[Q] Phone Thinks I Am Roaming

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SuperGrant

Member
Jun 30, 2014
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0
Hello,

I bought my HTC Sensation about a year ago on Ebay. The seller claimed the phone was purchased outright and paid off. I checked the imei and it showed clean. When I got it, I popped my Airfire sim card into it and it worked fine. A month ago, I switched to Cricket as Airfire was going out of business. Cricket made me enter my imei. It said it was bad. I called T-Mobile and they said the seller defaulted on payments. They refused to help in any way. They told me to buy the phone direct from them next time. I told them I had proof I was buying it in good faith. They didn't care and apparently have no problem punishing the victim.

Anyways, when I got my Cricket sim and popped it in, my phone said I was roaming. It has said I was roaming for a full month now. I can send and receive calls, but my data is stuck at EDGE and some of the programs don't work since the phone thinks its roaming. I need to have "data roaming" enabled for data to work. Cricket ran some tests and eventually said I needed to do a factory reset.

So, I switched from the Android Revolution rom to the ViperS 5.2.1 rom. I did a full dalvik and cache wipe and reformatted everything but the sd card. I installed the new rom and kernal. Same thing. Phone still says I am roaming. Odd thing is, when I go to manually select carrier, my options are Cricket (current carrier), Airfire (previous carrier) and TMobile (stock carrier). Also, when I am using data, it has an "E" above the data. E is what Airfire used. Is there somehow somewhere a place that the phone is storing info through wipes?

I am s-off, rooted and debranded. I sim unlocked the phone myself. I am so stuck and think that only one of the geniuses on XDA are my only hope. I have went mental spending hours and hours on this. Some XDA peeps are smarted than HTC and Cricket combined, so please help me out here.

Thanks,
Grant
 

heavy_metal_man

Senior Member
Nov 6, 2011
2,749
752
Hello,

Thanks,
Grant

Hi grant, this is a very odd situation your in. With my sensation when I leave the UK and connect to another EU "partner network" is the only time my phone would jump into roaming mode. Is it possible that cricket is not directly supported in your area? Maybe they rent their local connection from another carrier and thats why your getting connected as roaming? Have you tried any other sim cards to see if they come up as roaming?

Sent from my HTC Desire S using Tapatalk
 

SuperGrant

Member
Jun 30, 2014
7
0
Hi heavy_metal_man

I am quite sure that At&t is Cricket's parent company so all of the towers should be At&t's networks. Also, I have checked it when in other cities and I get the same message, though I haven't traveled more than 30 miles away.

The previous sim with AirFire worked fine. I also popped out the sim for Cricket and put it in my mom's phone to see if it was the sim. Her's worked fine. She got the automatic Cricket update settings right away and was not roaming. Mine never got the Cricket pop-up so I had to manually enter all of the data info. Yes, odd indeed and I am lost.
 

heavy_metal_man

Senior Member
Nov 6, 2011
2,749
752
I am quite sure that At&t is Cricket's parent company so all of the towers should be At&t's networks. Also, I have checked it when in other cities and I get the same message, though I haven't traveled more than 30 miles away.

The previous sim with AirFire worked fine. I also popped out the sim for Cricket and put it in my mom's phone to see if it was the sim. Her's worked fine. She got the automatic Cricket update settings right away and was not roaming. Mine never got the Cricket pop-up so I had to manually enter all of the data info. Yes, odd indeed and I am lost.

OK, the info your adding manually, is that the same info as is registered when the card is in your mums phone? Same APN etc?

Sent from my HTC Sensation using Tapatalk
 

SuperGrant

Member
Jun 30, 2014
7
0
OK, the info your adding manually, is that the same info as is registered when the card is in your mums phone? Same APN etc?

Hi heavy_metal_man. Yup. Same info. Only difference is that the info all loads automatically on hers. I do get automated texts from Cricket when I put the sim in my phone as did she, but I had to get the APN info from Cricket the first time because it didn't auto load. I am still wondering if it is a sim issue, but I expected my mom's phone to be roaming when I put the sim in hers. I was shocked when it wasn't. She just has a free stock phone from Airfire btw. Nothing fancy and nothing done to it.
 

heavy_metal_man

Senior Member
Nov 6, 2011
2,749
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OK, the info your adding manually, is that the same info as is registered when the card is in your mums phone? Same APN etc?

