How does the phone chose 3g vs 4g? - Nexus 6 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

So in the first floor of my office I usually connect to 3g and it's very slow, one day I decided to force the phone to stay on lte and I discovered my building has lte signal on the first floor as well. Why is my phone choosing to connect to 3g when there is 4g available?
Sprint Nexus 6 stock rooted prl and profile up to date
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reinaldistic said:
So in the first floor of my office I usually connect to 3g and it's very slow, one day I decided to force the phone to stay on lte and I discovered my building has lte signal on the first floor as well. Why is my phone choosing to connect to 3g when there is 4g available?
Sprint Nexus 6 stock rooted prl and profile up to date
Sent from my Nexus 6 using XDA Free mobile app
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What do you have your preferred network set to? LTE (recommended) or Global?

reinaldistic said:
So in the first floor of my office I usually connect to 3g and it's very slow, one day I decided to force the phone to stay on lte and I discovered my building has lte signal on the first floor as well. Why is my phone choosing to connect to 3g when there is 4g available?
Sprint Nexus 6 stock rooted prl and profile up to date
Sent from my Nexus 6 using XDA Free mobile app
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General speaking phones choose which one to use based on the signal strength(by dBm not by bars). So if you are in an area with a strong 3g signal but it also has a weak 4g signal, it will try to hold on to that 3g signal. Now I dont have sprint but I've had a few of the other carriers and that's how they worked.

mademan420 said:
General speaking phones choose which one to use based on the signal strength(by dBm not by bars). So if you are in an area with a strong 3g signal but it also has a weak 4g signal, it will try to hold on to that 3g signal. Now I dont have sprint but I've had a few of the other carriers and that's how they worked.
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Every android device I've had will choose the "best" network connection type, regardless of signal strength.
For example, my phone will always choose LTE over HSPA+ even when LTE signal is really poor and HSPA+ is good.

Related

HTC One LTE

I pick up LTE by my house when I go to the store, which is about half a mile away. When I'm outside that store, my HTC one shows full bars 4G, my girlfriend's iPhone 5 only shows 3G, when I leave the store I still get full bars until I drive under an overpass, then it just randomly turns to full bars 3G.
That doesn't really make sense, I got excited the first time I spotted 4G in that area, thinking that I should also have it inside my house, since it would be faster than my home internet
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I've read several times people saying the bars don't reflect your LTE signal strength but calling signal strength. You could be in the bare minimum fringe of LTE and pick it up and saturated cdma and have full bars and spotty 4g.
Also, the antennas in phones can vary in efficiency and quality. One phone may pick up better than another.
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IPhone 5 bars represent data signal.. The One shows 1x voice.. The One does not hold very good 4G in fringe areas. Wait for the area to launch then start to pinpoint the issue.
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i hope i get 4g soon..i heard by next week
BrianBaker said:
IPhone 5 bars represent data signal.. The One shows 1x voice.. The One does not hold very good 4G I'm fringe areas. Wait for the area to launch then start to pinpoint the issue.
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Sense Roms always show voice signal as bars. You are right. If you install an AOSP Rom on your One the signal bars will be of your data. That's why my wife's old NS4G always seemed liked it had worse signal than my old EVO 3D.
DruoGaby said:
i hope i get 4g soon..i heard by next week
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Here is the possible bad news: The HTC One uses the Snapdragon 600 which does not support the 800 band of LTE that Sprint has been deploying. I'm currently in Chicago and I can tell you that the 1900 band in a market that is nearly at 100% is spotty at best. The 800 band will travel farther and get better building penetration. The only way to to use the stronger transition band is to switch to a Snapdragon 800 phone when they come out in Q3.
Birdemani said:
Here is the possible bad news: The HTC One uses the Snapdragon 600 which does not support the 800 band of LTE that Sprint has been deploying. I'm currently in Chicago and I can tell you that the 1900 band in a market that is nearly at 100% is spotty at best. The 800 band will travel farther and get better building penetration. The only way to to use the stronger transition band is to switch to a Snapdragon 800 phone when they come out in Q3.
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But I don't think Sprint will do much LTE on 800 for a while. They are still shutting down IDEN through the end of the 2013.
undrgrndchemist said:
But I don't think Sprint will do much LTE on 800 for a while. They are still shutting down IDEN through the end of the 2013.
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The last day Sprint will be supporting iDEN across the country is June 29th. The 800 band has been testing in Chicago in spots already, especially out in the suburbs. In a market like this where it's the most completed of any NV rollout, the 800 LTE and 800 1x will be live in late Q3.
Check out s4gru.com for all info on LTE deployment for Sprint. There are apps like Sensorly that can show you actual data strength. Your bars do show voice not data strength though, unless you are on a AOSP ROM, they show data strength.
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gk1984 said:
I've read several times people saying the bars don't reflect your LTE signal strength but calling signal strength. You could be in the bare minimum fringe of LTE and pick it up and saturated cdma and have full bars and spotty 4g.
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I have heard this 2. Bars and 3g/4g icon have nothing to do with each other. Bars is phone reception, 3g/4g icon is current data connectivity.
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[Q] Way to know if 4G is working

