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[Q] Verizon SGS3 same LTE radio as Galaxy Nexus?

I went from the Droid Razr when I found had good LTE reception at my house to the Galaxy Nexus which was terrible. After that, I got the Rezound which brought back the good LTE reception, about 10Mbps every time. Then the iPhone 4S which obviously doesn't have 4G. Then I got the Droid Charge which got me about ~10Mbps on 4G.
I always had 4/5 bars on my Droid Charge, at times I would have 3/5 and my LTE speeds were fast but I just got the Galaxy S III today and my LTE speeds are way, way down. I usually only get ~4Mbps down now and upload speeds have decreased as well. Ping also rose pretty dramatically.
Signal strength on the Droid Charge was usually about -85db and right now the GS3 is reading -111db. The radio in the phone is definitely inferior to the ones in the Rezound, Razr and Charge.
For reference, I'm 1.78 miles away from the Verizon cell phone tower. Is anyone else experiencing a drop in signal quality? I remember it was a pretty big deal with the Galaxy Nexus.

I have the same question... curious how VZW SGS3 radios / network connectivity are in comparison to Verizon Galaxy Nexus.

geekaren said:
I have the same question... curious how VZW SGS3 radios / network connectivity are in comparison to Verizon Galaxy Nexus.
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I've had both home and they appear to be the same because they perform similarly, which is not a good thing. I have noticed that the phone does allow for simultaneous voice and data over 3G which is different from Verizon's Galaxy Nexus, I'm always in 3G on the first floor of my house unfortunately.

Agree, if the radios perform similarly.... that's not a good thing. Appreciate this feedback.

Its not exactly a "scientific" test but I had full 4G on the SGS3 while my friend next to me had 2 bars on his Nexus.

I just tested this today with my Thunderbolt running a very old GB radio version against my SGS3.
Thunderbolt gets 3 bars, SGS3 only has one at my house. Did two speed tests inside, and one outside. All three times the TB had almost exactly double the Mbps down of the SGS3. Twice the SGS3 failed to start the upstream test citing communication issues. The time it did complete, the TB again was twice the speed.
Pretty disappointing to say the least. What's more disappointing is I only get 4-5Mbps down these days with the TB, while the SGS3 was only getting 2-2.5Mbps down. Little over a year ago when I got my TB, I'd always get 11mbps+ down at my house. So looking like the network is getting pretty saturated in my area these days.
I've been on vacation since before I got my SGS3, so we'll see how it goes at work when I return tomorrow. LTE signal is better there, on the TB anyway. Not a big deal at my house since I have FIOS 75/35 internet, but it will suck if the SGS3 gets poor speeds all over the city.

Well it's good to know that I'm not crazy then. It MAY be better than the Nexus but it's still not great.

I'm in an area that's pretty new to LTE. Where I sit now, I have 4 bars and with a speed test have seen speeds at around 41Mbps down and 13Mbps up. My coworker with his Droid 4 gets about half of the speed I do. I can't test my Thunderbolt right now (no microSIM adapter yet), but before activating my GS3, I was getting around 26Mbps on speed tests from this same location.

Using old unlimited verizon plan as home internet... any one done it?

So I've been waiting to get internet at my apartment, and have been using my one m8 tethered as home internet (thanks to the help on this forum getting a ROM running on it that lets me use the mobile hotspot).
Its working great. However, i'm at 120GB with 5 days to go. Being that this would be, under most carrier plans, an insane amount of data... I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with this. I definitely haven't seen any throttling or slowdown. Runs PS4 games, streaming, whatever. I was actually at 60GB 5 days into the month and have made a concereted effort to slow down lol, otherwise I might be in the 300-400GB range. That said, it really isn't too bad.
I actually just ordered time warner cable for $40/mo, so I guess I'm moving on anyway. But I'm curious if anyone has been doing this for an extended period and if Verizon ever made a stink.

Someone I know does. He canceled all wired tv, phone, & internet service to his home and has been using his verizon S4 for it all for over a year now. He's on the old unlimited data plan. It is apparently working well for him but he had to get a special wifi card for his PC to use the hotspot from the phone. He uses a wifi capable "smart" bluray player to get all his TV programming from youtube, netflix, and amazon prime. He said it was a learning curve to find all the tv programming he used to watch on cable but he has been able to get it all, albeit, at a later release date then the mainstream networks' prime time debuts.

