Samsung Galaxy S3 Not Receiving Calls - Phone issue or Android issue?

[j5k]

I just got a Samsung S3 a week ago.  I have received calls and texts on it, but it appears that I am missing calls.  Somebody tried calling me 6-7 times in a row in a 30 minute time span yesterday and it never rang, and only one of those showed up as a missed call.  Today, the same thing happened again with two calls, and neither appeared in my missed call log.  They sent a text and it didn't appear until about 20 minutes after it was sent.

I live in a built up area where there should be good coverage, and looked at the map and am rated as "best coverage."  In the past six months, there were maybe two incidents at most when my old phone (not a smart phone) did not ring.  I have a normal amount of bars on my phone.

During both of these incidents, my phone was not in use, and the ringer was on with sufficent volume.

Does anybody have any recommendations for solving this?

[srfarmer1]

Interesting. I always have my Wifi turned on when I am at home (or anywhere else with Wifi). And, my Wifi is through ATT UVerse. Hmm. I will try this. Thanks for the suggestion.

[jamileh]

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@luke13 wrote:

Got my GS3 in early December and upgraded to JB 4.1 shortly after. Started having the same issue described by everyone here immediately. Last week had my SIM changed and that has not helped. The phone and text issues are both happening with me. Incoming calls may not even hit voicemail, I have been told that it sometimes sounds like a busy signal which is not good when one is expecting potentially important phone calls. I went to a newly opened Device Support Center here in Columbus, OH today and they told me immediately that there is an issue with ALL phones running 4G/LTE on the ATT network that run JB 4.1. 

She told me that there is a patch being worked on and apparently they have also found that JB 4.2 works with 4G/LTE just fine. She could not tell me when there is an expected fix. 

My question to Jamileh (apparently the ATT Community Manager) is, if ATT knows that JB 4.2 would fix this issue, why has that not been rolled out to us yet? I do not anger easily but if I am waiting on someone to contact me about a job interview or if a family member is in trouble for some reason I do not want to have to wonder whether or not my phone is going to work as I have paid for it (and am paying monthly) to. If JB 4.2 works please roll that out. 

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I'm sorry you're having an issue with receiving calls on your phone. Unfortunately, I can't speculate on the release times of updates to Android or any other operating system. 

[Anonymous]

I appreciate your repsponse jamileh. I know that you personally can't make something like that happen. My hope is that you pass this along because if a release of 4.2 is an answer to this issue that would seem simple enough. Also this problem seemingly started in earnest right when the JB update came out which was over a month ago. I, and I am sure everyone that has posted here, would like to hear what solutions are actually being worked on. All anyone has been told from ATT it sounds like is "we don't know when something will be out to you". After a month plus of people having these issues a true remedy should be more than speculation at best.

[Anonymous]

I don't think this is stricly an Android or 4.1 issue. We have an iPhone 5 in our house and it had these issues too. Also, I'm running a custom 4.2 CyanogenMod Nightly on my S3 and I still had these issues. If anything, it would be the modem version, not strictly the android version. And like I said, we have an iPhone 5 that does the same thing. The solution for us was getting AT&T to give us a MicroCell which keeps the phone in 3G anyway. I don't mind this since I have WiFi in my house and I work from home. For people who are having this issue at their work place they'll have to keep the 3G only APN until AT&T fixes this problem which I don't think they can with the current infostructure of LTE.

[MN-Android]

I have had this issue for well over a month. Been through too many steps to list, new sim card, two phones and many calls to AT&T, all failed. Yesterday after yet another failure, I called AT&T and spoke to a guy that got my hopes up. He said he knew exactly what the issue was and can fix it today. I don't know what all the terms he threw at me meant but he said my account was wrong. Said my routing numbers and "LRN" were mismatched. Also said I was on the wrong network and he moved me to cingular wireless. Another statement he made was that my "SOA updated with LRN to proper SPID". I hung up thinking I have finally got a fix only to have the phone fail again today!

A few minutes ago, I used the work-around mentioned in this thread and followed the video to create a new APN and use 4G vs LTE. I sure hope this at least allows me to receive phone calls. I have elderly, ill parents and I need my phone AT&T!

[bags51]

This is directed to the Community Manger Jamileh. Is ATT aware that there is a problem with calls not getting through? Are the engineers at ATT working on a solution? Are all support people at ATT now aware of this problem? Thank you in advance of your reply.

[rer2415]

I was able to finally speak to a tier 3 technical support rep who acknowledged to me that att was aware of this problem and was working on it. First rep on the phone who understood was I was saying although it sounded like they were in the first stages of calling people who are reporting it to collect information.  Said that it had to do with a circuit switch fallback failure on the lte network . . just as a few assumed on this forum.  No idea on an timeframe for a fix.  The only temporary solution they had was creating a wap.cingular apn to disable lte.  Said it was nationwide and it seemed to be getting worse in the past few weeks and would personally call me back in a week to follow up... Hopefully this brings some hope to some of you...

