Retitled. How to hose your phone in 35 easy steps. :)

To be fair to HTC/Sprint I retitled this. As the phone is not representative of a normal M8 (either by hardware or corrupted/miss programming).

Long story.

If you want the short version, "This phone sucks" (and by the way so does the S5).

Here is the long version.

Bought the phone first day.

HTC Unlocked and Rooted it as soon at it was available. Applied S-OFF as soon as it was available.

I had not much time to play with it and stayed on Stock and have WIFI on full time which is used at work and home.

Couple days ago I decided to try some ROMs (being very patient for things to mature a bit). I tried Barebones, pretty good ROM. Note I had "dirty flashed it".

Then I took my first long trip since I got the phone. 100 miles into the boonies.

It popped up "Roaming Guard every 2 minutes", every call. But it was still running ok.

I had forgot to shut the roaming guard off (or it was locked out by the time I though of it).

This is a known issue and happened on M7as well. Most reliable way to deal with it, is to full wipe in order to disable it. (I tried all the tricks).

Well at this time OMJ released his "Harman" ROM and Firmware.

Well I guess it's a good time to start clean, wipe and switch to OMJ's Harmon ROM (and firmware) (whom I've been a loyal customer of)

So this stupid Roaming Guard thing keeps coming and going as I sort out which ROM I want, restoring things with TB etc.

But now, my phone is "stuck is 1X". WTF. And if it does occasionally show 3G as soon as I use it, it drops out completely or reverts to 1X.

So now I think I hosed something really bad. Can't get 3G at home or work. My wifes HTC One M7 is fine (running OMJ's BadBoys ROM)

Updated Profiles, played with PRL's.

So I put it all back to factory (except S-ON) and used the HBOOT that hides that's it's S-OFF.
And flashed the closest Stock ROM I could find (which so happened to get no Data or Voice at all). Perfect !!

Then took it to sprint store, and it was a sharp kid and he said it was rooted and nicely handed it back. He suggested I add T.E.P. and "try again".

Well I figured I'll have to S-ON it. And stopped in another store to added T.E.P. just in case. I had like 2 days left.

So I was gonna go home S-ON it and go to another Sprint "repair" Store but decided I really needed to get to some other commitments.

So I restored a backup and on the road and the phone was back to "Normal" except for the stupid Roaming Guard thing. WTF.

Then it hit me. The new ROM from OMJ was telling me what my REAL network was doing and the stock ROM was lying through it's teeth.

I'm well aware of Developer ROM's displaying "1x" when it sees 1x but after being on the stock ROM (with WIFI on), I kind of forgot about it.

And I was never clear what the "New" Spark Icons were really saying anyway (with WIFI ON or OFF).

So the truth is this thing has been running like crap since day 1. And I believe even worse since the first OTA firmware update.

I started researching options to get the Galaxy S5. Turns out the reviews are worse on the S5 than the M8.

Then I kept finding threads like this one.

https://community.sprint.com/baw/thread/155517

Maybe I have a bad phone. Maybe I'll just smash the thing and try another one.

I miss my M7. Luckily my wife has it.

breezedragon said:

I don't understand if u don't want the roaming guard to sound just uncheck it on the settings. If you have trouble with your settings dial *#*#4636#*#* and select phone information scroll down and select the option cdma+evdo/lte then reboot and check if that help

Sent from my 831C using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Not so easy to shut Roaming Guard off. I'll bet if most people look right now, You'd find it greyed out.

I just completely wiped my phone again. Ran RUU on it. Immediately Disabled the Guard. And a half hour later it's all locked out again (but it's locked out disabled).

I don't know what causes it to lock.

But you do have to do it immediately after a wipe.

I'll check out the Options #*# option you suggested. Thanks. I remember that being mentioned before.

Aldeel said:

Uhh.. No problems here. Sounds like a defective device to me. They won't swap it where you rooted it, TEP will cost you a deductible and they'll send you a refurbished model. Shouldn't of rooted so quickly.

Sent from my 831C using xda app-developers app

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I tend to root as soon as it's available. In case an OTA comes out and lose the ability to ever do it. I also like to see if I can root it with in the 14 days, because if something does go wrong I can swap it. I can make it factory looking again. I just didn't want to bother in case they could fix it, because it felt like just a programming issue. I knew I was taking a chance when I brought it in like that. I've brought in MUCH more hacked phones and walked out with a brand new one, with no T.E.P.

I'm still not sure if this is a "Broken" phone. It definitely won't pull in weak 3G like my M7 did.

HaiKaiDo said:

As a sprint tech I can tell you 100% of the M8's that have come in to my store that I've replaced have been better the second time around. Seems like there were some lemons in the first batch. You'd better take it in to get exchanged or break it to get a replacement soon(lol) because as of today we were ordering new replacements, soon it'll be refurbs once there is stock in the warehouse.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Thanks for the heads up. Hopefully I won't have to "break it". I never have, but I would if it came down to it.

I was thinking that they are not refurbished yet as well.

I'm not convinced 100% it's broken yet.

I did notice in a breakdown of the phone, that they do have little spring loaded contacts to the Antenna's, which have been a problem on past phones. And that might be all it is.

I have $18.00 glass screen installed on it as well. And it's installed PERFECTLY. Chances of that happening again are slim

I really would like to get this phone to work.

That thread I posted, folks got second phones and still had issues.

I think it has to do with this whole Spark thing.

You know I wouldn't be rooting and wanting the option of Roam only etc. if the Sprint Network wasn't so bad in the first place.

The only thing that keeps me is the SERO plan. But that is wearing thin. Everyone of my co-workers gets 10-40x faster data rates than I do.

AT&T or Verizon.

Sprint better get their act together.

Oh and the store I did go to. They just fired all their Techs 3 weeks ago. It used to be a good store to go to.