I do it, but with T-Mobile.
Just one thing though....constant wifi tethering will destroy your phone. Specifically the battery, but all that heat and energy use can't be good for the rest of it either. I ruined 2 batteries on my Galaxy Light in less than a year. Ruined 2 Motorola Razr Maxxes this way too. You don't want to be doing this with a phone like the M8 that is practically impossible to repair.
If you choose to go this route, pick up a cheap (rootable, obviously) phone with a removable battery, like a Galaxy S3 to use as your "home" phone.

The S4 is better then the S3 in that regard because it supports that newer faster LTE (aws?), the wifi hardware is quite a bit more advanced (faster), and the repairs (if ever necessary) are easier. Wifi tether does use a lot of power but you'll be plugged in for that most of the time, especially at home. The circuitry holds up just fine in the S4 as long as you're not aggravating the situation with over-volting / over-clocking.

I had been using my old Droid 4 as a home gateway/router before I got the One working. Perhaps I could just use that as my home router.. it worked well enough but would cut out occasionally (annoying during games... the One doesn't do that). If anything the Droid 4 seemed to have a stronger wifi signal when it worked though... better range, just as fast as the M8.
Do you know how much data your friend goes through?

The Droid 4 does/did get really hot while tethering. To the point I'd usually rest it on a cold can of soda or something while using it, lol. The One doesn't get nearly as hot.

Keep in mind that the power consumption and heat generation of the screen still dwarfs that of the wifi module. While using the phone as a home internet gateway the screen will likely be off most of the time.
I don't know about his data useage quantity but he's almost always got something streaming video of some kind. Its probably not ideal for serious gaming because the signal does drop out from time to time. Toggling airplane mode on and off again reestablishes a full-speed connection pretty quick but it would be disruptive in a game.

well. my signal on the One hasn't dropped and I've been logging a lot of Destiny this month. Sometimes you'll get a little lag but it isn't bad.
Just saw that VZW is hiking unlimited prices $20/mo... wonder if that'll get challenged by the FCC (like throttling etc): http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/08/tec...ted-plan-increase/index.html?iid=hp-stack-dom

I have old UDP and use my phone hotspot to devices it in my motorhome. All was good until 2 months ago when I used 50-60gb and they throttled me since. No 4g at all from home tower. get 4g elsewhere .
How do I approach customer service to get un-throttled? New reports say they are not throttling anymore.
Thanks.

Try cycling airplane mode on/off to reestablish a 4G data connection.

0reo said:
Try cycling airplane mode on/off to reestablish a 4G data connection.
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Tried that 50 million times. She a no work! Others get 4g at my place not me.

This is my SOLUTION
Verizon 4G LTE Broadband Router With Voice
Works like a charm.

Born<ICs said:
I have old UDP and use my phone hotspot to devices it in my motorhome. All was good until 2 months ago when I used 50-60gb and they throttled me since. No 4g at all from home tower. get 4g elsewhere .
How do I approach customer service to get un-throttled? New reports say they are not throttling anymore.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i would just call them and explain your problem as you have here, and leave out the throttle part.
back up your data firs, they will likely have you factory reset at some point.
it could be a problem with your phone, or a problem with the towers in your area. they will determine which.
its very unlikely they are throttling. they wouldnt reduce the 4g signal output on an entire tower to do it, and they are actually prohibited from doing it by the fcc.

bweN diorD said:
i would just call them and explain your problem as you have here, and leave out the throttle part.
back up your data firs, they will likely have you factory reset at some point.
it could be a problem with your phone, or a problem with the towers in your area. they will determine which.
its very unlikely they are throttling. they wouldnt reduce the 4g signal output on an entire tower to do it, and they are actually prohibited from doing it by the fcc.
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Thank you. Ended up swapping Sim then got consistent signal a few days later. No idea what they did on their end. Swapped Sim to 6P and all is good now.

I did this when I was doing my internship. I mainly just streamed Netflix and only hit 256GB that month. There was a time Verizon was throttling my data even though they wouldn't admit it until I eventually got transferred to an engineer . None of their support tiers could answer my questions and kept telling me they didn't have the capability to throttle so the problem is my fault. I somehow eventually talked to an engineer at Verizon and the engineer didn't directly admit it but rather, he implied that they do have that capability and the support techs were lying. One tech blamed "tower service in the area" and another tech blamed the unlocked bootloader on my 2013 Moto X DEV for causing the connectivity issues even though I was running the stock ROM and even restored everything back to stock prior to calling. Hahaha.. The funny thing is that the connection went back to normal directly after that call ended. Weird how that works....

