Help Bad reception and dropped calls all day long! Galaxy S3

[dizazta23]

Hey Peoples,

I have an S3 with US Cellular (CDMA / 4G LTE). I live in Milwaukee WI and US Cellular coverage is great. I have had US Cellular for 7 years now, and always get better reception and data service than friends on Verizon, Tmobile, and Sprint.

I got my S3 a few weeks ago and have constant dropped calls and horrible reception in my house and in my office. There are 4 others with US Cellular in my office that have no trouble at all, full bars when I am barely getting 1.

US Cellular was good to me and replaced my phone to try to correct the problem, but the issue is the same. They tell me that this is a known issue with the S3 on cdma networks and that they are waiting for a patch from Samsung. Has anyone else heard about this? Does anyone have any ideas how to fix this? This is making my phone pretty much useless to me.

Thank you for any advice!

 

[davidmanvell]

Hey Peoples,

I have an S3 with US Cellular (CDMA / 4G LTE). I live in Milwaukee WI and US Cellular coverage is great. I have had US Cellular for 7 years now, and always get better reception and data service than friends on Verizon, Tmobile, and Sprint.

I got my S3 a few weeks ago and have constant dropped calls and horrible reception in my house and in my office. There are 4 others with US Cellular in my office that have no trouble at all, full bars when I am barely getting 1.

US Cellular was good to me and replaced my phone to try to correct the problem, but the issue is the same. They tell me that this is a known issue with the S3 on cdma networks and that they are waiting for a patch from Samsung. Has anyone else heard about this? Does anyone have any ideas how to fix this? This is making my phone pretty much useless to me.

Thank you for any advice!

Make sure you have updated your towers on the phone.

 

[dizazta23]

Make sure you have updated your towers on the phone.

Thank you for the advice. I did that a number of times with the Level 2 tech support rep.

 

[jerry 12]

Hey Peoples,

I have an S3 with US Cellular (CDMA / 4G LTE). I live in Milwaukee WI and US Cellular coverage is great. I have had US Cellular for 7 years now, and always get better reception and data service than friends on Verizon, Tmobile, and Sprint.

I got my S3 a few weeks ago and have constant dropped calls and horrible reception in my house and in my office. There are 4 others with US Cellular in my office that have no trouble at all, full bars when I am barely getting 1.

US Cellular was good to me and replaced my phone to try to correct the problem, but the issue is the same. They tell me that this is a known issue with the S3 on cdma networks and that they are waiting for a patch from Samsung. Has anyone else heard about this? Does anyone have any ideas how to fix this? This is making my phone pretty much useless to me.

Thank you for any advice!

Yes that is a known problem with the uscc S3 and samsung is working on a fix that is what i have been told by uscc tects.

 

[clitrenta]

Hey Peoples,

I have an S3 with US Cellular (CDMA / 4G LTE). I live in Milwaukee WI and US Cellular coverage is great. I have had US Cellular for 7 years now, and always get better reception and data service than friends on Verizon, Tmobile, and Sprint.

I got my S3 a few weeks ago and have constant dropped calls and horrible reception in my house and in my office. There are 4 others with US Cellular in my office that have no trouble at all, full bars when I am barely getting 1.

US Cellular was good to me and replaced my phone to try to correct the problem, but the issue is the same. They tell me that this is a known issue with the S3 on cdma networks and that they are waiting for a patch from Samsung. Has anyone else heard about this? Does anyone have any ideas how to fix this? This is making my phone pretty much useless to me.

Thank you for any advice!

I'm with you. USC has always had good reception in Milwaukee. I have the same problem with you although mostly just in my office. Mostly my problem seems to be with data. I can get calls in my office but data is very weak. This seems to be the only place I have that problem. I live in Racine and the reception there is good. I also have WiFi at home so no problems there either. It only seems to be in my office for the most part(not even the rest of the darn building). I really love this phone so I'm just trying to accept it for now and hope a future update will improve it. You would think that simple testing before release would identify this problem.

 

[CReuss]

I hear you. I am on Sprint and my S3 is pretty much useless to me :-( I pray they get their act together soon. Between the Nextel switch over to Sprint and no 4G LTE I am not real happy yet. Hopefully they have their stuff together by the 1st of the year.

