Anyone with a Droid losing their 3G signal randomly?
darkdomino
Newbie

I bought my Motorola Droid in the store on February 19th, and it has been working perfectly up until recently.  The week before last, I noticed my Droid losing the 3G connection randomly, and going to 1X only.  It would never lose the connection entirely, but it would become very slow.  I tweaked just about every setting imaginable, and the problem still occurs.  The frequency at which it occurs has become daily now.

 

Last week, my phone has starting LOSING the 3G connection randomly.  The 3G icon will go off completely, and all apps that use data will give connection errors.  Switching to airplane mode, and switching back again will NOT fix the problem.  The only solution I have found is to reboot the phone completely.

 

If the 3G connection gets dropped, you can enable wifi as a temporary solution... however it should be noted that you can still receieve text messages.  The wireless signal meter in the status bar will show either 1 or 5 bars... usually never anything in-between.  I can also make and receive phone calls, but no data whatsoever.

 

I have noticed that the problem seems to occur more often when I'm using the "Seesmic" app... however the 3G connection will drop randomly even if I'm not running Seesmic.  I have removed the Seesmic app from my phone, and have turned off background data and GPS.

 

I am really at a loss for what to do here.  I have dialed both *228 and *22882 (whatever the longer number was) and programmed my phone MANY times.  Both these things don't seem to help at all.  The only thing I haven't done yet is factory reset the phone, and I really hope it doesn't come to that.  Does anyone know how to fix this?

 

by the way I am running Android 2.1  ... this problem has happened with 2.0.1 and 2.1

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Re: Anyone with a Droid losing their 3G signal randomly?
Jorde
Newbie

Is your voice privacy turned on? Go to settings, then call settings, and make sure enhanced voice privacy is turned OFF! It's a service provided by verizon and not all towers are compatible with it.

 

Tell me if this works 

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Re: Anyone with a Droid losing their 3G signal randomly?
darkdomino
Newbie

Checked my "Phone Settings" and Privacy is not enabled.  I don't think it was enabled before either.

 

Just an update though... I've removed some excess apps, and I've actually gotten my Droid to maintain 3G connectivity for 1 full day now with no glitches.  I've been using the browser, seesmic, facebook, and skype.  So far the problem seems to have subsided.

 

Part of me thinks that this might just be a Verizon issue and not an issue with my phone?  I have 3 bars around my house, and even with my Motorola Q9c I remember having some connection problems.  Could it be that Verizon's EVDO just has a lot of hiccups or what?

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Re: Anyone with a Droid losing their 3G signal randomly?
Ferdie
Enthusiast - Level 2

Mine shows PRIVACY is ON, but still getting 3G signals up to 3 bars.  Though once in a while, I got 1 to 2 bars.  I live here in Los Angeles bordered to Glendale - California.   I noticed though that they need a relay tower somewhere in Mt. Washington area of Los Angeles as that area is totally blocked without any 3G signal at all.   MotoDroid.

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Re: Anyone with a Droid losing their 3G signal randomly?
M3lton
Contributor - Level 1

Could it maybe be your area? Are you around building made of cement?

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Re: Anyone with a Droid losing their 3G signal randomly?
darkdomino
Newbie

You know I don't know if it is my area.  I have watched my cell signal today and it fluctuates a LOT... It will go from 4 bars to none at various points in the day.  I think it may be my area, but I've never had a problem with voice calls or text messaging, but the 3G is kinda flakey.

 

It's nice to know that maybe it's not my phone acting up.  I will definitely keep an eye on this.

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Re: Anyone with a Droid losing their 3G signal randomly?
reallyniceguy
Contributor - Level 3
Mine switches between 2g and 3g sometimes but I can fix it by turning airplane mode on and then off. This has not happened after the 2.1, well see how that works.
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Re: Anyone with a Droid losing their 3G signal randomly?
turbotim21
Newbie

I'm a new Verizon customer, and have noticed the 3G/1x switching on my Droid (from 4 bars of 3G to almost none, then 1x, then full 3G again). I had a Nexus One on T-Mobile and got rid of it because it did that too. I'm starting to think I'm cursed, lol.

 

I did the *228 thing (PRL?) and I'm thinking about trying the "voice privacy" trick described here.. Does that expose calls to being "listen-able"? I'm relatively unfamiliar with CDMA networks, having used GSM for so long.

