you know that supervisors are not allowed to talk directly to customers? Because that sure is news to me, as I found out when I was eventually hung up on when asking to speak to someone higher up.

 

Damn what the hell kind of service is that?

That sucks. :/

Is it possible for you to lock your phone on fast 3G bands only? Not that it will help or not but you can on GSM handsets.

Is MetroPCS an option?

 

That's a common call-centre line fed to people they don't want to deal with.


Find the CEO's e-mail address and complain directly, that tends to work.

 

I have no idea about locking bands. I'm sure that's something HAL could answer for both of us.

MetroPCS isn't available here in Cleveland. The only other non-contract service available is Boost Mobile, which actually looks pretty good. They also have a much better selection of phones; their Android flagship is the Samsung Galaxy Prevail. But they only have one plan, and that's $50 a month for unlimited everything, which is literally double what I'm paying now, and way too rich for my blood. If they had cheaper plans with limited minutes, I'd jump on that.

There's also Revol Wireless, which normally has decent plan pricing of $35-45 a month, but they require a $55/month "Smartphone Plan" if you use an Android phone.

Yeah, maybe...I doubt anyone will read it, but it'll be nice to let off a bit of the steam anyway.

 

Ah well, Boost will use the same stuff Virgin does. So if it is actually a coverage problem then it wouldnt be solved, dont worry about that

 

You'd be surprised.
It's definitely worth a shot.

Here in the UK, a lot of the time it'll get you significantly better service than you'd get otherwise.

 

The Galaxy Prevail has the same S3C6410 SoC that your Intercept has. It's just in a different wrapper. So you wouldn't get any better performance out of that one, though it does have an interesting design.

I've done some checks with a few colleges of mine, and found out that even though your phone is capable of 1xEv Rev.A, your actual provisioning at the tower level is secondary to all Sprint subs. Virgin Mobile, Assurance Mobile, and Boost Mobile make up a group called the Sprint Prepaid Group. That group is maintained separate of contracted Sprint service, which has absolute #1 network priority. Since in most places, Sprint's actual 3G backhaul isn't that great to begin with, that's why you're seeing the speeds you're seeing. There's basically 4 different services leeching off one tower, nevermind the roaming agreements in place. As far as I know, Sprint uses Ethernet as a backhaul connector to a POP, instead of fiber. So they also can't just install a new fiber transceiver and upgrade tower backhaul. They would have to bond Ethernet lines, or bring in new backhaul completely.

So another words, whatever cells are in your area... they're getting slammed. And until regular Sprint subs start complaining of network issues, you're stuck.

GSM carriers, like AT&T and T-Mobile, use equal provisioning for prepaid and contracted subscribers. That's why ahl is getting such high speeds for prepaid service. That, and HSPA is just a much faster standard than 1xEv. It has more spectral bandwidth than 1xEv, it can accommodate more customers, and has higher operating headroom.

 

So, I'm screwed. Nice.

Well, I get what I pay for, I guess.

 

Those of you with Galaxy S devices... I just put together a new JVH ROM. This one is my stable version. JVK and JVB were a mess. It comes with DVJP9 modem from the Bell Vibrant, so the included modem defaults to WCDMA 850MHz. So if you're on T-Mobile US, you'd have to use a different modem that works with i9000 builds. The kernel in the package is for the US AT&T Captivate, so you'd have to replace that also. Drop the modem and kernel in the updates folder in the zip.

- Download Here -

Spoiler

 

I got an email back from VM...even though I called them like 3 hours ago. Anyway, the rep who emailed me said he refreshed my 3G and told me to reboot my phone. I did, and Speedtest is giving me pretty much the same results.

Ah well, I give up. Maybe I'll be able to afford a real internet connection (or at least real phone service) by the time I graduate.

 

To me, this begs the question, why? Why would Sprint deliberately build in something that wasn't expandable? Cost? Time?

I love my Sprint bill, and the service in my area is just fine, but good lord, as a company, they seem retarded.

 

Cost trimming, and previous management. Dan Hesse is doing what he can, because Sprint was a complete wreck before he got there. Bleeding subs, cash, and poor network coverage.

