Help Pitch in and help me help HTC!

[death2twitter]

Are you on stock everything and want to help get rid of the signal fluctuations and Interface Shortage annoyances? No, this isn't some stupid petition, this is real.
I am currently in an email conversation with HTC tech support, and so far they've been extremely good. However, they asked me to perform a troubleshooting step which i cannot because I currently do not have acess to WiFi. Here is the relevant paragraph, copy-pasted from the email:

"I would like to enable an option on your phone as well. Let's navigate to Settings and tap on Wi-Fi to the left of the on/off toggle. Here we can press Menu>Advanced. I'd like to enable Best Wi-Fi performance, and for now at least set 'Keep Wi-Fi on during sleep' to always. Now let's return to Settings and, with only Wi-Fi enabled, turn airplane mode.

Let's hold down power for about 30-45 seconds until the phone powers off completely on its own. This resets the battery connection. Now let's press the power button and, once the screen has turned on, hold down Volume down until the phone finishes booting up. This disables third party applications and can help with testing. We should see Safe Mode written on the bottom left of your screen.

Michael, at this point if we turn off airplane mode do you get a good Wi-Fi connection? If so, does it act up after we re-enable mobile data?"

Basically, boot the phone into safe mode and see if WiFi fluctuates like the cell radio. Personally I don't see what WiFi has to do with it, but he seems to have a hunch, and I am more than happy to get one step closer to fixing this thing.
For me, nothing happened when I held the power button down for a full minute, so maybe shut off normally and pull the battery? Also, when I entered safe mode in airplane mode, it would not come out of airplane mode, so i had to re-reboot without airplane mode.

Bottom line, do what the guy says, and post results. Also, say if you had the same problems with the power button and airplane mode.

I don't want to make this sound like a demand, I am merely asking you guys, so together maybe we can get this thing fixed!

 

[gamikzone]

Are you on stock everything and want to help get rid of the signal fluctuations and Interface Shortage annoyances? No, this isn't some stupid petition, this is real.
I am currently in an email conversation with HTC tech support, and so far they've been extremely good. However, they asked me to perform a troubleshooting step which i cannot because I currently do not have acess to WiFi. Here is the relevant paragraph, copy-pasted from the email:

"I would like to enable an option on your phone as well. Let's navigate to Settings and tap on Wi-Fi to the left of the on/off toggle. Here we can press Menu>Advanced. I'd like to enable Best Wi-Fi performance, and for now at least set 'Keep Wi-Fi on during sleep' to always. Now let's return to Settings and, with only Wi-Fi enabled, turn airplane mode.

Let's hold down power for about 30-45 seconds until the phone powers off completely on its own. This resets the battery connection. Now let's press the power button and, once the screen has turned on, hold down Volume down until the phone finishes booting up. This disables third party applications and can help with testing. We should see Safe Mode written on the bottom left of your screen.

Michael, at this point if we turn off airplane mode do you get a good Wi-Fi connection? If so, does it act up after we re-enable mobile data?"

Basically, boot the phone into safe mode and see if WiFi fluctuates like the cell radio. Personally I don't see what WiFi has to do with it, but he seems to have a hunch, and I am more than happy to get one step closer to fixing this thing.
For me, nothing happened when I held the power button down for a full minute, so maybe shut off normally and pull the battery? Also, when I entered safe mode in airplane mode, it would not come out of airplane mode, so i had to re-reboot without airplane mode.

Bottom line, do what the guy says, and post results. Also, say if you had the same problems with the power button and airplane mode.

I don't want to make this sound like a demand, I am merely asking you guys, so together maybe we can get this thing fixed!

this may or may not work, i have spent hours working on this issue i finally got 90% of the flucutations gone, i rooted my phone did s-off flashed custom rom flashed a prl changed hboot and flashed a older version of a radio from the evo 3D this may sound like a long hard process but its not really, now for the signal problem i will try it but i dont think it will work, the signal fluctation is more of a hardware issue when virgin rebranded these phones from the orignal sprint. but if this does work you have found a great fix and i thank you for that

 

[death2twitter]

this may or may not work, i have spent hours working on this issue i finally got 90% of the flucutations gone, i rooted my phone did s-off flashed custom rom flashed a prl changed hboot and flashed a older version of a radio from the evo 3D this may sound like a long hard process but its not really, now for the signal problem i will try it but i dont think it will work, the signal fluctation is more of a hardware issue when virgin rebranded these phones from the orignal sprint. but if this does work you have found a great fix and i thank you for that

I'm glad that all worked for you, but I'd really rather not resort to that just yet. Plus, doesn't that kind of prove that a software fix is possible? This isn't really a fix, all this is is a troubleshooting step that I lack the resources to perform at the moment. It's you guys helping HTC hone in on what the exact problem is (hopefully, anyway).

