Trade In and Get Rewarded!
dynamo69's profile

Teacher

 • 

15 Messages

Monday, September 16th, 2019 9:45 PM

Terrible Connection Inside & Outside of Home

I have a Galaxy S5 phone 🙂 works great except for the terrible connection to ATT where ever I am. When at home in a residential area blocks away from a tower it felt like someone was blocking my 4G LTE usage although my phone showed I was connected with a nice connection. I recently bought another house, in the hills of Southern California and the connection is even worse. Its barely connected and everything is slow when it does work. Many times I lose connection all together. Neighbors have Verizon (or T Mobile) and do not have the problems we have. My wife has an iPhone 9 or 10 and she has the exact problem that I do. I believe its the phones, she thinks its ATT.

Im considering buying a mid range phone such as a Moto G7 Power which seems to cover a large range of 4G networks, at least in comparison to my old trusty S5. Thoughts? Thank you!

 

For reference the Moto G7 Power covers these 4G networks...

 

4G Network LTE band 1(2100), 2(1900), 3(1800), 4(1700/2100), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 12(700), 13(700), 14(700), 17(700), 20(800), 25(1900), 26(850), 29(700), 30(2300), 38(2600), 39(1900), 40(2300), 41(2500), 41(2500), 66(1700/2100), 71(600)

Master

 • 

3.5K Messages

5 years ago

@dynamo69 I don't know, but you're saying you did a factory-reset, WITHOUT a restore from backup (this part is important), and it still happens?

I was reading around a bit, about this issue, but it sure looks to me like it's something like a "3rd party app camera-stack issue", where basically another app has hosed the camera settings.  

I would think that simply finding ALL the apps that have "camera settings permissions" and uninstalling them, and then un-install/re-install of the GCam app, would fix this (it seemed to, for quite a few, for good reason).

 

If something gets into the "camera settings", particularly the settings that aren't UI-exposed, and starts "tweaking them", for the apps' use, it can really make a mess of things.  The same stuff can happen to the phone in general, with some apps that have "screen overlay permissions", they can make a mess of things, and are "hard to unwind", unfortunately.


I'm pretty careful, about what I install, and what kind of permissions I let apps use, VERY careful, for this reason.

It's always a "balancing act" on Android like this, if you like to use a lot of apps, you have to "vet" them, Google just is more open, and iOS isn't...

Teacher

 • 

15 Messages

5 years ago

I am SUPER happy to report the phone itself works awesome minus the camera issue. Love the phone and WOW I have excellent reception at my new home. The ONLY thing, and Ive done everything else, the only thing I have not done is a factory reset. I'll be doing that now and see what happens.

Teacher

 • 

15 Messages

5 years ago

The camera did not work out of the box when I turned it on yesterday before it began installing my backed up apps from my other phone. And I noticed the LED flashlight never worked either. After clearing cache and settings in the camera app several times and rebooting I did get the secondary camera to work using 'Open Camera' app, but thats as far as I got. 

I just did a factory reset and the camera does not work. I updated the camera app and it still does not work. I do like the phone itself so I'll just get an RMA for another one.

 

Master

 • 

3.5K Messages

5 years ago

@dynamo69 Did you make sure to "NOT restore", after the "factory reset"?  


I'd try this, IF you haven't, before I did an exchange.  I strongly suspect this will "fix" the "camera settings issue", or it should anyway.

 

The fact that you "got the secondary camera to work", is "telling", in that this is most likely a software issue, that's hosed some hardware (camera) settings.

If that's the case, and you exchange, and simply lay down that restore, the new/exchanged device will also be hosed, the camera problems will appear to "persist", when in fact, they just being "brought along" by some apps/settings.


I hope I'm making sense here?

Anyway, good luck, either way, SUPER glad to hear the Pixel is working (so much better) in terms of the cell reception issues, I strongly suspected that would be the case, their radios/antenna array rock!

Teacher

 • 

15 Messages

5 years ago

You totally make sense. I too thought maybe its a third party app causing probs and one of the recommended fixes is to go into safe mode. Another is fresh factory reset. None of it helps. I spent the majority of the day yesterday never having the camera work at all (gcam or opencam) and one comment out of 1500 said they just turned off their phone for a day and when they turned it on the next day the camera worked. I did that for about an hour and thats when the 2nd cam started working.

