Help Weak 4G Coverage Lead to Reboots/Poor Battery Life?

[IamMark]

I'm on my third replacement Thunderbolt after having some unrelated issues to what I'm going to describe below. The area that I'm in has 4G coverage, but where I both live and work I believe the 4G coverage is weak/sporadic. My "new" phone has been having issues in these areas where it switches between 3G/4G/1x throughout the day. My phone has rebooted on several occasions, which my previous T-bolts never did (I did update the phone to the latest OTA update). Additionally, my battery life has been horrible compared to my previous phones, in which I'm only getting about 7 hours with almost no use whatsoever.

I'm wondering if the above symptoms (3G/4G/1x switch, reboots, poor battery life) would have to do with weak 4G coverage. If the phone is consistently switching between the different data networks, would this cause these issues?

 

[Yeahha]

The signal handoff uses alot of battery. If you are not on the OTA from July then you are on MR1 which was prone to having random reboots. Reboots also suck a lot of battery.

 

[MRW1215]

I'm curious as to what was actually causing those reboots on the MR1 update. On MR1, I would get one reboot a day, and I was also having an issue where my 4G connection would get stuck in 1X, and I'd have to either use an app to go into 3G-only, or reboot the phone to get 4G back on. A week or two before the MR2 update came out, though, both of these problems stopped happening completely, on my phone. So, I'm wondering if it was something on Verizon's end. Not that it matters now, anymore, since my phone has been working fine. But I'm still curious about that.

 

[Yeahha]

I'm curious as to what was actually causing those reboots on the MR1 update. On MR1, I would get one reboot a day, and I was also having an issue where my 4G connection would get stuck in 1X, and I'd have to either use an app to go into 3G-only, or reboot the phone to get 4G back on. A week or two before the MR2 update came out, though, both of these problems stopped happening completely, on my phone. So, I'm wondering if it was something on Verizon's end. Not that it matters now, anymore, since my phone has been working fine. But I'm still curious about that.

Short answer: I am pretty sure it was a radio issue.

Long answer: Those of us who are rooted had the MR1 radio, then a leaked MR2 and MR2.5, The actual MR2 radio (the one on the just OTA) and now we have 2 leaked GB radios. It seemed that the MR1 radio was causing reboots, the leaked MR2 had them as well, past that the reboots have stopped for the most part. Every once in a while there is a report of someone having a reboot. They were also happening regardless of the rom. When you flash a rom your radio doesn't change, so it would either be a hardware defect (which would not go away), or something that didn't change with rom flashes like the radio

 

[IamMark]

I'm on the OTA update from July and am running stock ROM. Given that, should I still be experiencing rebooting as a result of the signal handoffs?

 

[IamMark]

I'd really appreciate anymore advice on this. In addition to the several reboots I've had, my phone on two occasions over the last week and a half has powered itself off.

Again, just wondering if this is "normal" behavior on a t-bolt running the latest OTA update from July.

Thanks.

 

[Yeahha]

No that isn't normal at all That update was supposed to remove the free wireless tethering and fix the reboot issue. Mark, as much as I dislike sounding like VZW tech support have you tried a factory reset to see if that helps? I can't really give many other suggestions as most the things I would suggest would require root. You could try calling VZW and complaining, most the people who had reboots issues had the problems resolved with the July update.

 

[IamMark]

I did try a factory reset (a number of times) in addition to formatting my SD card, which unfortunately didn't help. Looks like I'll have to request a replacement and hope 3 exchanges is the charm!

Thanks for your help.

 

[Yeahha]

That sucks, sorry we couldn't get it working for you.