Any official word on .901?

[moneyfornothing]

I think VZW might be experiencing problems with the network. There have been many reports of problems with data today.

This is true. I called Verizon 1-800 number, entered my phone number, and got a recording saying 4g devices are having issues. I texted a friend, he has the Charge, and he has no data either.

 

[rck76]

Yep, 4g is down again I didn't even notice because I was on wifi and 4g icon was still present but toggled airplane mode and now it's gone.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk

 

[Underwater Mike]

Yep, 4g is down again

It's definitely been difficult to isolate problems when both the phone and network suffer from issues. My only consolation is that my AT&T service was basically inoperative, dropping both data and voice. So, compared to that, anything is an improvement, even if it's only a minor improvement. :blink:

 

[cbrmike]

My only consolation is that my AT&T service was basically inoperative, dropping both data and voice. So, compared to that, anything is an improvement, even if it's only a minor improvement. :blink:

+1........ AT&T sucks in my area also 4-5 dropped calls a week.

 

[draexo]

Ummmmm...


Maybe it's just certain parts of the network and not all. Maybe Moto is making updates to help mitigate the issues in areas where the VZ network is having issues. There's a whole lot of anecdotal evidence that the VZ network is a big contributor to issues in many areas and let's face it there are daily reports of areas and whole regions going down at least on a weekly basis. This would seem to indicate that the "network" is a "work in progress". I would imagine if it were the phones, VZ would be all over the MFGs and discontinuing the "problem" phones rather than letting the reputation of their "network" take a beating like it has.

Just my 2 cents ...

:icon_eek:

I just drove from Virginia to New York with my Bionic. There were three areas with 4g. There were multiple times I lost 3G data that my wife's iPhone (also Verizon) sitting next to us did not. Even back home here in New York, I am dropping data on occasion..... I wait and wait and eventually get tired and reboot and when the phone comes back up, I have data again. What I discovered is that a reboot restores my data connection, whereas it seems that it takes a fair amount of waiting for the phone to reconnect to data.
I have no idea what any of this means. The problem seemed to occur in the 3G areas, but did occur in the 4G area once as well. If I wait long enough, it will come back, but the reboot works a lot faster.

It should not be happening at all though.

Going back to Verizon Store today as the battery seems borked now.... goes down to 70% and then dives to 20 and then 5. I should get more than 7 hours on standby!

 

[aaf709]

It's definitely been difficult to isolate problems when both the phone and network suffer from issues. both data and voice.

It would be interesting if we could get some Bionic owners to stand shoulder to shoulder and see if a connection problem occurs or disappears. I know location isn't the only factor, but I'm sure it contributes a lot.

 

[LoneWolf15]

It has to be soon. Im wondering whether or not those who are already using it are still getting data drops?

Sent from my DROID BIONIC

The current problem is figuring out whether data drops are due to the phone, or the inconsistency of Verizon's LTE network. Some people may be having both, but be blaming it all on the phone.

I have gotten very few data drops with my Bionic (I got .901 as an OTA update, less than a week after .893, which I installed prior to even activating my phone). When I have, the phone generally picks back up just fine with no need to go to airplane mode, or do a battery pull; it's just brief periods of time where I have voice (an probably text, I didn't check SMS) only, and I've had very few of these. My guess is that the phone is tower-hopping during that time, but I have no conclusive evidence one way or the other.

I don't deny some people are having issues. However, I think a number of user complaints might be ones found on many current LTE phones, and that at least a percentage of the issues aren't the Bionic, but are Verizon issues. The problem comes in figuring out whether the phone or the network is the issue, and most of us don't have multiple LTE phones we can carry around to test with. If you read the .893 and .901 changelogs, some of it is code in the phone that fixed things, but VZW's infrastructure takes additional work that is still in progress.

.893 worked well for me, and so has .901.

 

[bluezdawg]

Stopped at Verizon today, their tech person had no clue about .901. He asked if that is something called Ice Cream Sandwhich.... duh

RE: the network drops comments...
Try driving from Colorado thru Kansas, dang, I think they still run all data over barbed-wire out there, if that. Would be nice to just see a network! ;-)

 

[LoneWolf15]

RE: the network drops comments...

Try driving from Colorado thru Kansas, dang, I think they still run all data over barbed-wire out there, if that. Would be nice to just see a network! ;-)

I forgot; I did have that in Indiana when driving from SW Michigan to Chicago the middle of last week. Data dropped in Indiana, and picked back up Just outside the Windy City. Appears northern Indiana doesn't have good data coverage along I-94, despite what the VZW coverage map indicates; either that, or there was an outage in that area.

It also reminded me that I better start the Navigation app when I'm sure I have coverage.

 

[Berniep]

+1........ AT&T sucks in my area also 4-5 dropped calls a week.

HA!! I got that in an average day in my area. So even with the data issues its still better.