Hi heavy_metal_man. Yup. Same info. Only difference is that the info all loads automatically on hers. I do get automated texts from Cricket when I put the sim in my phone as did she, but I had to get the APN info from Cricket the first time because it didn't auto load. I am still wondering if it is a sim issue, but I expected my mom's phone to be roaming when I put the sim in hers. I was shocked when it wasn't. She just has a free stock phone from Airfire btw. Nothing fancy and nothing done to it.

Hmm. Are those 3 carriers the only ones available to you? I think the imei may be key here, if cricket know its a T-Mobile phone they may register that you are roaming. I think your previous carrier (airfire) was a Virtual mobile network, much like giffgaff in the UK ( which runs on the o2 network.) As such they may not have inforced the same imei policy's that cricket does. But this is just a hunch as I am on UK networks and we do things much differently. If you could ask about any friends and colleges that have different carrier simcards from our previous 3 you could gauge what carriers your phone is compatible with.

Worst case scenario you could maybe buy another broken htc sensation and perform a motherboard swap. This would solve your imei issue, assuming that it was the primary issue. But check the simcards first and report back :)

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
 

SuperGrant

Member
Jun 30, 2014
7
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Hmm. Are those 3 carriers the only ones available to you? I think the imei may be key here, if cricket know its a T-Mobile phone they may register that you are roaming. I think your previous carrier (airfire) was a Virtual mobile network, much like giffgaff in the UK ( which runs on the o2 network.) As such they may not have inforced the same imei policy's that cricket does. But this is just a hunch as I am on UK networks and we do things much differently. If you could ask about any friends and colleges that have different carrier simcards from our previous 3 you could gauge what carriers your phone is compatible with.

Worst case scenario you could maybe buy another broken htc sensation and perform a motherboard swap. This would solve your imei issue, assuming that it was the primary issue. But check the simcards first and report back :)

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk


Hmm... There are only 3 carriers available. Should there be more? It's not tied to the sim? Everyone I know either still has Airfire and plans on switching to Cricket or has cdma so I have been out of luck with trying another sim. The only other thing I thought about was 4ext recovery. No matter what I flash; roms, kernals, firmware or radios, the recovery always survives of course. So, if the previous carriers are surviving the flashes, perhaps there is a place on the phone like the recovery where they are surviving.
 

heavy_metal_man

Senior Member
Nov 6, 2011
2,749
752
Hmm... There are only 3 carriers available. Should there be more? It's not tied to the sim? Everyone I know either still has Airfire and plans on switching to Cricket or has cdma so I have been out of luck with trying another sim. The only other thing I thought about was 4ext recovery. No matter what I flash; roms, kernals, firmware or radios, the recovery always survives of course. So, if the previous carriers are surviving the flashes, perhaps there is a place on the phone like the recovery where they are surviving.

Its unlikely to be to do with the recovery, no reason for it to keep anything like that. It's most likely the phones imei at this point, though im unsure as to why this was not an issue for airfire.
Do you know what firmware version you have? Have you flashed 3.33 by yourself?

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SuperGrant

Member
Jun 30, 2014
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Its unlikely to be to do with the recovery, no reason for it to keep anything like that. It's most likely the phones imei at this point, though im unsure as to why this was not an issue for airfire.
Do you know what firmware version you have? Have you flashed 3.33 by yourself?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk


Yup, I flashed 3.33 universal after doing a super Cid. Well, maybe its time to just get a new phone, although I would really like to figure out this problem first. I am not the kind of person who can just drop things, lol.
 

heavy_metal_man

Senior Member
Nov 6, 2011
2,749
752
Yup, I flashed 3.33 universal after doing a super Cid. Well, maybe its time to just get a new phone, although I would really like to figure out this problem first. I am not the kind of person who can just drop things, lol.

