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[APP] Roam Control

Still waiting for the update.... I have an Epic and I payed for the app, and still not able to use it. Thanks for your prompt support MRGreg.

The app was updated to support the Epic and Moment a couple of weeks ago, and it's working for many Samsung owners. Have we talked over email? If not, I recommend sending me an email. If for some odd reason we can't get it working, I can always issue a refund!
 
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Ok I just got my Epic from the store yesterday. I have been running on a TouchPro 2, stock rom. Other then the weather hack, the only other hack I had on it was to force roam. When I am at home I am luck if I get 1 or 2 bars from sprint. I live outside of the St. Louis area, about 70 miles. There is a US cell tower maybe about 1/2 to a 1/3 mile away from me. On my TP2 when I roam I get full service cause the tower is so close.

Now I needed the same thing from my Epic from Sprint. So I found this app, followed the instructions for rooting my phone, which I have 0 idea of what the purpose of that was and it worked just fine. I dl this app, paid the money for it, and am lucky when I run it to force roam if I get 1 or 2 bars if I am lucky.

So what am I not understanding here? Am I doing something wrong? Is the phone not picking up the tower? I am so lost and confused. I am just about ready to take the phone back and get a refund. So far I am not impressed with Droid at all, it can't even get my folders for my Hotmail.

Seriously though, help me here?!
 
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for those who disbelieve what I am saying,here are a pick of each phone that i just took a few minutes ago. both on force roam.

still looking for some help here...

ok i also figured out that i am roaming on my TouchPro 2 on us cellular, but on the epic it is trying to roam on verizon. might explain a lot.
 

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Ok I just got my Epic from the store yesterday. I have been running on a TouchPro 2, stock rom. Other then the weather hack, the only other hack I had on it was to force roam. When I am at home I am luck if I get 1 or 2 bars from sprint. I live outside of the St. Louis area, about 70 miles. There is a US cell tower maybe about 1/2 to a 1/3 mile away from me. On my TP2 when I roam I get full service cause the tower is so close.

Now I needed the same thing from my Epic from Sprint. So I found this app, followed the instructions for rooting my phone, which I have 0 idea of what the purpose of that was and it worked just fine. I dl this app, paid the money for it, and am lucky when I run it to force roam if I get 1 or 2 bars if I am lucky.

So what am I not understanding here? Am I doing something wrong? Is the phone not picking up the tower? I am so lost and confused. I am just about ready to take the phone back and get a refund. So far I am not impressed with Droid at all, it can't even get my folders for my Hotmail.

Seriously though, help me here?!

Hi Mr (Dr?) Evil,

You aren't doing anything wrong. And don't worry about the $$ part, if you are dissatisfied I can always refund your money.

The WinMo phones have "roam only" compiled into the firmware but it's hidden. You can expose it by editing the registry.

With the Android phones, the "roam only" option is not compiled into the firmware. That makes things a lot more difficult since we don't have access to the exact source code (unless you run something like CM6). There are even differences between forcing roam with HTC phones and Samsung phones (with the Samsungs being more difficult).

When put in a "roam only" mode, the Samsungs will only roam onto 800mhz networks (this doesn't apply to HTCs), which may explain why it's roaming onto Verizon in your area. Otherwise, it may just be preferring Verizon towers, and I'm not sure why since the source isn't available.

Anyways, this has always been a drawback compared to WinMo phones.

I can't answer your Hotmail question since I only use Gmail...
 
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thanks for the reply. i am not as concerned with the hotmail thing, i am working that out slowly.

as far as the roam thing goes here is some updated info on that.

I left it on roam only and it does want to stay on verizon for some reason. but if i leave it on automatic, it will roam over to us cell and will stay for a bit but never stay for a long time. it is usuable and as long as i am using it then it stays on us cell.

so it is possible for it to roam on to the us cell service. so if it can roam on to the us cell service then it is something inside of the forced roam program or the os it self that is directing it to verizon only. which is a bit of what you said. but, if it will roam on to us cell service on its own then there has to be a way to include that into your program.

since i have no idea how to do this, i can only guess as to what I might do. so maybe 2 different roam options or an option in general. one to roam on any network, one to roam on cdma(verizon), and one to roam on non-cdma(us cell or like them). guess that might be 3 options. but really one 2 would work at 1st. one for cdma and one for non-cdma. should nt be that hard to figure out the frequency and what it takes to make the phone search for it and lock on.

Thoughts?
 
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thanks for the reply. i am not as concerned with the hotmail thing, i am working that out slowly.

as far as the roam thing goes here is some updated info on that.

