Samsung will not go from cell tower to cell tower

[Android Central Question]

Samsung Galaxy S20FE /SM-G781U. Service is att. In may the phone started to not connect to next cell tower. The att store says it's ATT fault. They said to turn on airplane mode on then off. That works but you have to keep doing it that's nuts. I have ATT and never had to do this. Is there a setting that needs to be changed. Wife has been missing important call from hospital due to brother having a stroke. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[joeldf]

That's bizarre. The very nature of the cell phone is to bounce from signal to signal no matter where you are or how you are moving. There's nothing to "set"... it's automatic and been that way since the '80s.

I too have an S20 FE on AT&T and never experienced that. I have a cell tower app that shows the towers it connects to, and there are several that my phone just picks and chooses from as I move, or even just turn a different direction. Just driving a mile down the road and my phone bounces between 4 to 5 different towers. The app is just informational.

Is this something that just recently started happening? Have you had this phone for a while, or is it brand new?

Something else to try is actually rebooting the phone. If you haven't already tried that. That is, turn it off, and then back on. Hold the side lock button down until the 3 options show up. Select "Power off", then confirm it by tapping it again. After it goes off, wait for about half a minute, then press and hold that side lock button until the screen lights up and the phone does that quick vibrate buzz and wait for it to fully come back up. You might have to input the PIN if one is set, otherwise it'll eventually go to the homescreen. Then check if it stays connected between towers. If not, the radio chip may just be defective.

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[smvim]

Samsung Galaxy S20FE /SM-G781U. Service is att. In may the phone started to not connect to next cell tower. The att store says it's ATT fault. ....

It's odd that AT&T claims it is at fault but is not going to address this problem itself. If this is the case, is there another AT&T store in the area or is this the only one within a reasonable distance? It might be better to try consulting a different store, or at least the manager of this one. Just guessing but it seems like an issue where you were talking to an untrained staff person.

Anyway, getting back to your query more directly. Yeah, toggling Airplane mode on and off is just a temporary stop-gap measure, not an actual solution to whatever is the problem. Just some suggestions:
-- (This almost goes without saying but just in case, you have tried just restarting your phone. Yes? That alone solves a lot of one-off glitches.)
-- Try re-seating the SIM card. Not a real common problem but just in case something happened so the little metal contacts on the card are matching up properly with the little metal contacts in the card slot.
-- You might want to manually create a new APN entry. Typically when you insert a new SIM card a new APN entry gets automatically created with the necessary settings, but occasionally that doesn't work out. So use AT&T's recommended settings from its site to create a new APN entry and see if that works out better:
https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...rt/article/wireless/KM1062162/&token=rmubCd94
Be sure to use the exact same spelling and punctuation (i.e. don't add spaces between commas on your own), and when you're done, select your newly created APN entry and restart your phone. The restart is just so this APN gets loaded into memory as it doesn't always just happen on-the-fly when you select one or the other.
-- This is more of a drastic measure but if you open up your Settings menu, do a search for 'Network settings reset'. This function will clear all your network related settings so try this when nothing else is working out. Things like all saved WiFi entries and Bluetooth pairings will be wiped, and in this instance cellular connectivity returned to 'clean' defaults.

 

[B. Diddy]

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[mustang7757]

Can also try resetting network
Go to settings>general management>reset>reset network