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Root PRL question

idbl_fanatic

idbl_fanatic

Android Enthusiast
If I were to switch back to stock, change the PRL, then restore from nandroid, would that keep the PRL I just stuck in there, or would it restore to the one that I had when I did the backup?
 
Is anyone getting faster speeds with updated PRL's? I live in a rural area and there are only two Sprint towers (LOL yes I know.. that's sad). The way I understand it, is that PRL switching is only beneficial if there have recently been new towers added that aren't listed on the current stock PRL. Is that correct?
 
PRL's (Preferred Roaming List) only matter if you're in a roaming area, & if there's a new tower in that roaming area that wasn't in the old PRL. Since VM doesn't allow roaming, PRL swaps don't do anything.
 
Whyzor said:
PRL's (Prioritized Roaming List) only matter if you're in a roaming area, & if there's a new tower in that roaming area that wasn't in the old PRL. Since VM doesn't allow roaming, PRL swaps don't do anything.
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Well, it worked for me, I am now getting full bars, and faster speeds.
 
There have been a couple reports of people being able to do some roaming, so it is possible it might help. But those reports are just of getting the roaming icon, and there isn't much else to back it up, yet.
 
idbl_fanatic said:
Well, it worked for me, I am now getting full bars, and faster speeds.
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Nothing personal, but it could be due to other factors, like weather, time of day, congestion on the network. Until I see someone do more thorough testing with -dBm readings (the signal bars icon isn't specific enough) & actual connecting tower differences between separate PRLs, I will stay with the stock VM PRL.

I actually did do some testing on my OV a few months ago, swapping & trying different PRLs then running a bunch of speedtest.net tests, the results didn't show any noticieable difference between stock VM and a bunch of Sprint PRLs. What mattered more was which speedtest servers it was connecting to.
 
Whyzor said:
Nothing personal, but it could be due to other factors, like weather, time of day, congestion on the network. Until I see someone do more thorough testing with -dBm readings (the signal bars icon isn't specific enough) & actual connecting tower differences between separate PRLs, I will stay with the stock VM PRL.

I actually did do some testing on my OV a few months ago, swapping & trying different PRLs then running a bunch of speedtest.net tests, the results didn't show any noticieable difference between stock VM and a bunch of Sprint PRLs. What mattered more was which speedtest servers it was connecting to.
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Very true. With stock PRL my speed tests vary from day to day and that is with just two towers in my area. For instance this morning my DL speed was 600Kbps and this afternoon it is around 1.8Mbps .. still very slow in my opinion, but the variance is there. Those speeds are typical for this area. Travelling 60 miles to the nearest large city I see DL speeds of around 3Mbps. I would assume that the two Spring towers in this area are extremely overloaded. I notice extremely slow 3G speeds during the lunch hour and 5 oclock hour and that is not a coincidence.

So yes, speeds do vary on the stock PRL and with a very wide margin in most cases, depending on peak usage, weather conditions, etc..
 
It is very easy to see if swapping PRL does anything good on Virgin. Use opensignal from the market. I did this on my Optimus V a few months back and it does help. With the original PRL my Optimus V would only show a small number of towers, I want to say one or two at home. Everywhere I went at home I was connected to that same one or two towers in opensignal. When I switched to the 1115 PRL opensignal started reporting a ton of towers that were available. When I moved my phone around the house I would switch to new towers all over my house. I know that looking at the bars is not accurate, but with the old PRL I would never get more than half the bars but the new showed all bars lit up almost everywhere I went. In fact at Walmart I couldn't get a signal in the store at all, sometimes I would get a 1x signal but usually nothing, but the new PRL I had full signal. Testing speedtest.net is not going to show you anything since your speeds are limited by Virgin's proxy server anyway. With a good decent signal on either PRL you should get about the same speed since Virgin's speeds are much slower than Sprint's towers are capable of. The latency on the new PRL though was about half what the original was. Again, use opensignal to test your signal strength. On the original PRL at home I would be really low, if I remember correctly it was about 30% or so, and the new PRL was like 80%. Now this was on the Optimus V, it truly improved my data connection, VOIP worked flawlessly on the new PRL but sounded like crap on the old PRL. I got the Triumph like a month later and the new PRL really doesn't help much. The problem is that the Triumph antenna is just not as good. My triumph with the new PRL keeps a decent enough signal everywhere except in the pocket. Usually I pull my phone out of my pocket and have no data connection or a very weak data connection but it quickly connects by the time I unlock and start to use it.
 
Found this interesting post on another forum. Thoughts?

  1. PRLs are not a list of towers. They are a list of SIDs - geographic regions. As long as your phone knows about a given SID, it will automatically find new towers within that SID. AFAIK, Sprint has not added a new SID for years. Earlier in this thread, @abefroman gave reference to a PRL interpretation page, at:BatonRougeBroadband.Info - Home Have a look and see how there are no lists of towers, only SIDs, carriers, priorities, and frequencies.
  2. Roaming, in the context of a PRL, means leaving your home SID, not roaming to another carrier. Therefore, VM phones need a PRL to know what to do when you leave your home area.
  3. I haven't looked at the PRLs for the latest VM phones, but they used to use standard Sprint PRLs, and disallow roaming to other carriers in firmware.
  4. Even if you managed to hack your phone to allow roaming to other carriers, you still couldn't authenticate to those carriers. In other words, doing all that work would only result in a message to "Call 611 to establish service", or something similar.
  5. Carriers that allow roaming to other carriers are constantly updating their PRLs to reflect changes in agreements with other carriers. Carriers get added and dropped, and roaming priorities get changed. That is why Sprint postpaid users (for example) are always on the lookout for new PRLs. And updating a PRL is sometimes a step backwards. You may get worse service, not better.
  6. Anyone seeing an "improvement in reception" after hacking their PRL is more likely seeing an artifact of cellular breathing.
 
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