P8 Max in US

I have Straight talk currently with Ascend Mate2, and I do enjoy LTE speeds as they are much faster and definitely more consistent than my old hspa+ phone. The allure of this screen size may make me want to change my mind though. Can anyone detail if this will worth with ATT HSPA+ network as (maybe what connections it can use on t-mobile as well)
Also a slight unrelated note, are there any phones this large or greater than 6.5/6.7 that work with US LTE or definitely going to be released in the US soon? I read somewhere the lenovo phab plus might be but only seen that in one article.

I have a DAV-703L variant of the p8max and can confirm HSPA+ working on at&t's network. No LTE but from my experience I have noticed any horrible slow downs since most people have upgraded to LTE phones so the network isnt as congested as it once was. Here is a speed test done inside my house during "peak" usage time in this area. Speed usually sits around 7-8mbps up but wanted to show a worse case scenario, but even with those speeds non hd youtube, web browsing, pandora have zero issues.

Can't configure hspa to work on T-Mobile maybe I should switch to at&t

2 Questions about switch to MetroPCS

I did a search and couldn't find a good spot to ask about plans so hopefully this fits here.
Recently upgraded from N4 to N5, since I now have have access to LTE (and T-Mobile has recently rolled out Band 2 coverage just about state wide in my state) it has opened up my service provider options. Currently on ST (AT&T) $45 a month, was hoping to be able to switch to something else and gain LTE speed (I have an early sim card and no LTE speed) and maybe save $5 or so a month.
Came across an ad for MetroPCS (MVNO for T-Mobile) offering a free LTE phone with porting of a non T-Mobile # (since I'm on AT&T right now I should be eligible). Figured I could pick up a free phone, drop the sim card into my N5 and keep the phone has a spare/give it to my son/sell it.
I have 2 questions:
1. If I were to give it to my son, would I have to use MetroPCS for service or could I use it on T-Mobile or any of its MVNOs (eyeing the $30 text/data plan). From what I have read I think it would be stuck on MetroPCS unless I unlock it, which is apparently a little difficult for their GSM devices.
2. Not sure if anyone would know the answer for sure, but the large majority of my data is used streaming music on pandora to my car radio (Android headunit running pandora app that connects to my phone via wireless tether). The appeal of MetroPCS vs. other MVNOs was even tho I lose 2GB of data (3 vs. 5) I save $5 a month and if my pandora steaming doesn't count then my monthly usage goes from about 4.5GB down to 2GB. I assume that MetroPCS just looks at the servers on the web the data is coming from and then flags anything from Pandora has not to be against my quota, it doesn't care if my phone then shares that data via wifi to another Android device.
Anyway thanks for any answers or feedback.

Well I have working tether now, I'll report back about the answer to 2. And I will steal a t-mo sim from another phone and check 1. but I believe the answer is it will only work with metropcs sims and not any t-mobile mvno.

OK to answer #2 it appears that A. MetroPCS is lying just streaming pandora on my phone seems to eat up data (or something is eating it up at an alarming rate with my phone idle and just playing pandora) and it most certainly is counted towards my data cap when its on a tethered device, in fact their whole data usage seems to be a big scam. According to the MyMetro app I have used 800mb in 3 days, this is with playing about 2 hours of pandora (which shouldn't count) 3 short trips of navigation, about 20 emails (none with attachments, just short text only emails) and about 10 minutes of web browsing. On ST that wouldn't have been more than a few hundred MB.
And lastly their coverage map isn't even remotely close, 3 separate times I have been outdoors on a main road in an area that is solid dark purple even at the most zoomed in level and I can travel a good mile in every direction before I get any kind of signal, let alone a 4G LTE signal.
/Rant

Switching Carriers (Verizon to AT&T) Phone from Verizon Will/Won't Work?

Hi
I bought a Samsung Galaxy S10 from Verizon and have completely paid it off. We are switching to AT&T soon and I want to know how my phone will be affected by this. We live in a somewhat remote area, 1 bar is normal 2 bars is the maximum I have seen at home. I am concerned that the phone I have bought from Verizon does not have all of the bands that AT&T uses which will leave my phone even less operable.
Thank you to anyone who helps I really appreciate it