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Root Need a little help.

E

entilzah

Newbie
In September 2011 I found the Evo 4g on sale through Walmart.com for Sprint. I was looking for Sprint because I live in an area where dial-up or satellite are the only options for internet. I had satellite previously and was tired of spending most of my time at dial-up speeds because of heavy usage. So I called Sprint and talked to a customer service rep and was told that 3g was available in my location. So because of Sprint allowing fully unlimited internet I went ahead and ordered the phone. As soon as I charged the phone it was rooted and Android Tether was installed. This phone stays at my house since the main purpose of it is internet. For the first month the internet did pretty good, but it was semi-erratic so I bought a Wilson Sleek and that seemed to make the internet much better. I had D/L consistently in the 1.5Mb - 2.0Mb range it even occasionally peaked out at 2.5 - 3.0 range (all this in 3g). All of a sudden in mid December the internet went to complete crap with many disconnects. Sprint support has told me that we are not in their main coverage area now and I am of course now beyond the 30 day cancellation period. They have also indicated some tower changes locally. I am going to get a 15db yagi to connect to my sleek, but need to know if I change the ROM from factory to something else. What should I use and will it make any difference in 3g performance, also since Saturday the internet has improved to almost as good as it was in October and November.
 
entilzah said:
In September 2011 I found the Evo 4g on sale through Walmart.com for Sprint. I was looking for Sprint because I live in an area where dial-up or satellite are the only options for internet. I had satellite previously and was tired of spending most of my time at dial-up speeds because of heavy usage. So I called Sprint and talked to a customer service rep and was told that 3g was available in my location. So because of Sprint allowing fully unlimited internet I went ahead and ordered the phone. As soon as I charged the phone it was rooted and Android Tether was installed. This phone stays at my house since the main purpose of it is internet. For the first month the internet did pretty good, but it was semi-erratic so I bought a Wilson Sleek and that seemed to make the internet much better. I had D/L consistently in the 1.5Mb - 2.0Mb range it even occasionally peaked out at 2.5 - 3.0 range (all this in 3g). All of a sudden in mid December the internet went to complete crap with many disconnects. Sprint support has told me that we are not in their main coverage area now and I am of course now beyond the 30 day cancellation period. They have also indicated some tower changes locally. I am going to get a 15db yagi to connect to my sleek, but need to know if I change the ROM from factory to something else. What should I use and will it make any difference in 3g performance, also since Saturday the internet has improved to almost as good as it was in October and November.
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First welcome to the forums were glad your here.

You question is really better suited for the Guys in the All things Root Section of the Forum. And will probably be moved when a mod gets a chance to move it.

Well your story tells me that since Saturday things seem to be back to normal if sprint was doing some tower changes that was more than likely your issue.

ROMS themselves will not make a difference since they really do not contain the radio's. Custom ROMS will show a more truer signal than the stock ROM (Sprint wants you to think your getting better than you are)
 
welcome to the forums!!!!!!!!!!!
i moved you to the rooting section.

and like argedion said roms really play no part in 3g signal. you can always try and update your prl and profile sometimes that might help if you are not updated.

also are you updated as far as radios go? check your baseband version in either hboot or in about phone. the current radio is 2.15.00.08.08. you can always update your radios. [ Radios ][ 9-5 ] All EVO Radio, WiMAX, PRI, NV & HBoot versions - xda-developers i would recommend that you flash the radio combo.
 
Apparently I spoke too soon about 3g improvement. Thank you for the help, the radio is not at latest version but I am not sure how to update it. If there is a thread that I should be using please link to it. Again thanks for help.
 
entilzah said:
Apparently I spoke too soon about 3g improvement. Thank you for the help, the radio is not at latest version but I am not sure how to update it. If there is a thread that I should be using please link to it. Again thanks for help.
Click to expand...

ok to flash the radios, you need to have plenty of battery life to start. i would do it on a full charge. also make sure that whatever you do not pull the battery out while it is updating that is a sure way of bricking your phone.

also make sure that you make a nandroid backup first with wimax backed up as well. depending on your recovery clockwork mod automatically does this, but amon ra you will have to select wimax. once you have a nandroid backup with wimax, i would save it on your computer and even on the cloud like dropbox so that it is safe.

next you will need to download the radio combo from the link i provided earlier. move the file to the sd card.

then in recovery flash the radio combo. and be patient it does take some time for it to update.
 
Call Sprint tech support and see if you qualify for an airave mini tower. It's free of charge and it will boost your signal significantly if the problem is that they made tower changes and now your signal is lower.

I got mine last week and it changed my average signal from -113 dBm to
-47 dBm im my apartment. It also has a gps antenna if you want to use it.
 
LittlrRedDot said:
Call Sprint tech support and see if you qualify for an airave mini tower. It's free of charge and it will boost your signal significantly if the problem is that they made tower changes and now your signal is lower.

I got mine last week and it changed my average signal from -113 dBm to
-47 dBm im my apartment. It also has a gps antenna if you want to use it.
Click to expand...

Only problems is Airave requires a hight speed internet. He is only useing the phone to tether internet. So this will probably not be a solution for him as it was for us.
 
Okay I seem to be having some problems. I have followed the directions above using the combo flash. When I booted to Recovery and chose the zip to install it runs real fast and says done, when I reboot the phone to normal the radio is not updated. What am I doing wrong? One other thing where to I find the backup so I can store it on my PC.
 
NM, got it to update, and found the backups. Still having same problem though I seem to have 3 or 4 bars but 3g is crap. Thanks for the help.
 
I have tried multiple times to update both PRL and profile but I do not believe they are updating since the phone still lists both files as available for update. So there is no update actually happening or the update is working but still listed but either way no change to 3g performance.
 
I live in an area with poor coverage, and I find that weather and sky conditions seems to have quite an impact. And if I can switch to roaming, then I'm usually better off (weird huh ;)).


Also, dial up brothers unite! Deeee reeeooooo ccccccchhhhhheeeeeeee (dialing sounds ;))

Also, depending on your sprint plan, you could try the verizon prl, that pushes you to choose verizon over sprint when given the choice, some have noticed better coverage and faster speeds. Of course, you take the chance that sprint will kill the account.... so. /
 
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