[Lleni]

Hello, I've recently had a big issue with my Vivid. Yesterday I was texting and calling with it perfectly well, but out of nowhere I lost service and haven't been able to gain even a single bar back. I rebooted it several times, and even did a hard reset, which I was reluctant to do considering I lost everything on it. I still have no service, and I even emailed my service provider to see if my area was having any service issues and they said not only was my area fine but my account with them was fine as well, so I haven't ran out of service time. My only other explanation is maybe the antenna in the phone was knocked out of place. I've also heard that Vivid's sometimes have service problems because of it's metal back but I don't know the details of that claim. I'm going to have the insides looked at today to see if anything in there at all could be causing this, but in case the guy I know says it looks fine inside, what else can I do to fix this? Any help is appreciated. I've had this phone for going on 3 years now and I don't want to lose it before I've been able to get a new one

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Are you able to bring your phone into an actual store for your wireless provider, or are they only available for support over the web or on the phone? It would be best for you to show someone in person what's going on.

[Lleni]

My service provider is Straight Talk, so the only people I can talk to in person are the Walmart employees. I doubt they will know anything about the problem because they aren't exactly trained to understand the hardware of 3 year old phones, as some of the employees haven't even been working there very long. They are basically there to just sell phones and plans and sometimes make phone calls to Straight Talk if necessary. I used to be with AT&T but all of the employees working there are young kids, and never have they been able to help me when I've brought my phone in with a problem. They didn't even know how to change the APN settings. Since this is an AT&T phone, they should be able to help but they can't. I do, however, know a guy that has a business that fixes all types of phones and has looked at mine on a couple of occasions and even fixed an antenna issue I was having.

Update: I looked under "About phone" and under Phone identity, I saw that IMEI was unknown. What does this mean? I also saw that I didn't receive a no sim error message after taking the sim out. There's another thread that has the exact problem that I am having now, and I read the whole thread and never found a solution. So I'm thinking my phone is basically screwed.