EDIT : NEVERMIND I'm an idiot.
Update : EDIT THAT LAST EDIT. Maybe I'm not as much of an idiot as I thought after all.
I tested my Evo side by side with a display model at Best Buy that I knew would be in good working order.
My 3G speeds were less than half the speeds of the display, and since this was my second Evo with the exact same problem, the chances of me getting two bad phones with the exact same problem were slim to none. This would mean that I was doing something to screw up the phones.
I didn't think of the fact that their display was on WiFi.
So just this weekend I tested an Evo at the Sprint store that one of the associates had. Same issue with his phone : 4G is great, then drops down to slow 4G, and suddenly dives into 3G at such a slow speed that it kicks you offline.
Earlier today here in Austin TX, I managed to get my best reading ever for my phone - over 7 Mbps.
This was a short lived burst, and two minutes later all signal was completely dead. In order to get signal again i had to restart the phone.
This happened twice to me today, even with two restarts.
The strange thing is that despite having absolutely no signal what-so-ever, the phone shows a full five bars of 4G.
(^ I have now come to realize that I was looking at the 3G signal bars here. The phone still showed 4G, no rings, but all bars of 3G. Despite this, the online connection dropped. When I posted this thread, I didn't know that my issues were a result of the transition from 4G down to a super slow 3G )
I tried placing a call, and was able to do so, but the quality was poor.
At the time that this happens, I am stationary and no more than a few thousand feet from the tower ( I can actually see it easily - about four blocks away )
I would just guess that the bars being shown were just a freezing error, but i
frequently see a full five or even six bars with rings of 4G, despite speeds of less than 2 Mbps. Apparently, something is screwwy with the way the bars are displayed.
Today is Saturday, so I can understand heavy traffic killing some signal, but why does the phone show full strength, and why does it just completely kill all signal that drastically ?
Sprint has admitted to me that there is a problem with the towers in the Austin area, and even offered to send me a signal booster ( which they now tell me that i will have to buy. )
So - just wondering, is this sort of thing is normal, and if so what causes it ?
Using latest 2.2 update on Evo.
This is my second Evo - the first phone also showed fluctuating signal problems, and Sprint had me return it.
Thanks