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little or no signal please help

I bought this magician off Ebay before I found this wonderful site. I have learned that I can't ever uprade to WM5 but I did manage to get latest ROM and radio. My signal is very low and sometimes the phone just searches for a network all day in my house. My Blue Angel never has a problem and I get max bars even in my basement. Is there any way to tweak the phone/upgrade my antenna? Aside from the "seen on TV" antenna booster which I embarassingly now own.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=249435&highlight=
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=234873&highlight=

The second link allowed me to examine and modify my antenna. Now I have the signal strength I wanted. Thanks for your help.

[Q] found a serious flaw with radio hardware and shipped ROM downloading consistency!

Hi all, please welcome me whom had bought the Optimus 3d just 2 days ago. I love this phone. Please do let me welcome you all to talk about a flaw, which I've found out right away with the new phone since 2 days ago! I've been with some others Android phones, so, I should say I've had good experience with Androids.
I realized that Optimus 3D has some kinda hardware Radio receiver flaw (I really don't know what should I really call it) similar to the famous iPhone 4 dilemma in the beginning. I found out that the "Radio receiver" is located somewhere at the bottom of the phone, where our hands most often holding the phone with. The hand will block out the signals and the signal bar will be reduced by a lot as much as to zero (if the signal strength itself is not strong in the 1st place!) Try find this yourself, have some experience by holding the phone at the bottom and let go and holding the phone and again let go, keep trying this you should see the signal strength that will drop and rise and drop and rise again. Or is this only my phone? But I've never experience this phenomenal with other Android phones!
Also, I don't know this has the directly link to the downloading issue or whenever browsing nets, the network data will drop very very often. I hardly got successful downloads from the market without few retries. Thank god at least at the moment I can temporarily fix it by turning off and on again with the data enabling shortcut in the pull down menu.
Please help me here and advice! Very much appreciated!

Since the famous iPhone 4 drama for a lot of phones these stories pop up once in a while. I know lots of people furiously believed the Samsung Galaxy S had the exact same problem but after a week or so nobody ever talked about it anymore.
I myself have absolutely no problem whatsoever with the signal, not even when I completely cover the entire phone with my hands leaving just a small spot to read the signal it never drops, not by one bar. I've never had a single download dropped with either 3G or wifi and I've downloaded my share of stuff from the market and other places.
I've tested this with my T-Mobile simcard (which has pretty horrible coverage here) and with my Vodafone simcard (which has great reception) and with both simcards the signal strength stays exactly the same according to the bars. Even when I go to the settings the dBm and asu values stay exactly the same, no matter how long and how bad I cover the phone.
So far you're the first and only person I've read about having these issues so I think it just could be an isolated incident, although that would be bad for you as that would mean you could have a defective phone

This problem is not something new and is not related with O3D.
All the phones have the same issue.
It is normal that if put your hand on the antenna the reception will drop.
The radio waves just work like this.
However the atenuation from your hand is most accentuated on higher frequencies like 2100Mhz.
On every phone even on the oldest phone with external antenna you will meet this phenomenon.

The difference between 4 bars and 1 bar is only around 10dBm which really isnt that massive a drop at all. Now that you've pointed this out i do see that the signal strength varies a little depending on how you hold the phone but its not enough to panic about i don't think. The iphone 4 problem was significantly greater in that the iss was that a user's hand would electeically short the mobile network antenna to the bluetooth and wifi antenna causing a total loss of signal. While 10dBm or so is a definite dip in signal strength, it's an acceptable level of attenuation and i dont see it causing any real world day to day network problems that you wouldn't experience with any other high end smartphone.
My workplace is in a giant tin hut of an industrial unit (read: faraday cage) and today while i had this phone there for the first time i saw no noticeable network coverage problems. The behaviour was as far as i can tell exactly tue same as my motorola milestone from which i upgraded.
Sent from my LG-P920 using XDA Premium App

As stated all phones can lose a bit of the reception when it's in your hand depending on how you hold it, the reason Iphone4 was such a big deal was that it was extremly sensitive when it came to left-handed people and they had a real problem with their antenna being totally blocked when holding the phone normally when speaking in it.
Later on media and uninformed people started fueling the flames as soon as they saw a bar drop when picking up the phone, radio waves are not magical rays or tachyons that can move though matter without interacting with it.

thanks for all the replies. Believe me or not, this is the 1st phone I realize this issue and it is so obvious, the bad news is, it is really bad for me that the antenna is located at the bottom, probably most others phones I've owned were at the top as a result i didn't got any problem before.
And another issue, I'm pretty stucked with the shipped rom now, really hope to see custom roms soon. I'm at the moment totally freak out with the inconsistent of data and the wifi, it keeps failing me, this really freak me off, what the hell is happening to me with this phone! I've never ever got any dropped data or wifi connections before. Arggghhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

I have no signal drop out no matter what hand positioning i use..

