First before I get into this post 2 things. 1) Sorry for the length, but I want to be thorough. 2) I'd like to lay out a few definitions - there seems to not be a hard rule, so I'd like to clarify things at least with respect to my post (they may not be correct but it'll at least be consistant within this post).
Warm reboot - holding down the power button from an on state until the slide to power down screen comes on and then sliding your lock screen down. Note that from here, you'll have to hold down the power key again to turn the phone back on
Cold reboot - holding down the power button from an on state until the slide to power down screen comes on and then continuing to hold the power button down for another 10 seconds or so until the phone powers itself down. Note that the phone will automatically power back up
Hard reset - choosing to restore factory settings from the settings tile and wiping everything on your phone (note that I never had to do this)
Now on to my test:
Earlier today I saw a thread about people that haven't had problems with their data connections. I was about to post in that thread, but the flight attendants had closed the forward door and I had to turn off my electronic devices. I go into settings on my L900, turn on airplane mode and power down (hold the power button until the slide to power down screen comes on and I slide down).
Fast forward about 2.5 hours and 700 miles or so, we touch down in my destination city and like all other business travellers, the the first thing I reach for is my cell phone. Power it back up and in a few seconds my phone has all its bars except it now says 4G instead of LTE (that's expected though since my destination city is only covered by HSDPA+). Despite all the icons that would indicate otherwise, when I try to force Gmail to sync or pull up a web page in Internet Explorer, I keep getting messages about connectivity issues. Did several warm reboots and nothing mattered. Checked to make sure airplane wasn't still on and it wasn't.
Fortunately a COR AT&T store was on the way into the office so I stopped by to see if they could figure it out. The guy I spoke to happened to also be using a L900 and tried to do a cold reboot and lo and behold that fixed it! He said he had never had that issue so I figure it's a fluke.
Later on in the night I decided to do some troubleshooting to see if I could reliably repeat what had happened. After many tests I can find that this process will reliably kill the data connection and also fix it.
1) Turn on airplane mode and power down your phone via the warm reboot method
2) Turn the phone back on and turn airplane mode off
3) Power down the phone via the warm reboot method
4) Turn the phone back on
5) Reboot the phone via tha cold reboot method
6) Phone powers back on and data works again
Some observations that led me to this process
- After step 2 wehen I turn the phone on and airplane mode off, data will never work no matter how many times I toggle airplane mode or do a warm reboot
- Here's the killer thing that makes me think there's a firmware problem. After step 2, if I immediately do a cold reboot instead of a warm reboot as listed in step 3, when the phone powers back on airplane mode is still enabled!
- Steps 3/4 can be repeated as many times as you want, but until you do a warm reboot and disable airplane mode and follow it with a cold reboot, data never comes back
Sorry for this long winded post, but I wanted to make sure everyone knew all the steps I went through in this troubleshooting. Also, I want to make sure people know about the cold reboot option and they give that a shot before doing the hard reset option.
I love this phone but it really seems to me like there is a bug here (evidenced by the second observation I pointed out above) in the L900 firmware. I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem like an AT&T issue (someone please correct me if I'm wrong).
Can anybody else reliable repeat this like I have? I've confirmed this exact process at least half a dozen times now and it's is 100% repeatable for me.
Warm reboot - holding down the power button from an on state until the slide to power down screen comes on and then sliding your lock screen down. Note that from here, you'll have to hold down the power key again to turn the phone back on
Cold reboot - holding down the power button from an on state until the slide to power down screen comes on and then continuing to hold the power button down for another 10 seconds or so until the phone powers itself down. Note that the phone will automatically power back up
Hard reset - choosing to restore factory settings from the settings tile and wiping everything on your phone (note that I never had to do this)
Now on to my test:
Earlier today I saw a thread about people that haven't had problems with their data connections. I was about to post in that thread, but the flight attendants had closed the forward door and I had to turn off my electronic devices. I go into settings on my L900, turn on airplane mode and power down (hold the power button until the slide to power down screen comes on and I slide down).
Fast forward about 2.5 hours and 700 miles or so, we touch down in my destination city and like all other business travellers, the the first thing I reach for is my cell phone. Power it back up and in a few seconds my phone has all its bars except it now says 4G instead of LTE (that's expected though since my destination city is only covered by HSDPA+). Despite all the icons that would indicate otherwise, when I try to force Gmail to sync or pull up a web page in Internet Explorer, I keep getting messages about connectivity issues. Did several warm reboots and nothing mattered. Checked to make sure airplane wasn't still on and it wasn't.
Fortunately a COR AT&T store was on the way into the office so I stopped by to see if they could figure it out. The guy I spoke to happened to also be using a L900 and tried to do a cold reboot and lo and behold that fixed it! He said he had never had that issue so I figure it's a fluke.
Later on in the night I decided to do some troubleshooting to see if I could reliably repeat what had happened. After many tests I can find that this process will reliably kill the data connection and also fix it.
1) Turn on airplane mode and power down your phone via the warm reboot method
2) Turn the phone back on and turn airplane mode off
3) Power down the phone via the warm reboot method
4) Turn the phone back on
5) Reboot the phone via tha cold reboot method
6) Phone powers back on and data works again
Some observations that led me to this process
- After step 2 wehen I turn the phone on and airplane mode off, data will never work no matter how many times I toggle airplane mode or do a warm reboot
- Here's the killer thing that makes me think there's a firmware problem. After step 2, if I immediately do a cold reboot instead of a warm reboot as listed in step 3, when the phone powers back on airplane mode is still enabled!
- Steps 3/4 can be repeated as many times as you want, but until you do a warm reboot and disable airplane mode and follow it with a cold reboot, data never comes back
Sorry for this long winded post, but I wanted to make sure everyone knew all the steps I went through in this troubleshooting. Also, I want to make sure people know about the cold reboot option and they give that a shot before doing the hard reset option.
I love this phone but it really seems to me like there is a bug here (evidenced by the second observation I pointed out above) in the L900 firmware. I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem like an AT&T issue (someone please correct me if I'm wrong).
Can anybody else reliable repeat this like I have? I've confirmed this exact process at least half a dozen times now and it's is 100% repeatable for me.
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