Flashing Samsung Galaxy S8 to Verizon - General Questions and Answers

I bought a refurbished phone from Amazon and it works great aside from an absolutely terrible data signal. My old phone (Galaxy S6) had 4G almost everywhere in my house, this one I was able to get a very weak 3G signal outside. Someone on another forum suggested that I could flash my phone to Verizon and that might help. Would that actually fix the problem? If so how do I do that?

Related

Radio Performance

I am curious as to how the phones signal has been for those that own it. I currently have the S3 and have had it since launch but don't like how it gets stuck in 3g or 1x when losing 4g temporarily even though I know i'm back into a good 4g area. Overall signal is good but the transfer between 1x/3g back to 4g is terrible and my next phone i'm hoping to avoid all the frustration.
I have thought of buying the moto x just because its motorola and they're known for good radios. I have some time and am thinking of waiting until the moto x2 or g3 but its one of those things where why wait if it's good.
Thanks in advance.
zim2704 said:
I am curious as to how the phones signal has been for those that own it. I currently have the S3 and have had it since launch but don't like how it gets stuck in 3g or 1x when losing 4g temporarily even though I know i'm back into a good 4g area. Overall signal is good but the transfer between 1x/3g back to 4g is terrible and my next phone i'm hoping to avoid all the frustration.
I have thought of buying the moto x just because its motorola and they're known for good radios. I have some time and am thinking of waiting until the moto x2 or g3 but its one of those things where why wait if it's good.
Thanks in advance.
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Click to collapse
To be honest with you. Samsung has the worst radios. I had an s3 and it dropped signal too many times. I then got the HTC DNA and it was so much better. I believe HTC has a way better radio than Samsung.
My All New One
I was kind of concerned about this too before I bought mine. I come from a long list of Moto phones. The only non Moto phone I've had was a Rezound. I had it for all of one day. The darn thing would only ring probably 1 out of 4 calls I received. 1 out of 3 if I was lucky. I took it back the day after I bought it and they looked at it and told me there was nothing wrong with it. Well, I've never had a problem like that in my house with any Moto phone. So, I told them to keep it and went home with a Razr Maxx. You can see why I was concerned.
Anyway, I have to say, this phone has the best radio or at least the best reception of any phone I've owned. I work in an area that is quite iffy as far as a signal goes and my Moto phones would hold a pretty good signal there but depending on where I was at any given time, I would lose the signal and have to walk around a bit to get it back. In the shop there, forget it. I pretty much had nothing. The signal on this phone shows it's slightly weaker at work than my Maxx but it's worked flawlessly for me out there. I can even take it in the shop and it works great. Signal is weak but somehow it seems to hang onto it. Listened to Tune In Radio for 5 hours in there today and never lost the signal once.
I also went to a town today where it's worse than at work. My Moto phones there would work but constantly on and off. I was listening to Tune In there today too and it did have one hiccup for 10 seconds or so but that was it in a half hour's time. But, that doesn't surprise me in that location. What does surprise me is that it only stopped once. No way any of my Moto phones would do that well there. Anyway, maybe I'm just lucky but I'm extremely pleased with mine and don't regret buying it at all.
The old faithful LTE ON/OFF FOR thunderbolt app still works like a charm to control the radio bands on an HTC phone.
Highly recommend to install to force lte or 3g when needed.
The S3 in particular had a wretched radio, I couldn't get signal for the life of me in my house. Verizon ended up replacing it for me with a Note 2 which was better in many regards. The radio so far on the M8 has blown the note 2 out of the water, it doesn't even compare. I get a steady 10-20 asu improvement over what I used to get with the note 2 in most situations.
Liking what I've read so far.
Been so so for me. I've always had ATT and personally only had bad reception in my home. Almost anywhere else I had 4g LTE everywhere. Never saw Edge connection, worst was 3G.
I just switched to Verizon for this device when it came out so first time with Verizon. I get better 4g LTE connection at home but I've noticed in stores I get only 1x (is this Edge type of network compared to AT&T?) Or maybe 1-2 bars of 3G. Only get 4G LTE when outdoors. Even inside huge Target, Wal-Mart, whatever get cfao reception when on AT&T this was never an issue. This might be a carrier thing though, nothing to do with this device but again nothing to compare to, first device and time on Verizon network. Surprising too living in southern California where LTE is literally everywhere here. Actually had much higher hopes for Verizon network, feeling let done here.