I am on .893
My bionic is now set to 3g only and I still get no data frequently. Sometimes toggling airplane works, lately mostly not, even rebooting doesn't help.

If you don't have another phone nearby how do you tell if its the phone or the network?
The few times I have been with my wife and had data problems her droid3 had data every time so I tend to think its the phone most of the time.

 

[don_droid]

The way the 4G phones handle Authentications is very different than the way the older 3G phones does it, so the Iphone 4S (an older network tech phone) might retain data while the 4G phone sitting right next to it will not get data. The 4G phone will still Authenticate on the 3G network in the new ways using the IMSI and that seem to be part of the whole data issue with VZW right now.

The new .901 had two maybe three items on it that might really help with the 4G data problems. Even the VZW network issues might be improved, unless the whole network goes down again.
1. 1. Patch for [COLOR=#812528! important]Alcatelhttp://www.droidforums.net/forum/-Lucent LTE infrastructure R9 support [/COLOR]
2. 2. Dual IMSI support
3. 3. Excessive LTE handover attempts (SIB8 messaging processing)

The IMSI and the R9 support sounds like some they might help fix some of the issues that was describe from VZW authentication issues. Anyone know for sure?


The first OTA the 5.5.893 did not help me much, so I gues my data issues and rebooting where caused by other issues. I hope the .901 does better for my phone.

 

[Dave12308]

The new .901 had two maybe three items on it that might really help with the 4G data problems. Even the VZW network issues might be improved, unless the whole network goes down again.
1. 1. Patch for [COLOR=#812528! important]Alcatel-Lucent LTE infrastructure R9 support [/COLOR]
2. 2. Dual IMSI support
3. 3. Excessive LTE handover attempts (SIB8 messaging processing)

The IMSI and the R9 support sounds like some they might help fix some of the issues that was describe from VZW authentication issues. Anyone know for sure?

I think number 1 is especially important. It seems like it would probably be part of the baseband firmware to address an incompatibility between the Motorola LTE chipset and Alcatel-Lucent LTE base station equipment. It's probably the reason some people have issues and others don't. My guess would be that people without issues on firmware prior to .901 are probably connecting to towers running different base station LTE equipment.

Not sure about IMSI, I thought that was a unique identifier attached to the SIM card. Not sure what dual IMSI support would do on a device with only 1 SIM slot. Maybe the LTE SIM can hold 2 IMSI #s, 1 for 3G and 1 for 4G? If so, maybe they are going to provision dual IMSI numbers for people with data issues that aren't solved by the update.

Number 3 might be pertinent to 3G mode, as well; I think what it means is that it will properly fall back to 3G if it cannot connect to the 4G network.

 

[bluezdawg]

I think number 1 is especially important. It seems like it would probably be part of the baseband firmware to address an incompatibility between the Motorola LTE chipset and Alcatel-Lucent LTE base station equipment. It's probably the reason some people have issues and others don't. My guess would be that people without issues on firmware prior to .901 are probably connecting to towers running different base station LTE equipment.

Not sure about IMSI, I thought that was a unique identifier attached to the SIM card. Not sure what dual IMSI support would do on a device with only 1 SIM slot. Maybe the LTE SIM can hold 2 IMSI #s, 1 for 3G and 1 for 4G? If so, maybe they are going to provision dual IMSI numbers for people with data issues that aren't solved by the update.

Number 3 might be pertinent to 3G mode, as well; I think what it means is that it will properly fall back to 3G if it cannot connect to the 4G network.

Think one 1 and 3 could help, especially 1 helping compatibility with infrastructure equipment. 3 will likely just help recover back to 3g as you stated. As far as the International Modular Subscriber ID, not really sure what that would help with unless maybe hey are wanting to use is to somehow validate 4g. The original intent of IMSI was to validate the device for international usage as I understand. This was a pretty sensitive topic sometime ago as frequently broadcasting the IMSI makes it much easier to track folks, which opens up privacy issues. At any rate, I am anxious to see what it does if they ever get around to pushing the update.

 

[steelman52]

I have enjoyed reading this thread. I had a Bionic then switched to Razr when it was released. My son now has the Bionic. While I had the Bionic it lost data a lot. I applied the new updates when they were available and it helped a little but it still lost data connection a lot and still does. It has .897 on it at present and my son complains constantly about data loss. Hopefully .901 will help it.
Now for my reason for posting here...the Razr in comparison very rarely loses data connection. My son and I can be in the same location and I will have data and he will not. This happens a lot, as a 14 year old has no problem voicing his displeasure, so I hear about it.
So, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I don't think it's as much about Verizon as it is about the Phone.
I'm thinking I need to get the .901 on his Bionic to see if it will help it...

Sent from my DROID RAZR

 

[Rckymtn]

Hey everyone, I just copied my post from another thread:

I manually updated my phone to the latest 901 update and my phone is running great. Data drops are very seldom now and battery life has increased tremendously!

Thanks for the walk throughs on how to install from the sd card!

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using DroidForums