[Q] force to 3G only?

The 4G service at work between 8:30am to 5:30pm is literally unusable. I have 3 bars but as soon as everyone shows up, the data literally slows to a trickle. This wasn't always the case and I'd like to test the modem in 3G mode. My theory is that the 4G uplink is saturated but possibly not the 3G pipe. I don't believe the software provides this functionality to the user normally but since my device is rooted, is there a way to temporarily tell the modem to switch to 3G? I'm proficient in linux/unix and comfortable in a shell environment so a solution along those lines is fine for now.

Running android 4.4.2 w/ baseband i535OYUDNE1 (most recent OTA update from verizon), towelroot and supersu.

-Kevin

bobloblaw1 said:

Use the additional info button a the bottom of the main screen.

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Thanks for the suggestion. I iterated through all of the options under "preferred network type" e.g. WDMA, CDMA, EVDO, GSM, etc. Changing the mode would remove the LTE symbol from the phone (and disable data) but I could never get the 3G symbol to show up. Is there another option I might be missing?

bobloblaw1 said:

That's odd. I'm on 4.3TW and the CDMA (prl) option works.

Are you sure 3g data is present at your location.?

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I can remember having 3g at one time here but I'll wait to answer that until I get home where I frequently get dropped to 3g.

But, I noticed something interesting in looking at the power metrics. As I said I have 3 signal strength bars and the 4G LTE symbol. But this app says I have -61 db(71%) LTE RSSI signal and 2db(44%) LTE SNR. Doing some google searches I found a verizon document that says that RSSI should be greater than -58db and SNR should be greater than 12.5db for LTE to work correctly on their network. So that would seem to indicate why my data performance is bad and not necessarily a saturated uplink to the tower. So, is the signal strength meter actual reporting CDMA (voice) RSSI?

smalco44 said:

I can remember having 3g at one time here but I'll wait to answer that until I get home where I frequently get dropped to 3g.

But, I noticed something interesting in looking at the power metrics. As I said I have 3 signal strength bars and the 4G LTE symbol. But this app says I have -61 db(71%) LTE RSSI signal and 2db(44%) LTE SNR. Doing some google searches I found a verizon document that says that RSSI should be greater than -58db and SNR should be greater than 12.5db for LTE to work correctly on their network. So that would seem to indicate why my data performance is bad and not necessarily a saturated uplink to the tower. So, is the signal strength meter actual reporting CDMA (voice) RSSI?

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Click to collapse

I confirmed that the app won't push me to 3g at home either and I am frequently on 3g there.

smalco44 said:

I confirmed that the app won't push me to 3g at home either and I am frequently on 3g there.

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hah, and now I'm at work and realized, my work phone is 3G (verizon) only and its got 5 bars. Any ideas what's going on?