Poor Reception/LTE/GPS Galaxy S6 SM-G920F

Hey Guys, first post for me here!
I recently purchased a Galaxy S6 SM-G920F through Amazon. I travel and need a phone that is able to support whatever SIM I put in it, plus the benefits of tethering are excellent! I am on AT&T family plan with unlimited data. I was upgrading from a SM-G900A Galaxy S5.
I've been seeing extremely poor reception, regardless of where I am, I'll get -101dBm on my phone, holding it right next to a new phone at an AT&T store that gets -89dBm. AT&T gave me a new SIM, and refreshed a bunch of stuff on their end, no change. I talked to Samsung and went through a bunch of troubleshooting steps, no change. They told me that the phone likely had a bad modem and suggested that I exchange it for a new one. I just received the new one today and I'm seeing the same signal issues! I'm unable to make a call without complaints of poor sound quality from the other end, Waze and Google Maps don't work at all, the phone receives GPS location.
Am I doing something wrong here? My understanding is that this phone should work flawlessly on AT&T network, according to the Samsung tech specs, it supports all the necessary bands for AT&T including B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B7, B8, B12, B17, B18, B19, B20, B26.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I really love the new phone, but it not getting reception or GPS really makes it useless.
I am having similar issues.
My reception stays for 10 minutes and then Its pretty much dead. No reception at all. I have to reboot my phone and then it will get signal. That doesnt stay for long and then It just disconnects.
Do you have any solution ?
I have the same variant and I've noticed that the signal is about 5dBm worse than my s4 in all situations on average. I suppose it's because it's glass and metal rather than plastic.
The signal gets stupidly erratic when I move around though it can jump up 10dBm and go straight back down. I wonder if the phone has an antenna at the top and bottom and switches between whichever one has a better signal. I don't think they've done a great job with the antennas in the s6 tbh.
same here. got the 920F from breed on eBay and I am having crappy reception at home, where as my iPhone 6 have 4 bars.
Same problem on edge version.
I think is software related because did same process with my vendor and nothing changed.
Today received an ota update and one change was the modem making it less Hot and "better" reception.
Before -103 now -93/-96
Maesedroid said:
Same problem on edge version.
I think is software related because did same process with my vendor and nothing changed.
Today received an ota update and one change was the modem making it less Hot and "better" reception.
Before -103 now -93/-96
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Click to collapse
which OTA update was this? can you advise? Thanks!
Maesedroid said:
Same problem on edge version.
I think is software related because did same process with my vendor and nothing changed.
Today received an ota update and one change was the modem making it less Hot and "better" reception.
Before -103 now -93/-96
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very interesting, please can you post more information such as your Build number and Baseband version in your phone settings/about device.
Hi, guys. I'm from the Philippines, and I also own the same S6 version as you guys do. Sadly, I'm also suffering from the same problems of my phone. Brought it to the nearest Samsung Service Center, and all they did was to re-software it. Same problem.
How are your phones now?
I'm getting -77 dBm and 18 asu as we speak, is that good?
I thought the G920F was the EU handset? Could explain the below-par signal in the US

Bad network signal / reception?