[MN-Android]

Hearing there is no fix and this will keep going on for weeks is discouraging. I did the new APN thing and since making the change, the phone's reception is very weird. I see the no coverage circle with a line in it and a few times get the "emergency calls only" message. Never got that before on any of the phones I have owned living here. There are two ways to move away from LTE, the steps where you unseat the SIM and the other, creating the new APN. Is one method better than the other or is it simply two ways of doing the exact same thing?

[Martinezbailey]

Hey guys! 

My husband and I upgraded (or should I say downgraded lol) to the Samsung Galaxy S3 from the iPhone 4 in November 2012. Since the first day we got these phonewere have had issues with:

not receiving calls, either goes to voicemail or busysignal,

trying to make calls and it says call ended,

not receiving text messages and voicemails for hours 

horrible signal. And battery life

I have been fighting with att since I stupidly let the 14 day window pass and we had already gotten rid of our iphones. They kept saying wait for the JB update it will fix everything. That was a joke!! They actually made me feel stupid like I was doing something wrong with the phone and couldn't get it to work properly!! They haven't even given me the curtosey of swapping my phones out, they go thru the tech support steps and just cuz the phone takes a couple calls they say its fixed and they pat themselves on the back. Meanwhile we are still left with a piece of crap phone and myself like others use my phone for my business. Not to mention if something happens and my kids need to get ahold of me and they can't that is a big issue. Att should give the customers the option to upgrade to another phone if we can't wait til the so called fix. One person from case management actually told me to buy some go phones from Walmart until the issue was fixed!!! I'm so tired of these phones and the lack of consideration from att I am ready to just cancel and move on!! 

[The Q101]

talked to at least 3 techs, no one knows whats going (chated with online tech support even linked this thread), all i got is useless advice saying i need to change the sim card, restart my phone, ect ect ect... and the issue is getting worse, half of my calls are getting through, i get texts in internvals, cant use the phone for work when it doesnt work hafl the time, i even missed a family emergency due to this issue.

[m.a.s.e]

EVERYONE SHOULD START POSTING LIKE I DO ON EVERY MAJOR NEWS SITE LIKE ENGADGET, TGSPOT, TECHCRUNCH ETC. UNTIL EVERY SINGLE SITE WILL START WRITING ABOUT ATT POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE TO OFFICIALLY UNDERSTAND THERE IS AN ISSUE.
ONLY THEN SOMETHING WILL MOVE

[Anonymous]

Jamileh, please remove the solved status, this issue is not solved. There is a temporary fix that was posted by someone not even from AT&T, but it is far from the permanant solution. This is not good PR for AT&T and it is unbelieveable to me that it has been going for as long as it has without a solution. The fact that Tech support is not even acknowledging the fact that there is an issue is problematic and showing what AT&T really thinks about their customers. If you read various forums on here you wilk see it is not just this phone. Nothing against you Jamileh but if we could have a reaponse from someone higher up that wouls be great. Thanks.

[MN-Android]

I fully agree, please remove the "solved" tag, no where near resolved and no answers.I had to put my phone back on LTE vs 4G because the phone went to constant SOS status all the time!

[jamileh]

I understand and agree that this is not a true solution to the issue but since it contains steps that several people found helpful, it will remain an Accepted Solution for visibility's sake. Marking that post as an Accepted Solution does not mean that we are no longer working with Samsung on this issue. 

If you'll take a look at my post earlier in the thread, I stated that this is NOT an AT&T solution but since it has worked for some people, I wanted to make it visible. I will update jan_raghavan's post with an edit that more clearly convey's the message so we do not continue to have confusion. 

When there is more information available, I will update the thread and Accepted Solution accordingly. 

‎01-23-2013 11:16:18 AM - edited ‎01-23-2013 11:57:13 AM

Hey all, 

We are researching this but I have marked jan_raghavan's suggestion as an Accepted Solution for the time being because it's worked for a couple people. 

I have to note that this is NOT an AT&T solution and it will limit your capabilities on the device because you won't be on 4G but since it's helped a few of you, I want to make sure it's visible. 

[jamileh]

Hey all, 

We are researching this but I have marked jan_raghavan's suggestion as an Accepted Solution for the time being because it's worked for a couple people. 

I have to note that this is NOT an AT&T solution and it will limit your capabilities on the device because you won't be on 4G but since it's helped a few of you, I want to make sure it's visible. 

[aftershocks]

I'm having the same issues to but with WIND Mobile...