To start off with, given the restrictions imposed by Verizon and or Samsung you can't access dialer commands showing network engineering, so the only app I know of that gives you some info without root is 'LTE Discovery' on the playstore. I wouldn't recommend using it regularily, just for the purpose of seeing what band your phone is on.
First off, when you make or recieve a phone call you might notice your signal strength bars change-this is because they're now displaying 1x signal strength (Because VZW for the Note 3 anyway sends voice and SMS over 1x.) When not on a phone call, it is displaying DATA signal strength whether it be 3g or 4g.
You might wonder but...but..my wifes Galaxy S3 gives five bars of LTE in my house whereas I only get 2 bars. What's probably happening is your phone is connected to Band 4 (XLTE, 2100MHZ and VERY poor at penetrating buildings.) You might notice that if you put the phone in your pocket, back facing your leg, and pull it out shortly thereafter all of a sudden you have a much higher signal strength! What probably happened is Band 4 became too weak, so the phone has switched back to Band 13-700mhz and much better at penetrating buildings.
Currently, for non-rooted phones the only way to see what band your connected to is with this app 'LTE Discovery.' It will show what band your connected to, along with 1x signal strength. Pretty nifty. I started researching this when I was getting 2 bars of LTE on the second floor of my home and 5 downstairs. Care to guess why? I'm very close to a tower otherwise it probably wouldn't have been able to connect to XLTE at all-but you guessed it, upstairs it was on band 4 hovering around -105DB and downstairs band 13 with -89 db signal strength.
The most marked change I've seen between NJ6 and NK1 is that the threshold where it switches from XLTE and band 13 is much higher. It will stick with a weaker signal on band 4 before falling back. This is probably a deliberate move as the band 13 700mhz has become overburdened (depending on region) and they're trying to take some off the load off-at the cost of increased latency to the end user and arguably slightly impacted battery life as it has to work harder to maintain the weak XLTE signal.
Hope this helps explain some of your signal variances
This forum has given me so much, so I wanted to take the time to give back and explain some of this.
For those of you completely dropping calls, or getting no voice service, this is probably unrelated to LTE. This is more likely a tower issue or a phone issue.
First off, when you make or recieve a phone call you might notice your signal strength bars change-this is because they're now displaying 1x signal strength (Because VZW for the Note 3 anyway sends voice and SMS over 1x.) When not on a phone call, it is displaying DATA signal strength whether it be 3g or 4g.
You might wonder but...but..my wifes Galaxy S3 gives five bars of LTE in my house whereas I only get 2 bars. What's probably happening is your phone is connected to Band 4 (XLTE, 2100MHZ and VERY poor at penetrating buildings.) You might notice that if you put the phone in your pocket, back facing your leg, and pull it out shortly thereafter all of a sudden you have a much higher signal strength! What probably happened is Band 4 became too weak, so the phone has switched back to Band 13-700mhz and much better at penetrating buildings.
Currently, for non-rooted phones the only way to see what band your connected to is with this app 'LTE Discovery.' It will show what band your connected to, along with 1x signal strength. Pretty nifty. I started researching this when I was getting 2 bars of LTE on the second floor of my home and 5 downstairs. Care to guess why? I'm very close to a tower otherwise it probably wouldn't have been able to connect to XLTE at all-but you guessed it, upstairs it was on band 4 hovering around -105DB and downstairs band 13 with -89 db signal strength.
The most marked change I've seen between NJ6 and NK1 is that the threshold where it switches from XLTE and band 13 is much higher. It will stick with a weaker signal on band 4 before falling back. This is probably a deliberate move as the band 13 700mhz has become overburdened (depending on region) and they're trying to take some off the load off-at the cost of increased latency to the end user and arguably slightly impacted battery life as it has to work harder to maintain the weak XLTE signal.
Hope this helps explain some of your signal variances
This forum has given me so much, so I wanted to take the time to give back and explain some of this.For those of you completely dropping calls, or getting no voice service, this is probably unrelated to LTE. This is more likely a tower issue or a phone issue.
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