Ethernet backhaul is cheaper to roll out than fiber. Much cheaper, but it comes with less reliability and less capacity in the end. It's also shortsighted. Fiber is just the best solution... and I'm glad AT&T and Verizon have been using it.

As a company, though, they are in a lot better of a place now than they have been.

 

Thanks for clearing that up HAL.
My knowledge is limited in this arena. Good to have someone around that knows his stuff.

 

On the topic of Sprint, i was thinking of switching to them to get a slightly cheaper plan and "true" unlimited and get a better phone (EVO 3D)

But their 3G speed is horrible compared to T-Mobile. I can get around the data throttling on my plan, so im going to stick with that. 1Mbps and under on Sprint 3G (at least in my area) for download speed isnt gonna cut it for tethering.

 

Try having 20Kbps down and 6Kbps up ^^

 

Yeah i know i shouldnt complain

You should do something like this to get someones wifi in the area

 

On the topic of data speed, Telus's download speed have really dropped recently and my ping have gone up alot. I'd be lucky to make it past 2Mb/s download. Upload speed have been consistently high though. And I know it's not the phone or rom. Been switching between the Desire Z and HD all day.

Also, Desire Z / T-Mo G2 development is so dead, I swear it's more dead than the HTC Magic/Sapphire/MT3G dev section on XDA. :cry:

 

No problemo!

I like that... It's ghetto, but looks like it should work!

Really?! I would have thought that device would still be really active!? Did development hit a brick wall or something?

 

I wish T-Mobile could be more accurate with the exact amount of data i used

 

O_O

Jesus!

!!

 

I know, what the hell? XD do they really need that many decimal places?

 

Yeah, compared to the DHD/Inspire 4G section the DZ section is really kinda dead. I would have thought it'd be active too. I just don't see any custom sense rom, and no really many AOSP roms aside from CM and stock T-Mo rom.

 

HTC officially dissolves locked bootloader policy -- Engadget

Good to see.

 

Thank god, yeah

 

That is excellent news.

 

Woot.. just got my invite for the google music beta

 

It takes forever to upload...........X_X

 

This is a random question, but is there a possibility that factory resetting/wiping the phone could also wipe all that's on the SIM card?

I'm tinkering a phone for a friend and he hasn't had time to sync his contacts with Google yet so they're on the SIM and since I flashed the new ROM on it it can't seem to read any contacts off the SIM

 

Nope. Factory reset won't wipe the SIM on any phone I know of. It may not have copied the contacts out to the SIM to begin with?

Sidenote... xxxdevelopers FTW!!

<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/JmvCpR45LKA?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JmvCpR45LKA?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width='560' height="349" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>

 

I'm pretty they were on the SIM since he came from a dumbphone I also know for a fact there were at least a few contacts on the SIM since when I ask to import, it shows me 2-3(as opposed to the dozen he has). Problem is, I changed ROM and now I see *none* which is why I asked lol

And seems the SIM is fine since text apps can read the texts stored on there.

 

I just ordered a Nexus S 4G .. not knowing about google wallet a few minites ago.. gonna be very handy

 

If you don't mind me asking, which dumbphone was it in particular?

Could you still put the SIM back into the dumbphone and recopy the contacts then put it back into the new phone?

 

I'll ask him tomorrow at work cause I have no idea which phone it was

 

Nice nice yeah that looks pretty awesome.

 

Indeed! Hopefully they'll make it retroactive for the handsets that are encrypted (including Merge)

 

Lol .

 

beautiful.jpg

 

So... is this imported or is it the unannounced ATT branded device

 

This is my personal imported GS2. The one we have at the office pulls around 3800-3900 bone stock. Mine has the 1.5GHz OC kernel.

 

Very, very jealous.

I really hope the gs2 is released sometime in june/ early july. If not, I may just wait until December to see what the nexus 3 will be like. Other than the touch screen wonkiness on the n1, I still like the device quite a bit. First phone in a long time that I have owned for over a year. Though, if the n3 is HTC I will most likely pass on it. Seems like they always cut some corners on their phones.