Hi all, since a couple of weeks I am the happy owner of an HTC One. Where I live (Belgium), there is currently only one carrier which provides 4G and it is limited to a few cities. However, I live in one of those cities and according to a map on their site I should have 4G reception.
Unfortunately, I tried on several locations in the city and was never able to connect to LTE. My reception is otherwise without problems and I do have 3G connectivity. Now the question is if my phone is the problem or the carrier and a spotty coverage. So I have some questions:
1) Is it possible that the modem is not functioning correctly?
2) Is there any way of telling if the phone is capable of LTE without having an actual network to test it?
3) Do you need a seperate APN for LTE aside from the one used to connect via 3G?
Info for readers that are also living in Belgium. I have Proximus with Generation Connect and live in Ghent. I tested 4G connectivity on "het zuid" and "St. Pietersplein" without any luck.
Not sure if this helps but you could also check with your service provider if the mobile plan you're on allows for LTE access.
Here in Singapore, although there is nationwide LTE coverage, not every customer can automatically access it even though the phone supports LTE. I had to sign a new mobile plan to enable LTE access.
Thx for the reply The situation is very similar in Belgium, not every mobile plan gives you acces to 4G. My plan does, so that cannot be the problem. I suspect it is just spotty coverage by the provider but there is no way of knowing for sure I fear. This afternoon I was standing next to a cell phone tower with network quality -59dBm (which is good I think) and still no LTE. I was getting 24Mbps down on 3G though.
Hmm I would like to know if there are alternative tests too
My area doesn't have lte until beginning next year, but I would absolutely love to see a confirmation that my phone is capable of it
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4g and lte are two different things and 24mbs download is 4g or hspa+
I know that 4g and lte are not always the same. 24 down was on hspa+ as you suggested However in Belgium, hspa+ is known as 3g or 3g+ and lte is known as 4g. So in my case, 4g always means lte but I understand your confusion, sorry about that.
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You may also need to change your simcard. Here in Malaysia, lots of people buy the phone from retailers, and their older simcard does not support LTE.
skinsfanbdh said:
4g and lte are two different things and 24mbs download is 4g or hspa+
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That's not strictly true. When the ITU created the ITU-Advanced spec (4G), current implementations of "4G" would probably not pass as it was between 100-1000Mbps. WiMax might. Very few countries went the WiMax route and some have given up sine and switched, most went for LTE as itbwas cheaper to convert existing technology. After the fact, the ITU decided that the 4G term could encompass LTE. So, for over 2 years now, LTE is 4G.

LTE on tmobile?

anyone able to pickup lte on tmobile? im in strong coverage area and usually any att phone i use with my tmobile sim picks up lte but not getting it with the first. only 4g. ??
only ONCE did I pick up a 4g LTE signal and it was in a T-Mobile store using the apn epc.T-Mobile.com but a little while after more specifically the after I went out LTE was lost and the speeds I saw were definitely LTE like. I don't know if it was just a fluke on the phone that displayed the signal wrong or that tmobiles refaring is getting allot more drastic allowing LTE
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LTE on Straight Talk (AT&T)

I steered away from this for a while after someone told me that AT&T doesn't use band 4 LTE. But I'm hearing isolated reports of people with LTE on straight talk getting 8 to 10 Mbps. I'm all stock right now and just got a new ST sim that works with "tfdata". Anyone care to share how they got it working?
http://goo.gl/fXJHjU
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You said you're all stock now. For LTE to work, you need to flash an LTE-capable radio. There are lots of threads that can help you with that, but here's one to start with: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2358931 [NOTE: I'm not sure all parts of that guide work with KitKat, so ask someone to make sure.]
Also, are you sure you're in one of the areas where AT&T has band 4 LTE? The easiest way to check is to go here: http://reboot.fcc.gov/spectrumdashboard/searchMap.seam
Click on your state, then filter by name (AT&T) and by license category (AWS-1). If your area doesn't show up there, you're out of luck. If it does, there's a chance, but no guarantee, that you can get LTE service.
I'm on Net10, which is functionally identical to Straight Talk for this kind of thing, and mine instantly worked once I activated a SIM card after LTE service went live. I got speeds as high as 18mbps down, but ping times were around 150 ms, not any better than HSPA. Also, I had issues where the radio would fail to switch back to HSPA sometimes after I left an LTE area, and I would have to go into the phone settings menu to disable LTE data to get it working again. Because of those issues, I haven't had LTE enabled lately, but I'll probably go back because there are areas I go where the HSPA network is too congested to get a usable connection.
Okay Thanx. I just confirmed AT&T doesn't have AWS (frq 1730 - 2135) in my area. However, MetroPCS, Verizon and T-Mobile did. How would you go about going with MetroPCS or Verizon?? I thought they were CDMA carriers.
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Xiaomi mi5/North america,United States usage?

I'm thinking of porting this phone to the states. Now i understand it will not get 4g LTE connection and will limit me to an hspa+ and 3g connection. My question is to anyone who has it in the states how's the connection holding up for you? Does it bug you that you dont have LTE?
Yes, the connection is quite slow. And the 3g signal is sometimes weak even though other phones have very good LTE signals. I unlocked other bands and sometimes I have LTE connections but the speed is usually slow. However, 3g is usually bearable for me.
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3g is fine if you are not in rural area.
U should choose ATT or its mvno.

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