Trophy 'world phone' has no data service on return to US

[braindoc]

So I emailed Verizon and explained the problem. This was the response I got back:

"I do apologize for the data issue you experienced and we do appreciate the feedback. I have researched this issue, and have also reported it in our product issue log to be reviewed by the manufacturer. Once the issue is duplicated, the manufacturer will work on a software fix which will be sent to all affected devices over the air."

Which I translate as: "Once this becomes a problem with enough of our customers we'll do something about it."

I haven't contacted HTC or MS about the issue but that might be the next option. Prior to the Trophy I used an Imagio, another HTC windows verizon global phone and it worked flawlessly, so it's hard to tell where the problem lies.

 

[Rocket_Girl]

So I emailed Verizon and explained the problem. This was the response I got back:

"I do apologize for the data issue you experienced and we do appreciate the feedback. I have researched this issue, and have also reported it in our product issue log to be reviewed by the manufacturer. Once the issue is duplicated, the manufacturer will work on a software fix which will be sent to all affected devices over the air."

Which I translate as: "Once this becomes a problem with enough of our customers we'll do something about it."

I haven't contacted HTC or MS about the issue but that might be the next option. Prior to the Trophy I used an Imagio, another HTC windows verizon global phone and it worked flawlessly, so it's hard to tell where the problem lies.

Yeah, my Blackberry was fine, too. I had the Droid Pro for a short time (global phone) but got rid of it too quickly to have used it for a trip.

That could be a sweet assignment for someone - to duplicate the issue. I doubt they can replicate by crossing from Seattle to Vancouver and back... it will take some serious travel!

I have also asked support about where to call/write/tweet to get this on the radar (I don't ever tweet, but would if it would help now). They had no other ideas... maybe one of them will notice this forum (I know, wishful thinking). Ultimately, I think there will be too few of us and it may never be solved. Could be cheaper for VZ to just replace with equivalent, that is when and if they ever *get* a different WP& global device. Unfortunately, whenever I go in to the store & talk to them, it only reinforces their biases against ever recommending a WP7 phone to anyone!

 

[braindoc]

So I contacted HTC about this problem and here was their response:

"If this is what I think it is; it may not be a bug, so much as an inherent issue with CDMA technology. Somtimes, CDMA phones may get stuck on the last foreign tower they had connected to, causing you a lot of problems when you return home. This is easy to fix, though. For that reason, I'm thinking we'll want to try to update your phone's PRL (basically, this defines what towers your phone is attempting to connect to).
To update the PRL, simply go to Settings --> System --> Carrier and scroll to the bottom. There you can just tap either/or "Change PRL" & "Change profile" and it will walk you through the update, which takes about 30 seconds -- this causes your phone to do a quick scan of the area, to find a closer tower to work with."

Unfortunately there is no 'Carrier' option in 'System' and the 'Cellular' option does not have the Change PRL option.

 

[Rocket_Girl]

So I contacted HTC about this problem and here was their response:

"If this is what I think it is; it may not be a bug, so much as an inherent issue with CDMA technology. Somtimes, CDMA phones may get stuck on the last foreign tower they had connected to, causing you a lot of problems when you return home. This is easy to fix, though. For that reason, I'm thinking we'll want to try to update your phone's PRL (basically, this defines what towers your phone is attempting to connect to).
To update the PRL, simply go to Settings --> System --> Carrier and scroll to the bottom. There you can just tap either/or "Change PRL" & "Change profile" and it will walk you through the update, which takes about 30 seconds -- this causes your phone to do a quick scan of the area, to find a closer tower to work with."

Unfortunately there is no 'Carrier' option in 'System' and the 'Cellular' option does not have the Change PRL option.

The theory does make sense... it is too bad the setting options do not exist on the Trophy. I wonder if that can be addressed via an update? Mango update added and/or reconfigured menu options... perhaps an update could add these options to the menu.

Logic is similar to using *228 to update roaming capabilities upon return to US, but that only works for cellular connection, not data.

Assuming they could prepare an update to address this, I wonder who "they" would be. I can see the need for an option to choose (or reset) carrier in areas where there are multiple carriers possible. With Verizon, there IS no other CDMA carrier, thus, IU could see them skipping that option in their devices -- after all, why would they need to have a 'reset carrier' option on VZW phones?