I know how you feel. Maybe its because they cricket know the sensation 4g is a T-Mobile device and force you into roaming mode by default. I think its possible to overwrite the devices mid and cid, flash a sensation XE rom and effectively have a sensation XE. But such things can be quite dangerous and i couldn't say for definite if it would work to fix your issue :/ (not recommending anyone tries this without proper research and understanding :/)

Can you get access to another cricket sim without a contract? Just for testing?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
 

SuperGrant

Member
Jun 30, 2014
7
0
I know how you feel. Maybe its because they cricket know the sensation 4g is a T-Mobile device and force you into roaming mode by default. I think its possible to overwrite the devices mid and cid, flash a sensation XE rom and effectively have a sensation XE. But such things can be quite dangerous and i couldn't say for definite if it would work to fix your issue :/ (not recommending anyone tries this without proper research and understanding :/)

Can you get access to another cricket sim without a contract? Just for testing?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

I believe I have already done that. When I go into info about my phone, it says Sensation XE. It also registers as Sensation XE in the Google play store. I was thinking about telling Cricket to send me a new sim. Otherwise, I have no access to one at this time.
 

heavy_metal_man

Senior Member
Nov 6, 2011
2,749
752
I believe I have already done that. When I go into info about my phone, it says Sensation XE. It also registers as Sensation XE in the Google play store. I was thinking about telling Cricket to send me a new sim. Otherwise, I have no access to one at this time.

I think that it would be your best bet, although your device is probably showing up on the play store as an XE because of its build.prop from your custom rom, not any advanced MID changes. although you can check by using the command

Code:
fastboot getvar all

this will show your your mid, cid and your imei among other things.
 

heavy_metal_man

Senior Member
Nov 6, 2011
2,749
752
I believe I have already done that. When I go into info about my phone, it says Sensation XE. It also registers as Sensation XE in the Google play store. I was thinking about telling Cricket to send me a new sim. Otherwise, I have no access to one at this time.

I've worked it out! Its a frequency issue. Cricket apparently only support cdma frequency's, while the sensation only uses gsm frequency's. So in order to connect your phone is bunnying onto a local gsm service, which is then redirecting you to cricket. Hence the roaming! If you want off the data roaming you will need to either swap to a different phone carrier or buy a cdma phone :)

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
 

SuperGrant

Member
Jun 30, 2014
7
0
Hi heavy_metal_man,

Cricket did use CDMA for most of the time, but they have switched to GSM. They send a sim now and are trying to switch all of their old customers to GSM. What I am having trouble figuring out is what frequencies they use. Perhaps my phone is not quite compatible. I am having trouble with that as well. GSM arena, Phonescoop and the other major sites kind of have different data as far as my phone goes. My phone is called "HTC Sensation 4G" as far as I know. Yet, they list no 4g capability or frequencies. Of course, I believe that would only affect data and I still should not show as roaming.

I have been unable to figure out fastboot since switching to the viper rom. It doesn't use usb mass storage anymore. It uses the new system in which the whole phone is recognized as a storage device by the computer. Forgot what they called it. I wish they hadn't changed it, and apparently Windows 7 should recognize it by default, but it does not. I am sure if I get enough time to put into it I will figure out how to use the fastboot commands again.

I am ready to give up and just get a new phone pretty soon. Would be nice if Cricket's customer service wasn't so worthless. It could still be the IMEI or something on their end that I can do nothing about but they have failed to provide any solution.
 

heavy_metal_man

Senior Member
Nov 6, 2011
2,749
752
Hi heavy_metal_man,

Cricket did use CDMA for most of the time, but they have switched to GSM. They send a sim now and are trying to switch all of their old customers to GSM. What I am having trouble figuring out is what frequencies they use. Perhaps my phone is not quite compatible. I am having trouble with that as well. GSM arena, Phonescoop and the other major sites kind of have different data as far as my phone goes. My phone is called "HTC Sensation 4G" as far as I know. Yet, they list no 4g capability or frequencies. Of course, I believe that would only affect data and I still should not show as roaming.

I have been unable to figure out fastboot since switching to the viper rom. It doesn't use usb mass storage anymore. It uses the new system in which the whole phone is recognized as a storage device by the computer. Forgot what they called it. I wish they hadn't changed it, and apparently Windows 7 should recognize it by default, but it does not. I am sure if I get enough time to put into it I will figure out how to use the fastboot commands again.

I am ready to give up and just get a new phone pretty soon. Would be nice if Cricket's customer service wasn't so worthless. It could still be the IMEI or something on their end that I can do nothing about but they have failed to provide any solution.

Sorry for my delayed reply, I noticed that cricket swapped out to gsm and I discovered that their gsm tech is actually supplied at&t as they bought them out.

So I looked at their coverage map for the area airfire operated and I noticed that they had 2 or 3 area that were only providing 3g support via a partner, so I assume that would put you into roaming. It might be worth a look at their map and confirm if you reside on one of these black areas ? :)

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