I'll never know for sure since Im not buying a brand new Pixel. Amazon is really cool about this and is exchanging for another refurb and like others have mentioned they are on their third or fourth exchange already. We'll see.

Master

 • 

3.5K Messages

5 years ago

@dynamo69 Glad I'm making sense here, that's good to hear ;-]

 

The bummer is, the "scenario" doesn't but maybe Google has a firmware bug here, or similar, they're not overly apt to admit that kind of stuff. 

Maybe even a h/w bug here, but I'd be surprised, Google has one of the best rated cameras out there, and most of that is due to their incredible software post-processing, that they own, in-house (and the reason I've used a modified GCam, on my OP6, and OP7 Pro, occasionally, for better pics in some lighting).
I did find quite a few threads (as I'm sure you did as well), where people did various resets and cache-flushes, and app-clean-installs, and got it work, but then a few didn't, like you, that seemed (oddly) obvious, too.

 

I think your exchange-approach makes perfect sense here, it's very unlikely that you'll end up "worse off", and quite likely that it'll be "fixed", whatever that means in this case, I do plan on following this topic, elsewhere (on XDA, and a couple of other forums), it's definitely "curious" now, for me personally ;-]

My wife falls solidly into the "just fix it, please" category, whereas our daughter does NOT, she wants to understand it, in almost all cases, and is pursuing something like an advanced physics or EE, possibly, that's her track in HS, still, it's been that way since she was maybe 7 or 8, she's goofy and fun like that. and often "fixes her friends' devices too";-]

Thanks for keeping a "level head" among all of this, that part is commendable, and somewhat unusual IME, it's easy to get "emotional" about things not working, particularly things like this. You've done "due dilligence" with regards to self-fixing it, you've gone WAY beyond an "average user" here, both in terms of learning/understanding/test-fixing the issue, IMO/IME, and that will likely "come in handy" with regards to phones, in general, long-term ;-]

Good stuff, I look forward to hearing the results here, or the continuing saga, feel free to PM me if there's something off-board you want to ask/discuss about it, temporarily.

In general though, I REALLY like to see the "solution" on the thread itself, in finality, so that other users can benefit, when they find it (it's a big bummer to find a "yeah, that's my issue", and the thread just dead-ends, with some offline discussion, apparently).


"Learning how to learn" is one of the most valuable things I think I got out of post-secondary-education, really, even all the science I studied (mostly CompSci/Math/Physics) wasn't much, compared to how it enables you to learn stuff.

I find this "learning process" to be a key part of life, for me, devouring all things scientific, and it's refreshing when someone wants to "learn why it doesn't work, and how can I understand how to fix it, myself".  
I do get though, that often the best thing, for many people (including myself, on a few topics), is simply to "get it fixed", and move on, not everyone wants to understand the nuts/bolts of their h/w and s/w of their phone or other computing device ;-]

Teacher

 • 

15 Messages

4 years ago

One more quick post... Received my new Pixel 2XL replacement phone and its really nice. Camera works just fine. Its a solid phone and it solves all of my connectivity problems which is what I was really most interested in. Thanks all for the help!

Contributor

 • 

2 Messages

4 years ago

AT&T trying to upgrade to 5G so us who pay for 4G currently are the ones who suffer. Instead of figuring out a way to upgrade without the disruption to current 4G we r the ones losing out here. The existing customers who pay for a service which we r not receiving. 

ACE - Expert

 • 

23.9K Messages

4 years ago

@BrandieMaria - AT&T's "5G" will only work on phones that have 5G capability. 5Ge is sort of like 5G lite or an extended LTE. I see 5Ge on my phones all of the time now but I don't see any degradation in service or connectivity, and I don't have a 5G capable phone. Technology moves forward, and there are always bumps along the way.

New Member

 • 

2 Messages

4 years ago

I have been having similar issues with my iphone 7 (i know a few models behind). It is completely up to date with both ATT and Apple updates. It shows full service and connectivity but nothing works. I am already on wifi calling, and I think if it wasn't for wifi my phone wouldn't work. I can't send SMS text messages, can't search anything in chrome. What is ATT actually providing me? Here is an example of seemingly full connection but no response.

(edited)

Not finding what you're looking for?
New to AT&T Community?
New to the AT&T Community? Start by visiting the Community How-To.
New to the AT&T Community?
Visit the Community How-To.