YayNote's Posts

I notice it seems to want stay connected to XLTE (band 4) much more often even if it means hanging onto a weak signal, but it will eventually fallback to the old band 13 LTE given enough time. The threshold seems to be around -115db. The last few updates have made the phone prefer XLTE (band 4) and btw, your signal strength bar in the notification window is reflecting data strength (LTE, 3g,not voice). When you receive a phone call, or are making one, the reason it changes is because the indicator is now displaying your 1x signal strength (Verizon still uses 1x for voice and SMS) For those of you wondering why your signal bars fluctuate wildly in the same spot-try downloading LTE discovery. Go into settings within the app and turn off all automatic updating/start at boot etc-you're only interested in the data displayed in the center. If it says (Band 4) this explains why your signal is mediocre or weak if you're indoors or in a fringe area. Put the phone in your pocket with the back facing your leg or move further into a building and you'll probably notice you now have full signal strength again. Quickly check 'LTE Discovery' and you'll probably see it's fallen back to Band 13 (not xlte, old 700mhz LTE frequency) Band 4 (XLTE) is much, much faster but penetrates buildings very poorly given the frequency its on. Band 13 (700mhz Old LTE) is much better in terms of coverage and building penetration. I believe NK1 was all but a radio update- thus forcing the phone to seek and choose  XLTE, even if it means a weaker signal strength. Very likely a decision made to take some of the load off the overburdened (depending on metro area) 700mhz LTE frequency. Most of these changes are underhood and wouldn't be noticed by the average user. These forum helped me out quite a bit and I've spent quite a bit of time researching Verizons' infrastructure and thought I might take a moment to try to give back. For those of you complaining of no-service altogether or dropping calls, this would be very likely a tower/phone hardware issue and not so much LTE/XLTE..Because as stated above voice still goes over 1x for us (which you can also see raw 1x strength in LTE Discovery btw) On a lighter note, I'm guessing there's no timeline for the Note 3 getting VoLTE?

It would appear as though Verizon has disallowed all dialer commands on most semi-current Samsung flagships (probably more.) So, since I can't bring up network engineering I have no way of seeing what it's connected to other than speed (more than 75mbps down is XLTE?) That said, is there anyway to tell which band is active without rooting? FWIW, This is on a Note 3 running 4.4.4 NJ6

I'm on 4.4.4 NJ6 and everything is working fine. I factory reset immediately after updates to avoid bugs and thus far it's worked. I bought this phone new in Sept of 2014 and _never_ had any signal issues on any build VZW has released. So, signal aside, did it break anything?

I recently updated my note 3 from factory release firmware to the most current (NC4) like an idiot. Prior, I had five bars of LTE at home and work (around -79DB.) Immediately after the update it starts off as that..then after a moment drops to 3 (around -100db) in my bedroom. Data etc is still fine. Moving around the house nearing my basement it drops to 2bars..then pops back up to five. I believe this is it switching back to LTE-the 700MHZ frequencys and as such the phone starts @ 700 which is why I have 5 bars on start. It would be really nice to have an indicator at the top saying this. As it is we have too little control..it's literally mobile data on or off no inbetween the note 3s radios are self-controlled. In the next update it would be really REALLY nice if we could force 3g, or turn off XLTE. This is NOT just my Note 3 doing this. My wifes Galaxy S5 does the same thing. That said, data works well in both cases. But it bothers me that there is no way to know what band the phone is operating on (unless someone here knows how to see that info without rooting?) Secondly, this update has ruined the stock text messaging app. Scrolling through text conversations was seamless. Now it's jerky and laggy-particularly if the text contains pictures. This is unacceptable given the CPU/RAM this phone has. Just sloppy coding. Having said that, besides the text messaging app, the phone is slightly more responsive. I see Verizon is pushing Android 4.4.4 to the Galaxy S5 now? Given that the Note 3 was/is a flagship phone-and less than a year old at that-it can't be long till we get it, can it?