Phone will not get service and date says fri jan dec 31st. Help?

[MikeMc890]

What can I do to have my phone find service? I'm not in a bad area or anything, instead of saying 3G and showing a bar or two, it just shows "the no" sign. a circle with a line diagonally through it. The phone is not in airplane mode, and data network mode is activated, it is not deactivated. I've rebooted the phone, did a battery pull, toggled airplane mode on and off, toggled data network mode on and off, unmounted the sd card, mounted the sd card, my bill is paid and up to date, what is going on with my stupid phone?


Oh yea, phone is completely stock and has the most recent OTA from sprint. And I kinda dropped it from 2 feet onto a carpet and it rebooted last night, but it was working fine after that.

 

[lordfire00]

Try doing a factory reset. This will wipe all data on phone. Not sdcard. And then do a prl and profile update. Before u do. Go into ur wireless network connections settings and make sure 3g is checked marked

 

[MikeMc890]

Re: Phone will not get service and date says fri jan dec 31st. H

Yep all that was checked. 3G is check marked under settings, and I cant update prl or profile because I have no service to get an update! When i try to update prl it says " an error occurred while trying to update your prl. please try again later. error: no service error" I did the factory reset as well and right off the bat, no service. Crazy. Looks like im heading down to the sprint store....

 

[lordfire00]

Is ur epic rooted by any chance?

 

[ratsttam]

Re: Phone will not get service and date says fri jan dec 31st. H

Is ur epic rooted by any chance?

The OP indicated that it's stock in his last paragraph.

"Oh yea, phone is completely stock and has the most recent OTA from sprint."

Since you're stock, I would take a trip down the Sprint store and see what their tech says (after doing a wipe, since they'll probably do that first). Sounds like the radio failed. If you don't want to take it down there, I would follow the directions for restoring a bricked Epic, as that will replace the radio firmware, possibly fixing the issue. If that doesn't work, than it's a hardware problem, and we won't be able to help with that.

 

[lordfire00]

Rat is right. Sorry I was real tired and misread a few things.

 

[MikeMc890]

Re: Phone will not get service and date says fri jan dec 31st. H

Well, I got my replacement Epic yesterday. Went down to Sprint sunday and the official diagnosis was that the phone was "stuck in airplane mode". At first they were thinking that the radio had a bad connection, but they took a look at it and that was not the case. Basically whenever I tried to get the phone off of airplane mode, it would say "searching/connecting/etc" for a few seconds then default back to airplane mode. Weird, huh?

Anyway, at least I got a brand new screen, brand new back cover, and the keyboard is brand new too, right?

 

[MikeMc890]

Re: Phone will not get service and date says fri jan dec 31st. H

Ok this just happened again, brand new epic this time. I havent dropped it or anything. It went to airplane mode and then I couldn't toggle it off. I rebooted the phone and now it works fine.

Would an aftermarket battery cause this problem perhaps? I have an Anker battery I'm using because my stock battery was not holding a good charge anymore. Would the different capacity or maybe voltage cause issues with the radio?

 

[ratsttam]

Re: Phone will not get service and date says fri jan dec 31st. H

Ok this just happened again, brand new epic this time. I havent dropped it or anything. It went to airplane mode and then I couldn't toggle it off. I rebooted the phone and now it works fine.

Would an aftermarket battery cause this problem perhaps? I have an Anker battery I'm using because my stock battery was not holding a good charge anymore. Would the different capacity or maybe voltage cause issues with the radio?

I can see if the voltage is wrong off the battery, but I doubt the modem would be the only component acting up. As far as capacity, I'm running a no-name 3500mah battery in my epic, with no ill effect (my last epic was stock battery when it decided to completely stop working). I would see if your old battery lets the phone work better, and take the aftermarket part out of the equation.

Have you installed any additional software right before it went to airplane mode again?