Ugggghhhh.... why didn't I come here first?!!? I couldn't find anything on Sprint forum and I have been pretty active on there lately.
For me, the issue began before I got the 8.1 update. I was getting a lot (and I mean a lot) of group text messages. I was in Florida at the time and I know for a fact on Dec 4th it was working because I was going to watch the Orion EFT-1 launch at 4:30 in the morning. Was trying to meet up with people in the dark and was voice texting while driving. Was working fine. Then had two other different group text messages going with family waiting for launch. Scrubbed the 4th and tried again the 5th. I think I may have had a little trouble on the 5th, but I attributed it to constant bombardment with a ton of group texts to large numbers of people. I can see if I can trace it back a little better. But I know somewhere between the 5th and the upgrade I seemed to get some group texts fine but other ones would not come in. (just checked, sent an email to family on the 11th saying I was having trouble with group texts)
Also I kept clicking on them so it got to the point where I would wake up with 70+ text messages that said the same thing about media content. Clicking would not download them. If you hold down and click it says there is a data connection error. (I am hard resetting my phone again at the moment so cant check exact wording) After a few days I would get spurts of messages, but the order would be all whacked and I would not receive all of them so it was impossible to interpret.
On the 23rd I was in the Galleria in Houston so I stopped at the big Microsoft Store. A couple people took a look, said all my settings were right and they had not heard of any issues with 8.1. They suspected damage to my SIM card. So I went to Sprint on the 26th. Sprint was useless as said they thought I needed to do a hard reset. Said if that didn't work, to come back and they would try a few things. So last night I came home and did a hard reset. After that was done, it was interesting, there were some things that changed in terms of when I looked for something in settings, but it did not fix the problem and the phone still worked fine.
Today I went to the store and tried endlessly to get my car to link to my phone. My car was coming up on the phone, but the car kept saying no Bluetooth devices found. Very frustrating. Then while I was in the store my phone turned off (does that sometimes in my pocket if I squat down or kneel down too long). This time it had an awful effect. My phone basically froze. I put in my pin and nothing happened. It eventually after 15 minutes or so unlocked, but then when swiping around the screen I chose Bluetooth and it froze again. I waited and waited and it never unfroze, so I did soft reset. Showed up at my appointment with Sprint that essentially seemed bricked and they said all we can do is order a replacement (refurbished) phone, will arrive Wednesday. They had no idea what to do with a Windows phone.
Since then it just keeps locking up and almost nothing will actually open. So I decided to do a hard reset again. While in that process I decided to check here and now I want to kick myself. Had not thought to try CDMA only. Reset just finished, so I will try now and see what happens.
Why didn't I check here before going to Sprint (The Never Network - where we hate Windows Phone)!:angry::angry::angry: