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Help [Sprint][Possibly resolved] when in 4G coverage, mobile data freezes device

S

spthomas

Newbie
I'm having problems with my HTC ONE when I'm on mobile data (not wifi it works fine). randomly the unit's mobile data will freeze. It still displays the 4g icon, still says "connected" in Settings. but no data is moving, and speedtest.net reports "searching for nearest server" until it times out.

I did speedtest.net side by side with my wife's Sprint Samsung Galaxy III. Hers was about 4mbit dl, mine still stuck on "searching for nearest server". did that 3 times on different days, same result.

sometimes it will just start working. again. sometimes on reboot it works. sometimes not.

Any ideas? Sprint doesn't.
Steve
 
It seems to be an internet connectivity problems -- this usually happens when the internet connection is intermittent or fluctuates a lot.

Have you taken the device in to be checked by a technician? ;)
 
I like to ask questions since it's very difficult to diagnose over the internet.

are you rooted?
has this happened from day one of using the device?
did you install or uninstall anything prior to this issue?
does the phone lock up globally? meaning when on cellular data can you use the phone to make calls, text, use the browser, play locally stored video or audio files?
does it happen everywhere or in certain areas?

seems its only occurring when in 4G areas? is this correct?

if you are in a fringe 4G area and the phone is constantly switching back and forth between 3G and 4G, this is most likely the reason.
 
spthomas said:
I'm having problems with my HTC ONE when I'm on mobile data (not wifi it works fine). Randomly the unit's mobile data will freeze. It still displays the 4g icon, still says "connected" in Settings. But no data is moving, and speedtest.net reports "searching for nearest server" until it times out.

I did speedtest.net side by side with my wife's Sprint Samsung Galaxy III. Hers was about 4mbit dl, mine still stuck on "searching for nearest server". did that 3 times on different days, same result.

Sometimes it will just start working. Again. Sometimes on reboot it works. Sometimes not.
Click to expand...

marctronixx said:
Does it happen everywhere or in certain areas?

Seems its only occurring when in 4G areas? Is this correct?

If you are in a fringe 4G area and the phone is constantly switching back and forth between 3G and 4G, this is most likely the reason.
Click to expand...

^ Almost certainly, this sounds like the issue.

A tip I have come across that helps sometimes is to switch on Airplane Mode for a minute and then switch it off. It will 'cycle' the radios and force a reconnect to mobile networks without rebooting the entire device. The Airplane Mode trick usually forces the device to Pick 3G or Pick 4G (LTE) whichever is stronger at the time and get you out of limbo.

I'm on a fringe LTE area and can't hold the signal very consistently (Sprint). My phone switches between 3G and 4G alot and often times I get stuck in this limbo land with no signal between 3G and 4G during the (poor) handoff.
Not even the Airplane Mode trick will help for a long period of time, so at home I keep my setting to 3G CDMA only and only switch it when I know I'm in a more 4G signal saturated area. (if you aren't familiar with this setting, please see the second part of this post)

The Samsung Galaxy S3 and HTC One have a different hardware make up, antennae, and radios, which is why one may be getting a signal and the other appears not to.
Also, if your city or "market" is just getting LTE rolled out to it you may find various strange connection problems.

There are some 4G settings in the hidden dialer menus that I have wanted to experiment with for a long time, however I do not want to put my device at risk by changing settings that could potentially hurt rather than help. I'll search around and see if anyone else has experimented with them - last time I looked a few months ago I hadn't found any evidence
 
The phone isn't rooted. It does not lock up globally; everything else works and if I have wifi available and turn it on while the mobile data is locked up the wifi connects fine.

Not really in fringey areas. My wifes phone is usually showing 3mbit - 5mbit 4G, which is a pretty strong signal. It also happens in several places, not just one.

Don't know about the 3g-4g switching. It seems to be working fine in 4g, then when it freezes it's still showing 4g. In fact I don't think this has happened in a 3g area, but most everywhere I am is finally 4g.

Sprint first said "you have something very wierd here. The menus in your "Mobile Data" screen are all wrong, you're missing two items. Must be a software failure!". Really, a software failure that results only in 2 items being missing from a menu?

Then I took it to the store, and they said "we reloaded the network by connecting to a pc, that will fix it" (I guess "connecting to a pc" is better than over the air?). But it didn't.

It is one of those cases where it sometimes just comes back to life when I pulled up at the sprint store. Maybe a REALLY strong 4G signal like they have at the store had something to do with it (around 15mbit I think).
 
This happens to me all the time in downtown San Francisco. Same thing would happen on my evo lte. I have to switch to cdma only all the time. Switching this usually switches mobile newtwork on and off. And then 3g works fine. I sometimes feel like it's also the amount of traffic in the area. As sometimes it will freeze yet later in the same spot 4g will work fine.

Sprint service no so great. I'm giving them a little over a year to change my mind otherwise I'm switching carriers.
 
Maybe it's an HTC defect. Every time mine locks up like this, my wife's Samsung is doing great on 4G in the same place at the same time.

After fighting with Sprint for about a year, finally they installed 4G in my area (after telling me it was there for over 6 months that it wasn't). I've been ok with the speed and the places I get 4g. But this lockup has got to stop.
 
this issue can behave differently on different phones, even the same phone, so the fact your wifes phone is ok and yours is not does not really mean your phone is defective. lots of factors in play to cause a device to freeze or misbehave...

it is worth a shot to contact phone support at sprint and maybe get to tier II to have them make sure your account is setup properly.

you could also be in areas where network vision is still rolling out/being upgraded and what you are experiencing is temporary growing pains.

the original evo on wimax did the same thing in areas where 4g and 3g would toggle. a workaround was to go into the phones radio settings (using your MSL) and altering radio thresholds and sensitivities and timeout values to squeeze every bit of wimax 4g one could find.

so just monitor where you are and the signal coverage when this happens. also if you know of areas where this occurs, temporarily disable 4G and see if the phone locks up. this should give you an idea if its just 3g/4g flip flop or not.

if you think your phone is defective and you are within your 14 day return, take it back for another.

spthomas said:
The phone isn't rooted. It does not lock up globally; everything else works and if I have wifi available and turn it on while the mobile data is locked up the wifi connects fine.

Not really in fringey areas. My wifes phone is usually showing 3mbit - 5mbit 4G, which is a pretty strong signal. It also happens in several places, not just one.

Don't know about the 3g-4g switching. It seems to be working fine in 4g, then when it freezes it's still showing 4g. In fact I don't think this has happened in a 3g area, but most everywhere I am is finally 4g.

Sprint first said "you have something very wierd here. The menus in your "Mobile Data" screen are all wrong, you're missing two items. Must be a software failure!". Really, a software failure that results only in 2 items being missing from a menu?

Then I took it to the store, and they said "we reloaded the network by connecting to a pc, that will fix it" (I guess "connecting to a pc" is better than over the air?). But it didn't.

It is one of those cases where it sometimes just comes back to life when I pulled up at the sprint store. Maybe a REALLY strong 4G signal like they have at the store had something to do with it (around 15mbit I think).
Click to expand...
 
It is sounding like a hardware problem to me, more and more. A bit more information:

1. It is ALWAYS in 4G mode when it freezes. And ONLY the mobile data freezes, the phone never locks up. Even when mobile data is frozen, I can turn on WiFi where available and WiFi works.

2. As Drew5150 suggested, the last time it happened, I switched to "CDMA Only" for a minute, and it worked on 3G. Then, at least one time, I switched it back to "LTE & CDMA", and after a few seconds 4G came back!

3. Still seems to happen in most areas, even where there is a fairly strong 4G signal, like 5-10Mbit. But twice when I pulled up near the Sprint store, which as a 20mbit 4G signal, it came on. Like that really strong signal overrode whatever was causing the problem.

I'll watch it a few more days. It's under 1 year warranty, so I've got 10 months to take it back if I need to.

Thanks everyone, this was a lot of help!

Steve
 
ok, if you think its a hardware issue, take it into the shop for an exchange or if you are past your in store grace period, contact htc.

it may very well be hardware related. its happened to other model phones in the past.

we can only troubleshoot what you tell us over the internet so we give our best guesses, but at the end of other day, they are still _just_ guesses.
 
spthomas said:
Still seems to happen in most areas, even where there is a fairly strong 4G signal, like 5-10Mbit. But twice when I pulled up near the Sprint store, which as a 20mbit 4G signal, it came on. Like that really strong signal overrode whatever was causing the problem.