Sounds like HTC may (correctly) understand problem that requires some VZW code to fix - does this make sense? If it does, that puts us back into the lap of the *last* response you received - from VZW - basically saying there aren't enough of us for them to even bother. Which means we may be stuck waiting for another VZW WP7.5 world-phone device, OR stuck challenging contracts for service VZW cannot provide. Or completely resetting phones upon every return to the US. With 3 more overseas trips in the first part of 2012, *that* possibility is less than thrilling. If I have to do it one more time, that will be the last time. One way or another, something will change thereafter.

Thank you, braindoc, for going after the problem and the answers, such as they are. Your patience and persistence exceeds mine (which is why you are, well, braindoc and I am social science doc!)

 

[braindoc]

I did inform HTC about the PRL setting not being present on our phones. They did respond by saying that performing the *228 option 2 should restore the system. I also asked them if simply turning off-on the phone wouldn't automatically reset the data and they said no.

I actually had, before I traveled to Europe, used global data roaming in Canada (Montreal) and didn't have any problems when I got back to the US. I'm not familiar with Canadian cellular systems so I may have been roaming on a CDMA network and this may be why there was no problem.

Perhaps the next person to travel outside the US and use GSM data can try the *228 option 2 trick and see if it works. If it doesn't, at least I still have my old Imagio I can activate for overseas trips.

 

[Rocket_Girl]

*228 does not work. That is the first thing I tried, before calling support -- and tried it again several times after that (I had 5 hrs to kill at JFK, with no data connection!). Once that failed, I knew there was little the support folks could do, but again - had plenty of time to call them. Once that did not work, they were at a loss as well.

At least one other poster in this thread tried the *228 and had it fail. I even tried *228 option 1 AND *228 option 2. No go.

 

[coffeyc1]

My company has been dealing with this same issue with the Trophy. I finally got word back from Microsoft. The first said "This is a known issue at HTC and they are working on a fix that should be delivered as an update to the phone."

When I pressed them about whether this was caused by Mango (because we didn't have the problem pre-Mango), he replied back "I do not have all the details pertaining to this bug, but apparently it was present in the WP7 build and surfaced as a result of the WP7.5 update process.

Again, we anticipate HTC to push the fix to the Marketplace any day now."

So, not sure how much to believe that but the carrot has been dangled!

 

[Rocket_Girl]

My company has been dealing with this same issue with the Trophy. I finally got word back from Microsoft. The first said "This is a known issue at HTC and they are working on a fix that should be delivered as an update to the phone."

When I pressed them about whether this was caused by Mango (because we didn't have the problem pre-Mango), he replied back "I do not have all the details pertaining to this bug, but apparently it was present in the WP7 build and surfaced as a result of the WP7.5 update process.

Again, we anticipate HTC to push the fix to the Marketplace any day now."

So, not sure how much to believe that but the carrot has been dangled!

It is promising, at least, to *have* a carrot dangled! This is far better than the altogether more expected 'harumph' -- I will be hoping and looking to see what happens - hopefully, before next trip!

I did notice over on the news page (here at wpcentral) that HTC has pushed random updates to several of their other models just today, so we can hope. I checked mine: as of today "your phone is up to date...". Ah, hopeful and waiting...

 

[mrobbeloth]

Repeatedly losing data connection

Although I have not been traveling internationally (although I had planned to do so with my Trophy in the near future), I have completely lost my data connection post Mango on two different phones multiple times with the only solution being to hard reset the phone (the replacement came with Mango installed). You can read the details here:

\HTC Trophy Connection Lost 4th Time post Mango Update - Verizon Wireless Community

Unless some magical update fix appears by later this morning, I'm going to press for an iPhone/Android replacement. I'm done with the Trophy at this point.

Michael

 

[braindoc]

Although I have not been traveling internationally (although I had planned to do so with my Trophy in the near future), I have completely lost my data connection post Mango on two different phones multiple times with the only solution being to hard reset the phone (the replacement came with Mango installed). You can read the details here:

\HTC Trophy Connection Lost 4th Time post Mango Update - Verizon Wireless Community

Unless some magical update fix appears by later this morning, I'm going to press for an iPhone/Android replacement. I'm done with the Trophy at this point.

Michael

Contact HTC. From a previous post it sounds like they know there is a problem but the more people who contact them the more likely they are to find and push out a fix. At the least, they seem to address these issues better than Verizon.

 

[mcetlinski]

I started a thread on HTC's forums. I still need to call them, but hoping to drum up some traffic and thereby some awareness for HTC on this issue.