Are the people in your office with the same carrier as you?

 

[clitrenta]

I hear you. I am on Sprint and my S3 is pretty much useless to me :-( I pray they get their act together soon. Between the Nextel switch over to Sprint and no 4G LTE I am not real happy yet. Hopefully they have their stuff together by the 1st of the year.

Are the people in your office with the same carrier as you?

I'm not sure if anyone has USC. My work phone is AT&T and some of the others have Verizon and Sprint - a real hodge podge. I can say that I did not have any real problem with T-Mobile in my office but it was total crap at home so I got rid of that. AT&T works relatively well but honestly, the S3 is the only phone I have that was this bad in my office and it's just my office. The rest of the building is ok. Go figure. I guess if my office is the worst I have to deal with, I can wait. When I had the iPhone, my data pretty much came to a screeching hault between noon and 4 - bandwidth overload I suspect. At least with my S3, I can go somewhere else in the bldg and be able to use it. No problems at home either. Reception is good where I live and I have WiFi at home so data is totally a non-issue. Maybe I can move my office

 

[handyman79]

i too have this phone, and is horrible at my work place. i can't even make a phone call, let alone get a text or use my internet. i switched over from verizon and a razr maxx...and live in washington state

 

[clitrenta]

It's just really odd though. I can almost understand the problem in my office as it does tend to do that to some extent with all phones but I actually get good reception in the bathroom which to me seems really "fortified" by walls and such and was usually the one dead spot in the building. Fortunately I have the kind of job where I can come and go all over the place to if I really need the data, I'll just take a walk. No problems with calls and texts. Most other attempts to use data are so-so. I can usually manage to get my e-mail but if I need to access data for more than about 30 seconds, it's best to find other surroundings. I'm getting used to it but a fix would be nice. I love the phone regardless.

 

[calwashere]

I am trying to decide what to do about my Galaxy 3. I can barely make a call anywhere that doesn't drop. After much arguing, US Cellular is willing to allow me to exchange the phone for an Electrify 2 saying "the antenna is stronger" but that sounds just odd since three other cell phones that are not Galaxy 3s all work at my house.

The 4G is just silly, everything about this phone is slower than my previous phone, the Mesmerize.

All that being said, I am pausing an exchange because there are so many features about the phone that I like.

Another tech told me it wasn't the antenna but it was a software upgrade that needs to happen and it should be happening soon.

 

[seana608]

I have the S3 for Verizon and I'm having the same issue with poor reception and dropped calls. I exchanged the phone once during my 14 day window and Verizon gave me a new SIM card the second time which didn't fix the problem either. This is the first time I've experienced this problem on Verizon's network so I'm sure that it's the phone. I'm trying to hold out and wait to see if it's fixed with an update because other than that issue I really like the phone. But it would be nice to be able to make calls with it. If there's no update by the time the new HD Razr is released I may be selling this and giving that phone a try.

 

[hbryder]

Thank you for the advice. I did that a number of times with the Level 2 tech support rep.

Until there is a fix, can you use wifi calling at work through your network? When I first got my s3 we had a bad tower in our neighborhood so they suggested while at home i use wifi calling it really helped.

 

[twitkow]

I have had problems with dropped calls and reception in general. US cellular tells me it is a known problem with a batch of the gs3s. I asked for a different phone and they refused. I have never had an experience with a company which appeared to care less about the customer. With 4-5 dropped calls daily I am trying to find out what recourse I have. Unfortunately I am past the 2 week time frame for returns. The phone worked well only for that time frame. I am paying over 200 a month on a family plan for a phone that doesn't work...

 

[Bloomy6]

I too am having issues. Dropped calls, bad reception, loss of data connectivity. I went to my local US cellular store and they also did not give me a new phone. Said they were aware of the issue and suggested I call customer service. I did. I was told this is a known issue and that it affects all phones from a certain batch that were sent out and it's not any carriers issue but software on the phone. I was told Samsung is aware and working on an update. Lol, as I'm typing this I just lost data connectivity and went to data roaming. This by far the worst reception I've ever had with any phone. I have done some searches for this and have no real information regarding this issue. I love the phone and just wish I could get some info as to where Samsung is with this issue.

