Hello all, hopefully you can help me out with this.
Basically, recently I decided to take a trip the the "sticks" over the weekend and I did a very high amount of research about the coverage there. Even though it was far away from any city development, Verizon stated that it had LTE all over the place for miles on end. And I also saw that other people were having decent experiences with Verizon while there, which prompted me to switch carriers from AT&T to Verizon. My problem was that for whatever reason, my phone was having extreme difficulty in picking up enough LTE signal to keep the phone at LTE instead of 3G. 95% of the time, my phone was stuck on having a bar or two of 3G data, while my wife had a function S6 Edge that picked up LTE with no problem, even when being in the same spot as my phone. And to compare even further, an S4 was also able to pick up LTE signal easily. My phone could be within a few inches of both phones and the S7 would have an awesome connection with 1 bar of 3G signal, while the other two phones were showing at least 1 bar of LTE, but most commonly having 2. Just to make sure my phone was also getting the same service, I downloaded the 4G Switcher app and made the phone use only LTE signal.. and what do you know, it started pulling the same LTE service as the other phones in my comparison.. maybe even better as I've seen the S7 having as much as 3 bars of LTE signal when under this band aid.. which astounds me because why wouldn't the phone default from 1 bar of 3G if it could pick up 3 bars of LTE in roughly the same area?! Anyways, while changing the network mode of the phone worked, kind of.. if I lost the LTE signal, then the phone wouldn't work so it's not a "fix" I would like to keep using. Even if I switch the phone to use LTE only, and then go back to "LTE/CDMA".. the phone would automatically default back to a weak 3G connection(again, even though I had strong use of LTE.. I could even watch youtube using it with barely any buffering, and while being on 3G.. I could not load a simple webpage like Google.com without waiting for minutes).
This problem also happened in other locations, within about 15 miles from the location in the first paragraph.. however Verizon genuinely had low service at this locations... the S6 Edge was still able to pull 1 bar of LTE, albeit barely, while the S7 had no service at all... in the same location, within inches from one-another.
I don't know why the phone is having issues with signal or with prioritizing 4G over 3G, but I've taken it to Verizon to get the SIM swapped and it was still having the issues. Granted, I don't experience these issues while at my home city.. much.. it does put things in perspective, my phone could be defaulting back to 3G very easily, making me think I don't have much signal while traveling.. while in actuality, the phone could have good LTE signal but for some reason decided that 1 bar of 3G signal would be the way to go.
Does anyone have any idea on what's going on? I would like the issue to be fixed and I would very much like the S7 to easily prioritize 4G over 3G so I don't have to tell it to only use 4G when I know it should have the capability of using everything. Thanks.
Can you please provide the zip code for the location where you were having trouble?
Looking at the specs between the two devices, the s7 can connect to more LTE networks then the S4, but those additional bands might weaker than the other bands S4 favors. Some of it might be refarmed CDMA network as well which might be why the phone is looking at those first.
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29835, and the S6 Edge was also doing better than the S7 in that department. It was very strange and upsetting.
We want to help stengthen your signal, Catastrophe. This is an area of service opportunity. To help improve signal, please try Settings>Mobile Networks>Data Roaming Access>Allow Access. Since you are within the United States, there are no additional charges for roaming.
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