I notice that my FP2 seems to be more “picky” when it comes to staying on a faster data connection (H, H+, 3G, 4G) since I upgraded to 16.11.0.
I have a sense the phone drops quicker from 4G/3G to E or even G than before and then stays there - even when I turn mobile data off and on again or switch the phone to airplane mode and off again. This happens even when the 4G/3G signal is pretty strong.
The setting “preferred network type” is set to 4G(preferred)/3G/2G and I have experimented with changing it back and forth, rebooting, but still the same situation.
Is anybody experiencing similar problems ?
Love it! I tested it this morning and suddenly I got H+ and 4G connections where the phone usually only offers me a creeping insecure edge or gsm connection. So it’s pretty obvious to me that the setting “preferred network type” has no effect, what means BUG!
I would like to add a feature request to this bug report and that is to add a 4G/3G only option to “preferred network type”. The reason is explained here:
A 4G/3G only option in the settings or using this app can help you to make your phone more secure:
Criminals and three letter (sometimes its four letters…) organizations use so called IMSI catchers to intercept mobile phone traffic. These devices create fake mobile base stations and lure the phone logging into them instead of a “standard” cell tower. This is no high-tech magic, you find instructions on the web that show how to build such a device yourselves.
A common practice is to provide a strong GSM signal and then establish an UNENCRYPTED connection to the phone. This spares the rogue device the trouble of decrypting the gsm traffic (although this can be done fairly easily). UMTS and LTE on the other hand always provide encryption - not uncrackable, but at least more difficult to crack. So by using this app and telling it not to use GSM you can show at least simpler IMSI catchers the two finger salute.
I welcome using this app because I have experienced phone behaviour that suggested an IMSI catcher in vicinity a couple of times. Typical indications can be a very strong GSM signal that forces your phone off UMTS / 4G and no or a very bad data connection and problems with sending SMS.
But an unavoidable negative side effect remains: By disabling the gsm modes you drastically reduce cell coverage and signal strength mainly in rural areas. This is due to the nature of mobile phone networks.
I can not reproduce this. I almost always have a 4G connection. Now I tried different settings and when switching preferred network type to 3G or 2G the network connection switched immediately to those and then back to 4G when I switched the setting again. So obviously the function works as intended if:
Your phone has no issues
The SIM works fine
You have coverage in your area
Maybe it doesn’t behave well if the preferred network type is not available, but I couldn’t test that so far as I haven’t left Vienna since the update and haven’t been anywhere where I didn’t have 4G. Actually before 16.10 I remember having weaker connections in some of the same areas where I now have 4G all the time.
I think the problem is how the phone handles field strength on the different bands. It looks to me that it switches too quickly to “E”, when the GSM signal is strong, although there is a reasonable LTE or UMTS signal available as well. I live in an area with a very mixed bag of base stations and signal strengths and I do see the tendency falling back to GSM, although I can easily nudge the phone to have a stable LTE or UMTS connection with aforesaid app. Before the last update I got 4G much more often and stable (without Network app). Maybe this cannot be called a bug, but (at last for me) “non preferrable criteria”. As I said in my previous postings an additional option with only 3G/4G and no 2G as “preferred network” would be great.