SN2 - NewB Root Caused Poor Reception

[jcrollman]

At&t Samsung-sgh-I317
I've seen stories relating to this in a couple different places, without any definitive answer.
I rooted my phone, ultimately in hopes of learning enough to remove the bloatware on my phone.
But after rooting it, I noticed right away that may signal strength went way down. This isn't a 'working on tower' thing. It has to do with what I did, which is, use Odin3-v1.85 to flash CF-Auto-Root-t0lteatt-t0lteatt-samsungsghi317.tar.md5.
I'm really looking for someone who knows what is going on. I've seen lots of guesses, and 'try this' type stuff.
If you have any insights, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks!

 

[jeep447]

At&t Samsung-sgh-I317
I've seen stories relating to this in a couple different places, without any definitive answer.
I rooted my phone, ultimately in hopes of learning enough to remove the bloatware on my phone.
But after rooting it, I noticed right away that may signal strength went way down. This isn't a 'working on tower' thing. It has to do with what I did, which is, use Odin3-v1.85 to flash CF-Auto-Root-t0lteatt-t0lteatt-samsungsghi317.tar.md5.
I'm really looking for someone who knows what is going on. I've seen lots of guesses, and 'try this' type stuff.
If you have any insights, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks!

Ok first of all what you're referring to as "guesses" and "try this" is called process of elimination, and most likely it's going to be the only way to determine what's causing your problem. It sounds as if you're looking for a "press this button to fix it" type solution, but you're talking about something that has hundreds of thousands of variables, so that type of solution to your problem is practically impossible. On top of that there have been thousands of SGH-i317 devices found to have hardware issues which cause bad or no reception, so it's possible that your device is simply defective. Just because you didn't notice it happening before you rooted it doesn't mean that rooting it was the absolute 100% cause of the problem. For all you know it could've been a lose wire that came apart over time, and if that was the case for example it wouldn't have mattered whether you rooted it or not because it still would've happened regardless. The point is you'll never "know" what's causing a problem until you narrow it all the way down to only one possible solution, and right now everything is just speculation. The correct way to go about solving the problem imo is to start from scratch by Odin'ing back to complete stock to see if the problem goes away, and if it doesn't at that point I'd look into getting a replacement unit under warranty considering it's a known issue. Hope it helps

 

[jcrollman]

I didn't mean to give the impression I don't appreciate troubleshooting, and the work and ideas put forth by the community here. I actually do root cause analysis for a living, so I understand the complexity involved. But I also believe in not re-inventing the wheel, and given the amount of cases floating around, it seems like this particular issue is repeatable and not a one-off.

From a personal standpoint, I have a full time job and two kids, while trying to close on sale and purchase of a home. As such, I am very much interested in a "Press this button and fix it" type solution. I don't really have to time to futz, (not that I wouldn't like to) so I'm just declaring it up front.

From what I've read, I haven't seen an instance where going back to complete stock fixed the problem. In fact most of the cases end up with the user throwing their hands up in air or returning the phone. But the android community is a resourceful community, so I would place a bet that someone on this forum knows what is going on.

Thank you for your thoughts as well.

 

[jdub1981]

This is this first time I have heard of this particular problem. I have been an AC member since November and though not rooted anymore I never once had the problem you mentioned.

If your chief complaint is remove the bloat I would just force stop the items disable them and then go In and hide them so they are no longer visible. You wont gain much storage space by removing them plus you still deal with the hassles thst come with root.

As far as signal strength goes try downloading the opensignal app. It will show where the att towers are in your area. It will also show you signal strength of each tower and allow you to manually reset and reaquire tower lock.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Tapatalk 4

 

[jeep447]

I didn't mean to give the impression I don't appreciate troubleshooting, and the work and ideas put forth by the community here. I actually do root cause analysis for a living, so I understand the complexity involved. But I also believe in not re-inventing the wheel, and given the amount of cases floating around, it seems like this particular issue is repeatable and not a one-off.

From a personal standpoint, I have a full time job and two kids, while trying to close on sale and purchase of a home. As such, I am very much interested in a "Press this button and fix it" type solution. I don't really have to time to futz, (not that I wouldn't like to) so I'm just declaring it up front.

From what I've read, I haven't seen an instance where going back to complete stock fixed the problem. In fact most of the cases end up with the user throwing their hands up in air or returning the phone. But the android community is a resourceful community, so I would place a bet that someone on this forum knows what is going on.

Thank you for your thoughts as well.

I appreciate your response and I just want to clarify though, I wasn't just trying to be ignorant or come across as overly harsh. It just came across (to me anyway) as if that's the kind of solution you were expecting, but now I understand what you're saying. I've been fixing things for a living for a very long time, and you'd be surprised how many people have completely unrealistic expectations. I totally understand what you're saying about not re-inventing the wheel, because I've seen so many people do exactly that and it almost always winds up getting them so frustrated that they end up giving up. As far as your specific situation goes, I'd be willing to bet the farm and all of the animals with it that you most likely have a hardware issue instead of a software issue. One reason why I believe that could be what's causing your problem, is because there has been literally thousands of SGH-i317 devices that were found to be defective and they all had problems with reception. I also have a friend of mine who had the exact same problem with his phone, and it wound up being defective just like the others so they replaced it for him. I was the one who rooted his phone and like you I spent days researching for possible solutions, but there weren't any to find because it was hardware related. Another "dead give away" imo, is that if the issue was actually caused by rooting the device (which would be a software issue), then returning the phone back to complete stock would essentially "have to" fix the problem. Anything causing a problem which is software related would almost definitely be resolved by going back to stock, because it would be completely be wiped out. I say "almost definitely" because I'm a firm believer that anything is always possible, but it's almost impossible for a software issue to just stick around and survive a completely rewritten partition. The only thing that could happen to make it seem that way, is if the .tar firmware that is flashed to the phone from Odin was corrupt, because then every time it's flashed it would cause the same issues. But in your situation you said that it wasn't having the problem until after you rooted it, so if it was a software issue going back to stock should definitely correct the problem. So if going back to stock doesn't fix the problem, there's a 99.9% chance that the issue is hardware related. That would also explain why so many people have had the same problem without any definitive solution. Anyway that's just my opinion though and I could always be wrong, but considering there have been so many defective devices which had the same problem and especially if restoring back to stock doesn't solve the problem, I'd be surprised if it wasn't hardware related. Hopefully you get it worked out either way though man, and sorry I couldn't be more help!

Sent from a modified ColecoVision