I left it on roam only and it does want to stay on verizon for some reason. but if i leave it on automatic, it will roam over to us cell and will stay for a bit but never stay for a long time. it is usuable and as long as i am using it then it stays on us cell.

so it is possible for it to roam on to the us cell service. so if it can roam on to the us cell service then it is something inside of the forced roam program or the os it self that is directing it to verizon only. which is a bit of what you said. but, if it will roam on to us cell service on its own then there has to be a way to include that into your program.

since i have no idea how to do this, i can only guess as to what I might do. so maybe 2 different roam options or an option in general. one to roam on any network, one to roam on cdma(verizon), and one to roam on non-cdma(us cell or like them). guess that might be 3 options. but really one 2 would work at 1st. one for cdma and one for non-cdma. should nt be that hard to figure out the frequency and what it takes to make the phone search for it and lock on.

Thoughts?

As usual, it's easier said than done. Android is open source, but the phone manufacturers have plenty of proprietary stuff. It's difficult to figure out how to do these things, and some are not even possible because of what's compiled into the firmware. I'm always thinking of new ideas and if they are possible, but so far I haven't come up with much else that isn't dangerous.
 
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Mr Greg,

Congratulations - you have an interesting product and it appears to be well received.

I have a special roaming situation with my HTC Incredible on Verizon. I have Verizon's Family Plus Canada plan which allows voice and data access while in Canada, without roaming charges. Everything works well while I'm in the US (on Verizon) or while I'm in Canada (on Rogers). However, there are places in Canada, close to the border, where the phone stays on a weak Verizon signal instead of switching to the strong Rogers signal. Would your application allow me to force my Incredible to roam to the strong Rogers signal (voice and data) in this situation?

Thanks for your help.
 
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Mr Greg,

Congratulations - you have an interesting product and it appears to be well received.

I have a special roaming situation with my HTC Incredible on Verizon. I have Verizon's Family Plus Canada plan which allows voice and data access while in Canada, without roaming charges. Everything works well while I'm in the US (on Verizon) or while I'm in Canada (on Rogers). However, there are places in Canada, close to the border, where the phone stays on a weak Verizon signal instead of switching to the strong Rogers signal. Would your application allow me to force my Incredible to roam to the strong Rogers signal (voice and data) in this situation?

Thanks for your help.

The app should work for you, but I can't make any promises since you are on Verizon. I saw someone left a comment on my app saying it worked on their Incredible, so that's promising. Go ahead and try it out...you can keep it past the 24 hour mark, test it out, and I'll refund you manually if doesn't work how you expect...just shoot me an email.
 
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I'm using this on verizon with a htc incredible and it seems to work for a few minutes, it will show I'm on an extended network, but it will always switch back over to verizon. My gf has sprint and she gets good service at my apartment so was hoping to use this app to force roaming onto sprint towers. How come the app only is made to work with sprint phones and not vice versa? Thanks for making such a cool app.
 
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My EVO is rooted using unrevoked 3.21. It switches to roam, i am about to get 3G data and call out, but i dont receive calls. when i call the phone i go straight to voice mail like the phone is off. Any ideas?

I replied to your email.

I'm using this on verizon with a htc incredible and it seems to work for a few minutes, it will show I'm on an extended network, but it will always switch back over to verizon. My gf has sprint and she gets good service at my apartment so was hoping to use this app to force roaming onto sprint towers. How come the app only is made to work with sprint phones and not vice versa? Thanks for making such a cool app.

There are certain things that trigger the phone process to query the current roaming mode. If it doesn't recognize the roaming mode (it won't recognize "roam only"), it will default back to "home only". I'm guessing that is what's happening to you. Are you going into any settings menus or anything that seems to trigger falling back to Verizon service? I've never used an HTC Incredible, so I'm not sure how different it is from the Sprint phones.

The app is written generically to work with any CDMA Android phone, but it's targeted towards Sprint users since we're the ones who usually need the roaming :) And of course, the firmware differs from phone to phone, so some of them may have specialized code that doesn't allow this app to work.
 
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This is a very easy app to use. You are over thinking things. If you want to roam, press the "Roam Only" button! Wait a few seconds and you should see a triangle above the signal bars. That means you are now "Roaming" on a different carrier. Home means Sprint service only. And Automatic is probably what you have now. It will always look for and hold onto Sprint towers before switching over to Roaming when no Sprint service can be found.
You need Root access for this app to work and there are some issues with Samsung phones right now.

ok i have the evo and im not getting the triangle above the signal bars
 
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MrGreg,

Congratulations on receiving my very first money paid out for a phone app. My Epic is now just about perfect. It took me a while to figure out how to root (programmers shouldn't always be in the "business" of writing instructions, no matter how simple they supposedly are!) but once it did, the market experience and your app work just terrific. Thankfully I also knew what "superuser" permissions were and allowed it too. :D I also got to your app in the market by using the barcode on your app page, which was so cool in itself!

So in short, thanks!
 
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