I'm in a very poor reception area. I do notice hand over phone a drop from 1 bar to none. Still not a red cross to indicate no signal but a drop of 1 bar all the same.

Just tested it.
Signal drops from 4 bars to 3 (1-2 in awkward positions) when hand-held. Not an real-life-usage impact though...

Thanks for all the test replies to support my findings. OK, now, I've realized that the hand holding issue has no direct impact to data drops. And the data drop is entirely due to the time issue which it does not lock down the data connection when swithcing data modes. And at the moment it can beasily over come to turn off with the data button in the pull down menu. I'm not sure though when in the situation when the signal strenght was so low, by holding with hands will give an direct effect of data drop or not. Will observe that

[Q] Random network signal loss

Hello .
I've got a problem with a random signal drops. The interesting fact is that it has started about two weeks ago when my phone was just laying on the desk, no moving, no touching, no ROM change, just nothing unusual. In random moments my phone shows "no signal" , when I try to set the provider manually, sometimes, after about 2 minutes, gets the signal, but although it shows full signal, the connection with internet is really slow, the quality of phone talks is pretty poor and text messages doesn't always want to get sent. I didn't notice any special places where I have a signal and where i don't. I've even gave my phone to repair but they said that the hardware is fully functional and they dont know how to fix that problem, I've changed ROM - still no effect.
I hope that somebody can help me, becouse that's pretty irritating .

Signal Problems

First of all thanks @LS.xD because I asked in emergency theard and he was the only who answer me. I have a huge problem with my HOS . A few weeks ago I take it apart back covers to clean them, and after that it was better the speaker the mic, charging and notification light, like new. Unfurtunatly I got a big problem with gsm signal (just gsm not wi-fi or gps) it is unstable, when I call somebody he hears me with cutted words ( hope you understand) and at every call longer then 5 minutes I lost the signal and the call ends, I can see at my signal meter that I have drops, I thing if the antena is not fitting well I have all time poor signal but I have moments when the signal metter shows well, but allso when it shows well I have problems. Where shell I take a look ? What can I do, I'm desperated I can't use my phone and I don't wanna change it. Please guys please a lot help me

What radio are you using? In RO the best radio I found was 1.15...not 1.20 nor 1.35a. Have you tried that one or at least reflash radio?
Sent from nowhere over the air...

3G cell reception issue and fix

I just want to write this post maybe it will help anyone that has or will have the same problem. I looked all over the internet and could not find a fix, so here is my fix. Hope it works.
I work over seas on oil rig sites (remote locations) so I talk to my wife and family back home via different VOIP apps so its important to get a 3G signal, usually I lock WCDMA only network and get at least 1 bar which is sufficient. All of a sudden I started experiencing very weak 3G signal on my phone, weirdly this was at the same location where it had full bars in the past. This only applies for 3G, I could get 2G signal no problem.
In other areas that I know had good 3G signals and towers were close, it would work alright outdoors but once I get behind a door or a window 3G disappears even if I have it locked. I put in my sim card in my old Galaxy Nexus and it had 3G indoors with no problems at the same place and right next to the N5. So I started testing with both phones right next to each other when I lock 3G with the same SIM the Galaxy nexus would get 3 bars while the Nexus 5 would get the empty triangle (emergency calls only).
I couldn't get out of my mind that I dropped my Nexus 5 a hard drop, but I have a rubber case that took all the shock and the phone didn't get a scratch on it. This was before the 3G signal starts getting funny. Couldn't help but feel that I broke it somehow though. I felt like this might have got something loose inside. What didn't make sense to me is that if the antenna didn't work it wouldn't get 3G at all, indoors and outdoors.
So Step 1, I assumed it was a software issue. I went through a painful hard reset. To my surprise it still had the same issue afterwards.
Then out of desperation I saw this dude's video on how he couldn't lock GPS until he opened the back of the phone and found that the GPS antenna was not connecting straight.
youtube com/watch?v=K1-uCIb-t8I[/url]
So I started searching for where the 3G or 2G antennas are on the N5, but couldnt find anything that points that out. The phone was worthless to me like that so... I took a deep breath and decided to open the phone. Keep in mind, i'm an oilfield engineer and I still had a feeling i might [email protected]#k the phone up, specially that I did not have any tools with me.
So I watched this video on how to open up the back cover:
youtube com/watch?v=mkbmtu-1KSQ[/url]
and went through this guide on what's inside the N5:
theregister co uk/2013/11/05/nexus_5_teardown_shows_a_light_touch_thats_easy_to_fix/[/url]
Then I opened it, couldn't find anything to do, except maybe clean the minor dust off and blow on the ICs a bit. There is alot of pins that connect to antennas located on the back cover itself, so I closed it up, made sure its closed tight and all the pins touching, put in my SIM, and GOD DAMN!! IT WORKS AGAIN... I was getting full bars 3G!!!
So what I figured is that when I dropped it, one of those pins moved a little bit away and broke the connection between the antenna and the IC. Works great for the last 5 hours, solid connection.
Hope I would help anyone with this
PS: put the dots in the links, XDA won't let me post outside URLs

