I'm traveling on honeymoon right now and am having more problems than I expected getting my phone to work remotely. I was in London first, but was finally able to get my phone working with the "3" network.
Now I am in Malta and am having more problems. I purchased a "Go" card because the sales lady said that it would work, but after she activated it and I paid for it, she tried to add in the APN information and it wouldn't work.
I was using Cyanogenmod, but found I couldn't use GSM in London. So I installed CleanROM and was able to get that working. But now in Malta, I'm back to square one. In London I was able to use the program "HiAPN" to get the APN working. But it's not working here in Malta.
Any ideas out there?
I don't have a sure answer for you, but I'm taking an international trip shortly and have been looking into this problem before leaving so I can get data service abroad. So this is my plan, but be aware that I haven't actually used this yet to get service.
First thing, any AOSP ROM (Cyanogen, AOKP) will, as you found, not be able to get data service on GSM. You have to use a Touchwiz ROM.
The other problem is that the Verizon GS3 does not grant you the ability to edit your APNs manually. Verizon is supposedly going to fix this so you can edit APNs but I'm not holding my breath. In addition, as of Ice Cream Sandwich, Android does not allow apps to change your APN settings unless they are system apps.
So, our only option is to get an app that can change APN settings and convert it into a system app. HiAPN has this ability built-in and will make itself a system app if you OK it. There is a free app on the Play store that will make any app a system app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...pmover&feature=nav_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDNd
There are other ways to do it but that one is free and the app only does one thing.
Now you need an app that can change your APN settings. Again, since I haven't actually taken my trip yet I don't know if this will work for sure, but I've been messing around with a few apps (including HiAPN) and the one I plan to use is this one:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...t#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5TSU1BUE5DaGVjayJd
Most of the APN changer apps I came across are meant mainly for use in countries other than the USA and I found a lot of them hard to understand (HiAPN especially, some menus are in Chinese, some in broken, misspelled English). That one is simple to understand. It's free, but there's a paid version that adds the ability to browse the app's APN database (I guess so you can look at it before you take your trip and make sure the provider you plan to use is included in the APN database). The free version will just look at the SIM that's in the phone and try to find the right APN settings. The app's APN database is stored on the phone so you don't need a data connection to change providers.
So, install Offline SIM APN Database, use System App Mover to make it a system app, restart your phone, then run it. It will warn you about Ice Cream Sandwich and newer Android versions not being able to change APN settings, but it will still let you try to do it, which should work now that you've made it a system app. The app author mentions this possbility in the app description. Anyway, run it, hit Search APN Settings for this SIM, check if the settings look right, hit Add These Settings, Yes, and that should do it.
Let us know if that works!
