Cell reception suddenly fluctuating like crazy

[Joe920]

After months of no problems my Lumia 1020 is suddenly misbehaving: the cell signal strength is fluctuating all over the place, from no service to 5 bars, sometimes it even switches to Edge. It will stay at a given strength for a while (tens of seconds) and then change.

Some symptoms:
- I'm using it on Straight Talk (AT&T towers), but I see the same thing with a T-Mobile sim.
- The same two sim cards work fine in my old iPhone 4
- It keeps happening as I bike around town, so it's not just an area with weak signal
- A soft reset doesn't fix it.
- I'm running WP8.1 Dev Preview, latest update (I think that's update 3?)
- Everything else works (wifi, bluetooth)

Has anyone seen reports on similar problems? Any suggestions on how to fix this?

 

[Muessig]

It might be worth a soft reset or a hard reset if you're running the developer preview and this issue has only just started to happen. It also might be worth going to sim settings through the cellular + sim area in settings and changing the connection speed to 4G or 3G or 2G and seeing if any of these help with your issue.

 

[Joe920]

It might be worth a soft reset or a hard reset if you're running the developer preview and this issue has only just started to happen. It also might be worth going to sim settings through the cellular + sim area in settings and changing the connection speed to 4G or 3G or 2G and seeing if any of these help with your issue.

Hey, thanks for the quick response! Soft reset didn't help. If I do a hard reset will I stay on 8.1 or go back to 8.0? I guess I would lose the tile layout again, right? As for changing to 3G, I can't find those settings on this 1020 8.1DP. It only has 'roam' and 'don't roam', and sim settings only offer internet and MMS apn, with no option for network speed that I can find.

 

[ssjmec]

Hey, thanks for the quick response! Soft reset didn't help. If I do a hard reset will I stay on 8.1 or go back to 8.0? I guess I would lose the tile layout again, right? As for changing to 3G, I can't find those settings on this 1020 8.1DP. It only has 'roam' and 'don't roam', and sim settings only offer internet and MMS apn, with no option for network speed that I can find.

You will stay at 8.1 after a hard reset. And if you perform a backup and restore it later, your tile layout will also be saved

 

[Joe920]

You will stay at 8.1 after a hard reset. And if you perform a backup and restore it later, your tile layout will also be saved

Resetting right now. I realize I will lose some app settings, but it's either this or sending it for warranty repair. Which might still happen, but at least I'll have tried everything.

 

[Joe920]

Well, at least all tile positions are saved..

Signal issue is better at the moment, but for some reason I'm stuck on edge. Still not up to snuff, I might have to send it in unless anyone has another suggestion.

Saw something new during restore: not-yet-installed apps show as dimmed tiles, and while they install the tile is 'undimmed' from left to right, like a progress bar. Cool.

The bad:
- looks like notification preferences are not backed up (I get notifications for every single email again, which I didn't use to)
- several apps for tracking stuff (shopping list, weight tracker, gas mileage tracker) didn't save their data.
- some live tile customizations were lost
- apps that were removed from the store are gone. Case in point: metrotalk, which still worked fine for me.
- the haptic feedback setting is lost (easy fix, but still)
- the night mode settings on glance are lost
- keyboard preference settings are lost (e.g. hide smiley suggestions)

 

[Joe920]

Well darned. Same problem after full device reset: cell reception fluctuates and just toggles off regularly using different providers. What a bummer.

Is it possible to fry these phones in hot weather while using GPS? The phone did get super hot, other than that nothing special happened.

 

[Joe920]

Big surprise, the steps they took to repair it were:

• Looked at it
• Looked at it
• Looked at it
• Looked at it

Fixed! If it comes back with the exact same problem I'm going to be so frustrated. :crying:

Screenshot from the actual response below. Worst is they say they 'corrected the problem', but there are no actual steps that look like a fix.

 

[Joe920]

Oh the irony..

Step 1: leave ATT because they refuse to unlock the 1020 on contract
Step 2: Unlock the device and use until breakage
Step 3: Return for warranty repair
Step 4: Receive locked device back.

I'm not even sure how this happened, the device has the same IMEI, how could it be locked again?