Extra Phone Tweaking (getting help getting good data)
Well, chalk this one up as a “never thunk of that!” moment. I never claim to be the ‘expert’, and it’s what I love about the Android community, that if I run into an issue, it’s absolutely SIMPLE to get an answer. There are tons of folk that are ready to offer their expertise (thanks Renaud).
So, here’s what happened. My new Galaxy Nexus has been dipping into the EDGE and 1G bands lately for data. I don’t notice it as much as I tend to have excellent wifi coverage where I go. But, when I had to rely on the towers often HSPA/3G was fairly weak compared to the older tech, and as such the phone would switch. The problem was that it wouldn’t switch back. 1 bar of H is way better than full EDGE. Anyways…
On my old phones there was an option to plunk in that would tell the phone to stay off 2G and be 3G/HSPA only. I set about in my Nexus to find that option… but it’s not there. What was I to do? Well, a quick G+ post to my Android circle and I got a reply pretty quickly.
Caution: Tread with care!
…here it is. And it’s something I should have known … I knew about this feature before, but hey… you forget things.
If you go into your dialer and enter:
*#*#4636#*#*
it will automatically enter the TESTING setup for the phone. In there you can choose PHONE INFORMATION, and then there’s the PREFERRED NETWORK option.
Typically it’ll be on something like AUTO. Which is okay if you’re comparing decent signals for either connections. But in an area like mine where one is pretty weak, it’s probably dropping down.
I set mine to WCDMA PREFERRED. That seemed to fix it. Now, if I go back into the screen it still says “GSM/CDMA auto”, but it hasn’t switched to EDGE since. If you know you’re only going to have better connection you can set it to WCDMA ONLY.
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So there you have it. A simple fix. But, keep in mind you really shouldn’t be mucking about in there if you don’t know what you’re doing.
I remember in the old days programming all those old phones… each had their own great sequence of *#*#23j234290uaskda… codes to enter the NAM and whatnot to register the phones.