 

[MelonSplitter]

My issue is that I recieve calls only about 50% of the time. I can make calls fine. Sprint gives me the crap about towers being serviced and that out going calls have precedence. This just started happening about 3 weeks ago. Sprint gave me a 60 dollar credit for my problem. Go ahead and ask for yours. I told customer service that my device is useless as a phone and that I only use it as a camera and mp3 player. Today I will have Samsung RMA my phone because it has a 1 year warranty. We should not have to go through this. Hopefully this fixes my issue. At least I will know for sure if it is a Network or my Device issue. Until I get a replacement I will fire up my trusty EVO and use her. Wish me luck and I will keep you updated.

 

[Edsmile]

Just signed up on this forum just to comment. Hey, Milwaukee! Me too. Loved my Evo - for last 3 years or so. Long time Sprint customer. But, broke the charging port. So, I JUST upgraded to a Galaxy 3. Yea, nice, not on the same order of improvement that the iPhone or Evo was a few years ago, but nice. Anyway, it is dropping calls! And no reception in buildings here in MKE. What? Am on day 10 or so before I can turn it in (Sprint). Any luck with the newer Evo? Better reception? Maybe I'll go back to the old Evo. or iPhone.

 

[clitrenta]

Just signed up on this forum just to comment. Hey, Milwaukee! Me too. Loved my Evo - for last 3 years or so. Long time Sprint customer. But, broke the charging port. So, I JUST upgraded to a Galaxy 3. Yea, nice, not on the same order of improvement that the iPhone or Evo was a few years ago, but nice. Anyway, it is dropping calls! And no reception in buildings here in MKE. What? Am on day 10 or so before I can turn it in (Sprint). Any luck with the newer Evo? Better reception? Maybe I'll go back to the old Evo. or iPhone.

Hey, I don't have any issues with reception in Milwaukee (US Cellular) so it could just be your carrier. It happens. My only problem really is in my office and even then, it's just data as I get calls and texts just fine. Go figure. maybe you should consider a different carrier entirely - doesn't hurt to just try since you do have the buyers remorse period. I think T-Mobile has good service here although they're crap in Racine. AT&T wouldn't be bad if it weren't for their data really slowing down in the afternoons. Oh and yah, US Cellular is actually pretty good to (except of course for the aforementioned office ). The thing about USCC is that after the initial contract, you NEVER have to sign another contract again. You still get new phones at contract rates after that (normal time frames apply) but you don;t have to sign another contract. How cool is that?! They have a special family plan offer going on right now too - unlimited voice and text for $99. Data plans are additional. I'm really thinking though that every carrier has issues of one sort or another and you simply have to figure out which one you can live with and which you can't. The S3 is a great phone but maybe a change of carrier is in order. Hit me up with any questions.

 

[ycn1959]

I've had the phone over the 10 day return date and have dropped calls from same time frame. Now as phone is older the dropped calls are worse than ever. (T-mobile Dallas Tx.)
Anyone know when the 'patch' to these phones will be available? I can't use the phone in my home office and go wireless and still drop calls. I have to talk with my clients 'outside' and still drop calls. Anyone with info?

 

[trucky]

There were known hardware issues with some early batches of the S3. The first round of replacements were the -B and the most recent were the -BR. You can find this listed on your phone, under the battery. Look for the internal RAM size 16MB and the -BR is right after that. It took two replacements for me before connectivity and reception were acceptable.

 

[Bschultz18]

hi everyone recently got the galaxy s3 through us cellular and live in milwaukee. I noticed spotty reception and dropped calls here and there. I was pretty frustrated but this is what helped me. I downloaded an app called phone info which shows me the dbm reading for my signal reception which was around 105 dbm switched my mode to cdma only and noticed reception went to 80dbm(lower is better). Now by doing this it switches over to 3g which you sacrifice for better reception,but for me at home I use my wifi anyways. I figure I can always turn 4g back on if in a better reception area. Using the 3g is still really fast and conserves battery. Now you dont need to use phone info to toggle 4g off. In settings under more settings select mobile networks and then select network mode and select cdma. Should do the trick. So ultimately 4g steals signal power to increase data speed.Hope this article helps some people out!

 

[MalikBear]

I would like to know if any of you from Milwaukee have this issue with Verizon and if anyone got this fixed through replacement or any other route.