I was wondering how everyones experience with network signal is on their S6.
I upgraded from an S4 i9505 to the S6 SM-G920F and I notice that the signal to my network is about -5dBm worse on average. It means the phone isn't as good at keeping signal in a low signal area, and it drops from 4G to 3G much more often that the S4 in the same place.
Maybe my antenna is bad or does anyone else experience this?
Also, don't use the signal bars as a judge of your signal. Samsung has changed them, for example they now show 2 bars 4G when my S4 shows 1 bar. Both phones could have -105dBm and the S6 will show 2 bars but S4 1 bar. It makes it look as if the S6 signal is the same or better when in fact the true signal is worse on the S6.
If you want to see your true dBm signal on the S6, go to the dialer and type *#0011# and choose STACK 1. Your signal is the RSRP.
Screenshots attached of S4 and S6, you can see S6 shows 2 bars with -109dBm and S4 shows 1 bar with -106dBm. S4 has a better signal, so don't believe the bars.
Well, i have a couple of flagship cell phone, including 2 motorolas ( Turbo and X 2nd gen) , i thing it might have differences from region to region , but from my experience , Samsung and LG was the ones with bad reception from past experience, S3 , S4 and S5 they were always with a bar or two lower than other phones, and when motorola has only one bar , sammy was with no signal at all ,long time already .
Well, motorola are the best in signal strength for me, follow by HTC. This time sammy has improved, i guess it's the in-house chips or something. Still no Motorola tough .
I guess we notice those things because we live or work in a region that has weak signal so a little bit more or less makes huge difference.
Here is my screen shot right now. The signal bar seems to be accurate with the signal db.
Thanks for the screenshot Galinha1. That's interesting that you find Samsung has improved this time around. I notice that your screenshot has "Ant RSRP Diff" at a minus number (-26) but I've never seen mine in a minus, you can see mine is at 14. I don't know what Ant RSRP Diff means though, any ideas?
If you find that the S6 signal is better than the S4, maybe I have a faulty device?
mupet0000 said:
I upgraded from an S4 i9505 to the S6 SM-G920F and I notice that the signal to my network is about -5dBm worse on average. It means the phone isn't as good at keeping signal in a low signal area, and it drops from 4G to 3G much more often that the S4 in the same place.
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Click to collapse
I have the exactly same experience. The S6 is more agressive drops to 3G. I'm coming from an HTC One M which in my everyday, according to OpenSignal, has 70-80% 4G connection 24/7, the rest 3G.
My S6 has around 30% 4G, 40% 3G and 30% Edge . Because of the great camera in the S6 I have decided to stick with it for now. Sadly. The great 4G signal in my area actually made me stay on 4G all day on the M8 and disregard wifi usage. On the S6 I've falled back to wifi which on my connection is a lot worse than 4G.
I'm really hoping for this issue to be in the Modem/radio firmware and not in the psycially device.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s6/help/lte-signal-indicator-issues-t3083001
mupet0000 said:
Thanks for the screenshot Galinha1. That's interesting that you find Samsung has improved this time around. I notice that your screenshot has "Ant RSRP Diff" at a minus number (-26) but I've never seen mine in a minus, you can see mine is at 14. I don't know what Ant RSRP Diff means though, any ideas?
If you find that the S6 signal is better than the S4, maybe I have a faulty device?
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Click to collapse
Well, i don't know for sure if it's better than S5, it's been around 7 to 8 months i last used my S5 . But i remember that it was a really bad device for signal and call quality. Looks like it's better or is the placebo effect from a shiny new toy . About yours been faulty , well, before last week i would say no for sure, i would assume a firmware or modem software issue, not hardware, but i bought my S6e 2 weeks ago, and i had a lot of drop calls, random reboots , freezes ,and people complaining that they call me and the phone rings once or twice and hung up , and in my end i never saw that attempt of calling, so i tried a new firmware, updated, downgraded it.. still having issues. So i went to my carrier and they didn't even let me finish my complains and handed me a new device. I went back home , thinking that couldn't be hardware issue and this new one would have the same problems. But now it works as it supposed to do . So i guess they might have a lot of faulty devices and software issues for those initial batches . Although i still have some drop calls, and 3g or 4g drops , is not that noticeable like it was before.
I have no idead what ANt RSRP Diff means.
I hope you solve your problem, anything i can help you let me know.
better than my old nexus 6 and m7. plus it holds onto lte much longer
I also have issues with cell reception. I'm on att, and although in areas where signal is strong there are no issues, I have serious issues maintaining a cellular connection when the signal is mediocre. I'm at my wits end with this. The phone seems to run fine, no issues besides the fact that I don't get signal in many areas that my old Nokia lumina 930 had no issue getting reception. Also, ive compared with a few friends iphone 6's and they have signal while my s6 will have nothing. I will be bringing the phone in tomorrow, but if anyone has any other suggestions to fix this besides factory reset, which I've already done, I'd appreciate the help.
I also had problems with cell reception. (no signal, drop calls)
As suggested on several forums I changed the network mode in settings to WCDMA/GSM and this seems to solve the reception problems. This way I am not be able to use 4G but at least I can make calls now XD
hnos said:
I also had problems with cell reception. (no signal, drop calls)
As suggested on several forums I changed the network mode in settings to WCDMA/GSM and this seems to solve the reception problems. This way I am not be able to use 4G but at least I can make calls now XD
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Click to collapse
Well looks like it's many more of us than I thought... I am on EE and reception is a joke ( joke anyway on EE) but with S6 reception is much weaker than on any previous phones I've had. What firmware r u running
misiokicio said:
Well looks like it's many more of us than I thought... I am on EE and reception is a joke ( joke anyway on EE) but with S6 reception is much weaker than on any previous phones I've had. What firmware r u running
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Click to collapse
I am on stock 5.1.1 G925FXXU2BOFJ
I believe the version is the same for the G920F
Just came back to Verizon after being with T-Mobile for a year. Signal is pretty much the same at the house as I has always been.
click for larger image
Around town it is normally pretty good. At work, it is much better than T-Mobile ever was.
S4 has better 4G signal then S6
This seems to be a problem world wide. Looks like Galaxy S6 is having issues with 4G. I compared it with my old S4 and it's way worse.
Here are the results.
S4- 4G inside the house signal: -109dBm 31asu
S4 - 4G outside the house signal: -102dBm 35asu
S6 - 4G inside the house signal: NO SIGNAL
S6 - 4G outside the house signal: -113dBm 0asu
On my S4 I'm getting a better signal inside the house than what I get on the S6 outside the house.
Does anyone know the reason for this and is there a fix?
4G is calculated differently than a 3G signal
4G: (113 is good, 140 is bad)

having problem with reception in my house since upgraded from S4 to S6 EDGE

i get reception problems in my house
never had those
it started the second i changed from s4 to s6
i dont know what to do
the only thing i can think of trying is to download my provider's stock rom for this device and pull the modem from there
the only one i could find is file named CEL-G925FXXU1AOD4
its 5.0.1 though and my device has the updated 5.1.1' would this modem work ?
Hello,
Return your Galaxy S6, it's useless if you want a signal. I also have the same problem coming from the Galaxy S4, I sent the S6 for repair twice and the signal is still poor. Samsung have made a horrible mistake with the antenna on the S6. it's the worst signal of any phone I've ever seen. And don't worry about 5.1.1, I have it on my G920F and the signal is still poor.
Change mobile providers. My signal is generally full on my S6 indoors and outdoors. In the basement at work right now I have Full bars, -95dbm, 10asu. No different than on S4 or HTC One M9.
How is changing mobile provider going to help an issue caused by the phone? We both notice worse signal with our S6s compared to other phones, on the same network. So Samsung probably has a huge batch with useless antennas.

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

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