Root [Virgin Mobile] Virgin mobile S3 - CM11 w/ APN fix - still no data/gps

[craze42]

Picked up a shiny new s3 off of ebay(as I didn't want the new tri-band model) after the battery in my victory blew up like a balloon on me, and I'm getting the 'no 4g or gps' problem when I load up cm11, but the APN fix isn't helping.

First thing I did after I got it activated was take the latest OTA and make sure I was on the NDC baseband. Followed the install instructions for CM, loaded philz recovery 6.48.4 with heimdall, then did a full wipe and installed CM11 M12 and the latest google apps package. Folks in the APN fix thread said that the newer snapshots of CM have the fix merged, so I figured I was good to go.

Unfortunately not so much, I've only got 3g, and my gps was off by a good 2 miles(but it at least sorta worked). So I grabbed the APN fix and tore it open, I checked the APN list vs the one bundled in CM M12 to make sure it had everything, then opted to delete the revised APN list from the fix first(as it deletes a whole bunch of APNs in addition to adding the VM ones, which M12 already had) and install the package that way to see if it did the trick.

No dice, still had no LTE and now my gps wouldn't even try to lock on, and instead just gave me a nice picture of all of north america when I tried google maps(androsense said that no gps information was available when I checked). I tried using the built in apn editor to force the current apn into lte instead of lte+cdma, but that caused it to switch back to the sprint apn for some reason. Figuring I buggered something up, I just installed the whole apn fix with no modifications and gave that a shot. That straight up killed my data connection, no 3g, no 4g, just kept sitting there trying to acquire a signal and not having much luck, I even tried switching between the sprint and vm apns manually, still nothing.

So I blew everything off again, loaded up CM11 M10 as I'd heard that might work. Same issue to start out with, buggy gps and no 4g, and installing the apn fix killed my data connection once again(couldn't really get any real details as M10 doesn't have an apn viewer/editor apparently).

Finally I had to give up, as I needed my phone to be at least somewhat functional in the meantime, and loaded up the stock 4.4.2 NDC package through odin, and used kies to update to NJ3 as I guess its not out for OTA yet where I am. So right now I've got a perfectly functional S3, with working LTE and GPS, running this awful bloated stock rom.

This issue seems different than the troubles people in the APN fix thread were having, so I made my own thread. I read everything I could on the matter and I'm unfortunately out of ideas...

tl;dr: New VM S3, NDC/4.4.2 installed first, loaded CM11 M12, no LTE or GPS, universal APN fix knocks my data connection out entirely instead of fixing it. Reverted to stock 4.4.2 and LTE and GPS work fine.

 

[craze42]

Update, I guess I have different APNs than everyone else? I had the bright idea to actually check the APN list on the stock rom and compare it to what was in both M12 as well as the APN fix; completely different. So I stuffed the APN config file from my stock rom into the M12 zip I had, along with a few other config files I snagged and a few build.prop changes, then reflashed it. Suddenly my LTE works! I can provide the APNs if anyone needs them.

My GPS is still busted though, I've tried both the stock config file, as well as the M10 config file(as a few users report M10 as the last version with functional GPS, figured it was worth a shot), neither of which are giving me any data in GPS test, just says it cant get a fix. I've also tried flipping the LPP_PROFILE setting between 0 and 3 on all the different config files as well, neither of which seem to help.

Running the GPS in low power mode lets me fall back to cell tower locating, which works well enough for google maps, but I'd still like the actual GPS unit to function properly...

edit: Scratch that, it was working earlier, now the lte has cut out again. It still says its connected, and I can switch between 3g/4g manually or pull up the connection info, but it doesn't actually want to do anything while on 4g all of a sudden. 3g data works fine, and it will switch to 4g if there's coverage, but I cant actually send/receive anything while on lte for some reason despite being connected...

 

[hatredg0d]

but I cant actually send/receive anything while on lte for some reason despite being connected...

Do you mean like MMS with the stock messaging app? or including web pages/data?

 

[craze42]

Do you mean like MMS with the stock messaging app? or including web pages/data?

No data at all while on 4G, tried a web browser as well as directly pinging things via terminal emulator. It says I'm on 4G and have bars(signal is fine here, stock firmware works under 4G), but the data doesn't actually work unless I leave 4G coverage or manually set it to prefer 3G.