 

Any ideas or help would be appreciated!

 

Thanks,

Tim

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Re: Anyone with a Droid losing their 3G signal randomly?
th3arin
Newbie

I have the Moto Droid and I just recently kept getting dropped from the 3g network as well. I do not know what is wrong. I'm not sure if its the area i am in or is it my phone or maybe verizon network? But i have been having this problem the past couple of days now, where my 3g network would be at 3 bars then suddenly drop to 1 then none at all. i have done the *228 method but it still hasn't help me out at all. It is getting kinda annoying because at times, i can barely view the vids that are on youtube. it would play a part of it then just stop suddenly. i've tested this on multiple vids on youtube and it gave me the same problem.

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Re: Anyone with a Droid losing their 3G signal randomly?
darkdomino
Newbie
Hey guys, just wanted to update you on my progress on this issue.... As you may know from my original post, I am having a 3G issue with my Motorola Droid. The phone is less than 2 months old, and has had no major problems whatsoever. Every now and then, my phone's 3G icon will just DISAPPEAR completely. When it does this, there is no way to regain connectivity. Trying to enable wifi once the 3G icon has disappear does NOT work, I have found. I've also noticed that my network signal meter is very sporadic. In places where my old Moto Q got 4 bars consistantly, the Droid's is all over the place... sometimes max bars, sometimes 3, sometimes the bars will diappear entirely and the 3G icon won't blink. Usually if it does this, the icon will disappear soon... sometimes but not always. So after having my 3G icon disappear again for the 4th time in one day... I removed every app from the phone, formatted the memory card, and factory reset the device. Things seemed to be going really well for a few hours, then I started installing my apps and things started to go wrong: I did some research, and my friend who's also on Verizon told me that perhaps my Task Killer (TaskPanel) was interfering or closing vital system processes, and causing the 3G to crash. So I removed TaskPanel from my phone, and just let Android handle everything. I didn't stop any processes, I didn't close any apps. I just used the phone normally. To my amazement, the phone worked FLAWLESSLY for 5 days straight. I put the phone through the ringer too. I had Twicca polling every 3 minutes, I had my facebook set to refresh every 30 minutes. All during that time the only thing I noticed was that twice in that 5 day period, the 3G icon went from 3G to 1x for a fraction of a second, but I never lost connectivity. I thought that I had solved my problem! Needless to say, I had to be sure... so I installed the TaskPanel again and just like clockwork... every time I began to kill apps, even non-vital ones, the 3G icon would disappear. I removed TaskPanel from my Droid, and reboot the phone.... then I tried Advanced Task Manager (the app the verizon people installed on my phone on Day 1) - I opened it up and tried closing some non-vital apps. Like clockwork, the 3G icon disappeared almost exactly after I did this. However I do not have the exact cause of this problem solved. Just today while I was at work, I had NO task killers installed and the phone had been working just fine for days. I opened up the Market, and downloaded the Skyfire Beta browser. Played around with it for a bit, and was shocked to find that shortly after... my 3G icon had disappeared.... Here are the apps on my phone: Amazon Astrid Battle.net Mobile Authenticator Wifi Analyzer Dictionary.com Documents to Go DroidLight Earth eBay Engadget Epocrates Evernote Facebook Fandango Foursquare Google Sky Map Google Translate Google Voice GPS Status Kayak Last.fm Listen Mabilo Ringtones Maps Market Movies My Verizon Nimbizz OI File Manager Opera Mini 5 Beta Palringo Paypal Photoshop.com Mobile Qik Retro Clock Shopper Skyfire Skype mobile Swype Twicca Visual VM XfMobile Running processes: GtalkService Android Keyboard Amazon MP3 Download Genie Refresh Service Skype mobile (Google Voice) CallLogService (Google Voice) UpdateService (Retro Clock) TimeService If any of you are having this problem, could you please post what apps you're using? I'd like to cross reference every app that we're using and see if I can find out some common factors here. I am convinced that this is not a hardware problem, but a problem with one of the apps we are using. It doesn't make sense that my phone would work for 5 days straight, only to have the 3G icon disappear after playing with Skyfire for a little bit. I am also tempted to get my phone replaced. I don't really want to spend the 80 bucks to file an insurance claim, but I don't know what else to do. I'm almost sure it's not a hardware problem, but getting a new Droid would definitely rule out hardware issues I think.
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