 

[hchen42]

Holding down power button for 30-45 seconds didn't work for me. I disabled the fastboot option instead. When powering back up, I just hold the volume down, and able to get into safe mode. Wife/cell/data(3g/4g) radios all seem "normal".

At this moment, I just wish HTC release the radio source code.

 

[mastersoup]

link them to the radio fix in the sticky section of all things root.

 

[FMKev]

I have a stock - non rooted - phone, so I tried to follow your steps and came up with the following results:

I installed "Signal Notification (free)" app to monitor the signal strength in the Notification area.
I enabled wifi and changed the settings: enable Best Wi-Fi performance to enabled, and 'Keep Wi-Fi on during sleep' to always
I turned on Airplane mode.
I pressed and held the power button for almost 2 minutes, and the phone did not shut down automatically. So I pressed the power down button on the screen.
I powered up my phone - held down the "Volume Down" button, and booted into Safe mode. Airplane mode was still enabled when phone came up.
I disabled Airplane mode. when I did this, wifi was disabled, so it actually connected to 3G. I clicked on wifi - to enable it.
I sent several texts and never saw an issue. signal strength for me was averaging in a range from -68 to -80. Wifi icon and the cellular bar icons never changed and remained full the whole time.
I disabled wifi (back to 3G connection) - I sent several texts. The signal strength stayed steady (-70 or so), the one item that did change is each time I sent a text, the 3G icon went grey and it changed to 1x, then after a short time it returned to 3G - but the cellular bars remained on and strong.

At this point I powered down my phone, and powered back up in normal mode.

I received a notification that Facebook authentication failed. With this still failed - not acknowledging any notifications - I enabled wifi. I sent several texts and never had any issues.
I disabled wifi, and sent several texts. with each text, the 3G changed to grey, changed to 1x, then after time recovered to 3G. the cellular bars always remained strong and never changed.

At this point I acknowledged the Facebook notification (and signed in) - during this process - I received a notification for "Authorize HTC sense error" but this error cleared itself a few seconds later.
At this point (wifi still off) I sent several texts.
The first text: The 3G icon greyed out, went to 1x, the cellular bars greyed out (like no connection) then everything came back. The Signal Strength number never changed however and stayed around -70.
The second text: (Same as first text) plus I received the SMS "Other general problems" error, and the Signal Strength went to -120.

I then enabled wifi. I sent several texts and did not see any issues at all.

I hope this helps.

 

[death2twitter]

Of course it helps.
So, after some more emailing they told me that they are aware of the Radio Interface Shortage bug and working with Virgin to fix it. He also sugested that I file a support ticket with Virgin. I imagine the more people that do that, the better, so come on guys!

 

[OGWillikers]

I have a stock - non rooted - phone, so I tried to follow your steps and came up with the following results:

I installed "Signal Notification (free)" app to monitor the signal strength in the Notification area.
I enabled wifi and changed the settings: enable Best Wi-Fi performance to enabled, and 'Keep Wi-Fi on during sleep' to always
I turned on Airplane mode.
I pressed and held the power button for almost 2 minutes, and the phone did not shut down automatically. So I pressed the power down button on the screen.
I powered up my phone - held down the "Volume Down" button, and booted into Safe mode. Airplane mode was still enabled when phone came up.
I disabled Airplane mode. when I did this, wifi was disabled, so it actually connected to 3G. I clicked on wifi - to enable it.
I sent several texts and never saw an issue. signal strength for me was averaging in a range from -68 to -80. Wifi icon and the cellular bar icons never changed and remained full the whole time.
I disabled wifi (back to 3G connection) - I sent several texts. The signal strength stayed steady (-70 or so), the one item that did change is each time I sent a text, the 3G icon went grey and it changed to 1x, then after a short time it returned to 3G - but the cellular bars remained on and strong.

At this point I powered down my phone, and powered back up in normal mode.

I received a notification that Facebook authentication failed. With this still failed - not acknowledging any notifications - I enabled wifi. I sent several texts and never had any issues.
I disabled wifi, and sent several texts. with each text, the 3G changed to grey, changed to 1x, then after time recovered to 3G. the cellular bars always remained strong and never changed.

At this point I acknowledged the Facebook notification (and signed in) - during this process - I received a notification for "Authorize HTC sense error" but this error cleared itself a few seconds later.
At this point (wifi still off) I sent several texts.
The first text: The 3G icon greyed out, went to 1x, the cellular bars greyed out (like no connection) then everything came back. The Signal Strength number never changed however and stayed around -70.
The second text: (Same as first text) plus I received the SMS "Other general problems" error, and the Signal Strength went to -120.

I then enabled wifi. I sent several texts and did not see any issues at all.

I hope this helps.

Confirmed these findings on Mobster 2.05 s-on and not in safe-mode. Interesting.