Sprint phones roaming abilities vary by manufacturer

Cruznis, a Sprint employee moderator on Howard forums makes an interesting post about what I and many others have suspected for years about Sprint's phones and roaming. This could be the reason why many people have reported not being able to digital roam in certain areas.


quote:
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Originally posted by larryt510
Cruz,

There has always been a discrepancy with roaming among phones like that even here in LA. Some will prefer analog and some will prefer digital depending on the brand/model even when they have the same PRL. The theory that's been tossed around is that the firmware in the phone also plays a role in how each phone will roam.
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The theory is correct. SPCS wasn't aware of this as the phones are NOT suppose to play a role in analog/digital roaming. My g/f lives in a roaming area.. which is what caused me to figure this out.. All samsungs (i tested a620 and a680) digital roamed in this area as well as the nokia 3588i BUT my sanyo's would not (8100, 8200, VM4500) even though they all had 10024. Well after emailing our lab and discussing this on the phone with them for a couple of weeks, they had me take 5 phones (3588i with prl 10024, A680 one with 23 and one with 24, and 2 Vm 4500's one with 23 and one with 24). They had stated that digital roaming was the primary choice up till 24 and then it's primary was analog off of at&t. Well.. after taking pics of the screens in the modes, SID #'s and driving around 4 diff towns up in this area.. It ended up being that despite the changes in 23 and 24, the nokia and all samsungs still digital roamed. They then spent a week of testing in the lab trying to duplicate this same scenario and was finally able to figure out what's going on.

They then reprogrammed a prl and emailed it to me to upload into my phone and tested fora f ew days in the areas. Over 30 miles over coverage is now digital instead of analog. Not sure if they are going to fix these issues as it is a manufacturers issue, not SPCS's. It was quite cool working with this dept. and testing for them.. So yes.. the phone does play a role but it's not suppose to. We'll see what happens in the future with newer handsets.


http://howardforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=474889&perpage=15&pagenumber=2

 

That is correct Tony. Sanyo will have to introduce new phones with different software and/or hardware to fix the problem.

 

Yes hardly any roaming around here anymore. I remember three spots that I used to roam at here in OC about 2 years ago. Those 3 spots are not well covered by new cell sites that since came up.