No Data Service upon return to US - HTC Trophy (Verizon) - Windows Phone Forums - HTC Community

Also posted on Microsoft Answers now:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...rn-to-us/39a95c3f-390a-4432-80b2-0e0d194bb102

 

[mcetlinski]

Got a response on the Microsoft Forum. They suggested running the HTC Setup app, I figured that it was worth a shot in the hopes that HTC has updated it. Keep in mind that my phone was fine and I'm just doing this to test out the app. I ran the Connection Setup application, and voila! no more 3G data connection as has been reported by many.

Now that it's in the fubar'd state I'll see if HTC can't help me out.

 

[thed]

Got a response on the Microsoft Forum. They suggested running the HTC Setup app, I figured that it was worth a shot in the hopes that HTC has updated it. Keep in mind that my phone was fine and I'm just doing this to test out the app. I ran the Connection Setup application, and voila! no more 3G data connection as has been reported by many.

Now that it's in the fubar'd state I'll see if HTC can't help me out.

Yeah, don't run Connection Setup as it's known to break 3G. Don't install it either because it runs whenever your phone reboots.

The funny thing is that they pulled Connection Setup for a while. I thought for sure it was to fix this issue. But it's back now, it's a new version and it still breaks 3G. Not sure what HTC was thinking there. Don't they do any testing?

 

[Rocket_Girl]

I did jump ship. Needed fully global WP7 phone. I am still following to see how this turns out...good luck!!

 

[mcetlinski]

I spoke with HTC and they found that the "APN" for Verizon is missing. This is what the Connection Setup (according to the tech I spoke with) is supposed to fill out. She said that they do not have Verizon's APN on record which is why the Connection Setup app breaks it.

I'll continue to drop updates. I'm calling Verizon next to get the APN. After that if it does fix it I'll see if I can't get some sort of escalation with HTC to get a fix.

If it was just me no problem, but with this potentially affecting the other executives in my company it's a very big problem.

 

[mcetlinski]

I now have a ticket open with Verizon that is with their Data Network team. They are also opening a ticket as a carrier with HTC. Still no resolution, but this issue is being worked from the angle of resolving the issue without doing a reset.

As for the APN from Verizon, they informed me that this is not something that only the Data Network team has access to that information. So HTC did not give me a valid answer as I expected.

Now working on escalating this with my business account manager reps and their management team at Verizon.

 

[thed]

I now have a ticket open with Verizon that is with their Data Network team. They are also opening a ticket as a carrier with HTC. Still no resolution, but this issue is being worked from the angle of resolving the issue without doing a reset.

As for the APN from Verizon, they informed me that this is not something that only the Data Network team has access to that information. So HTC did not give me a valid answer as I expected.

Now working on escalating this with my business account manager reps and their management team at Verizon.

Cool, it'll be interesting to see if you can get to the bottom of this.

 

[skytribe]

Experienced the problem on return from Europe. Verizon/HTC should sort this out as the phone is pretty well useless as a "WorldPhone" unless you want to restore a backup and lose data as a result. If you want to run a network that is different from a lot of the world you better make sure you devices play well if they are world phones. It sounds like QA was sadly lacking in testing this functionality....

 

[Rocket_Girl]

Experienced the problem on return from Europe. Verizon/HTC should sort this out as the phone is pretty well useless as a "WorldPhone" unless you want to restore a backup and lose data as a result. If you want to run a network that is different from a lot of the world you better make sure you devices play well if they are world phones. It sounds like QA was sadly lacking in testing this functionality....

Even worse, in some cases (above in this thread), restoring the backup wiped out the data connection that was regained thru hard reset. Now if that isn't hopeless, I am not sure what is!

Alas, I gave up and switched to carrier that plays well with the rest of the world (whether it plays well here remains to be seen...). Big fail on the part of Verizon/HTC/MS; raises significant questions about the future of Windows phones on Verizon. In the absence of Windows Phone device options and persistent lack of any fix, I waited 2 months, then gave up. I need a reliable Windows world phone sooner than "someday, maybe"... one that works abroad and continues to work back home! I will be watching to see what happens over here....

 

[mcetlinski]

Quick update; began working with a new Verizon level 2 tech, not sure what group he's in, but he does have a lab with a Trophy that he is going to reproduce these issues with. He has to finish updating the phone he has to Mango, and then will work on reproducing the issue. Should be hearing back from him this afternoon.