I'll watch it a few more days. It's under 1 year warranty, so I've got 10 months to take it back if I need to.

Thanks everyone, this was a lot of help!

Steve
Click to expand...

Exactly like Marc is saying, just guesses here:

Best guess: One of the other Sage Android Forums staff members, EarlyMon, highly recommends contacting higher level Sprint tech support over the phone and scheduling an 'RF Box Test' at a local corporate store to help test and diagnose your self-proposed hardware problem or radio deficiencies. I think this is a situation where you might benefit from this test or being able to speak with the tech that does the test for you in regard to the symptoms. I'm assuming that they can run a test on the 4G connection and will be able to tell you if it is not performing up to snuff.

Not so good guess:
You could look in your settings and see if the Sprint One has a readout of your active data connection. It should be in 'Settings -> About -> Network' or a similar path (could be moved/removed on the One) There are also applications in the 'Play' market that can help show this data to you (OpenSignal is one).
3G should show some details like these:
Operator: Sprint
Signal Strength: -92dBm
Mobile Network Type: CDMA -EvDo Rev. A
Service State: In Service
Click to expand...

4G will appear something like this:
Operator: Sprint
Signal Strength: RSRP(dBm): -117 RSRQ(dB): -12
Mobile Network Type: LTE
Service State: In Service
Click to expand...

Then go to a Sprint Store and compare Your One connected to LTE next to the One floor display. They should show approximately the same dBm readouts. These read outs are archaic, inaccurate at best, and are HIGHLY subjective. However, at least this way you are comparing apples to apples and have a baseline.
Sprint stores are equipped with a 4G signal repeater, which is why you are getting such a strong signal near there. It may be too strong for a good compare of signal loss over distance and how your phone handles it, but it may give you slight confirmation if your One is achieving a significantly different connection than the floor display at optimal conditions.

Another not so good guess:
If you called Sprint and they thought your 4G settings were not quite configured right on your phone, you could try using Sprint.com to de-activate and then re-activate your One (activate an old device on your phone line then re-activate the One on your phone line). Back up your phone first.
Maybe putting your phone through the hands free activation process and fully re-provisioning your data profiles and account info will help it to re-configure?

FYI:
The speed of the data connection is not always an accurate way to assess the signal strength or the quality of the connection.

Also

The manufacturer's 1-year warranty is provided and serviced by the manufacturer HTC themselves and not Sprint (in most cases). This was a Sprint policy change a few years ago - could have change by now too, I don't know.
You can try taking it to a corporate Sprint store for your 1 year warranty claim, but usually they will offer to replace/refurbish the device in the store tech lab at your cost and forgo the HTC warranty claim process (unless you have the Sprint offered insurance). If not and you want to make a claim with HTC, Sprint sometimes help get you started with HTC contact info, but then HTC handles it from there. You ship your device to HTC and are left with no phone for an extended period of time until they can log your RMA - or you can activate your old Sprint phone that you have sitting around.
Sprint insurance if you have it is generally handled in store but administered by Asurion LLC. Sometimes claims/cases have to go directly through Asurion and not Sprint at all.

Sensorly.com can help you examine your local area with Sprint LTE as mapped by other users of the service. Like OpenSignal it helps provide a more accurate representation of the signal-area as reported by the active user base
 
Thanks everyone, this is all great! The thing that makes me think hardware is that it's so binary; either it works or it doesn't, sort of randomly. Then switching out and back to the network makes it work again. I've sort of disregarded what the online support person said. She said there was an entire menu item missing on the Mobile Data menu, someting like "Roaming profile". I can see a setting being wrong, but a whole menu item gone from a screen? Hard to see. And the instore guy said that wasn't it.

He did reload the network settings from a PC, so I've done one hard factory reset (had to load all the apps again, very much a pain!) and none of that did anything.

This "RF Box Test" may be what the online support person said I should get the store to do, I think she called it a "Flight Test". But they didn't do either. Guess I'll head back to the store (trying to wait for it to mess up again, but since I WANT it to mess up, it's worked flawlessly the last 3 days!).

Thanks everyone. This is very helpful. Much more help than I've gotten on my last few phones after 40+ calls to Sprint (my older HTC EVO 4G was MUCH worse on Sprint, but that's a different story!).

Steve
 
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