walid.eldalil said:
I just want to write this post maybe it will help anyone that has or will have the same problem. I looked all over the internet and could not find a fix, so here is my fix. Hope it works.
I work over seas on oil rig sites (remote locations) so I talk to my wife and family back home via different VOIP apps so its important to get a 3G signal, usually I lock WCDMA only network and get at least 1 bar which is sufficient. All of a sudden I started experiencing very weak 3G signal on my phone, weirdly this was at the same location where it had full bars in the past. This only applies for 3G, I could get 2G signal no problem.
In other areas that I know had good 3G signals and towers were close, it would work alright outdoors but once I get behind a door or a window 3G disappears even if I have it locked. I put in my sim card in my old Galaxy Nexus and it had 3G indoors with no problems at the same place and right next to the N5. So I started testing with both phones right next to each other when I lock 3G with the same SIM the Galaxy nexus would get 3 bars while the Nexus 5 would get the empty triangle (emergency calls only).
I couldn't get out of my mind that I dropped my Nexus 5 a hard drop, but I have a rubber case that took all the shock and the phone didn't get a scratch on it. This was before the 3G signal starts getting funny. Couldn't help but feel that I broke it somehow though. I felt like this might have got something loose inside. What didn't make sense to me is that if the antenna didn't work it wouldn't get 3G at all, indoors and outdoors.
So Step 1, I assumed it was a software issue. I went through a painful hard reset. To my surprise it still had the same issue afterwards.
Then out of desperation I saw this dude's video on how he couldn't lock GPS until he opened the back of the phone and found that the GPS antenna was not connecting straight.
youtube com/watch?v=K1-uCIb-t8I[/url]
So I started searching for where the 3G or 2G antennas are on the N5, but couldnt find anything that points that out. The phone was worthless to me like that so... I took a deep breath and decided to open the phone. Keep in mind, i'm an oilfield engineer and I still had a feeling i might [email protected]#k the phone up, specially that I did not have any tools with me.
So I watched this video on how to open up the back cover:
youtube com/watch?v=mkbmtu-1KSQ[/url]
and went through this guide on what's inside the N5:
theregister co uk/2013/11/05/nexus_5_teardown_shows_a_light_touch_thats_easy_to_fix/[/url]
Then I opened it, couldn't find anything to do, except maybe clean the minor dust off and blow on the ICs a bit. There is alot of pins that connect to antennas located on the back cover itself, so I closed it up, made sure its closed tight and all the pins touching, put in my SIM, and GOD DAMN!! IT WORKS AGAIN... I was getting full bars 3G!!!
So what I figured is that when I dropped it, one of those pins moved a little bit away and broke the connection between the antenna and the IC. Works great for the last 5 hours, solid connection.
Hope I would help anyone with this
PS: put the dots in the links, XDA won't let me post outside URLs
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats nice , but lots of ppls have the signal issues with nexus 5 , and it isn't antena disconect for 90 % if us. I have separated the phone many times. , done about 5 hard resets's tried diffrent verions of radio's diffrent ROM's etc... nothing work's. Frineds have nexus 5 2 of them , and they can get 3g and 4g when they want, and i can only get Edge which is 2g. which is unusable..... I noticed that i have 3g only when i am in other towns, but not mine home town.... I tried diffrent sim cards, and diffrent netowrks, nothing seams to get the 3g at home, plus the gsm sucks, it interupts the calls.. So i must be the frequencies of the working 3g network in mine home town ? Then how i don't get 4g ? Why other ppl with the same phone, and same network have 3g when put next to mine ? NO one knows...

Same Issue
i am having the same issue, just having "E" Edge and cannot connect to 3G/4G, done everything to resolve the issue, took apart the antenna part of my phone but all the connectors and wires are intact, did hard reset several times, tried different ROMS including stock ROMS, tried the *#*#4636#*#* selected all the Radios but no luck, used 2 different sim cards but no use, same damn "E" in the status bar, APNs are all in place, nothing is wrong with the settings so far, dont know wots da problem with this set.
Please help us.