Simple Airave signal fix?

[grappler]

My financée and I have terrible coverage in our house with our new Pres--mine is significantly worse than what I got with my old Treo 650--so Sprint sent me an Airave for $25 with 2 years of free service.

The problem is that the Airave made things even worse--dropped calls constantly.

I spent a lot of hours on the phone with Sprint tech support to no avail. I changed the QoS on my router to give the Airave priority. Still no dice.

Anyway, I happened to see in another PreCentral thread the other day that you can use the ##EVDO# hash code to force the Pre to use a certain wireless standard. I live at the edge of decent EVDO coverage, and I figured the Pre was trying to grab that and trying to ignore the 1x Airave signal. After selecting 1x from the drop-down list, I haven't had a problem since.

I keep WiFi on at home so 1x data transfers won't send callers to voicemail.

Why wouldn't Sprint have suggested this first? Do they not want people messing with the hash codes? Seems like an easy and obvious fix for people in my situation.

[boxboy]

Does this hack require rooting?

[midmofan]

Originally Posted by boxboy

Does this hack require rooting?

Not really a hack. You just go to the dialpad and type in ##EVDO# and it goes to a screen where you have some options. Certain of the options can disable getting data from sprint network but wifi still works.

[i700plus]

The only problem is this forces your Pre into 1x only mode. You have to remember to change this back every time you leave your house and go into a non-wifi area otherwise you will not have any data or at most a VERY slow connection.

I also have a sprint airrave and ended up just disconnecting it, I got it when I first got the Blackberry Tour a couple weeks ago and had problems with dropped calls with the tour so I switched to the Pre. We'll i no longer have dropped calls anywhere else but home.. The airrave will kick the other user off the line, even if i have 5 bars and all they end up hearing is echoing on the line. I also have set up QOS on my router and have a very good connection otherwise.

[mattickus]

My airaveworked great for about 5 days then all of a sudden it no longer works. It hasn't worked now for 3 weeks and I have been working with the engineers in Orlando since then and still not working. I will try this evdo trick when I get home and see if it works for me. We also have a BB Curve that isn't picking up the airave, does anyone know how to change the BB to 1x only?

[grappler]

Correct, but I prefer that to the previous crazy situation. I now get crystal-clear, drop-free calls from everywhere is the house, and wifi suits my data needs just fine.

Originally Posted by i700plus

The only problem is this forces your Pre into 1x only mode. You have to remember to change this back every time you leave your house and go into a non-wifi area otherwise you will not have any data or at most a VERY slow connection.

[bigfire]

Originally Posted by midmofan

Not really a hack. You just go to the dialpad and type in ##EVDO# and it goes to a screen where you have some options. Certain of the options can disable getting data from sprint network but wifi still works.

Is there an explanation somewhere of how each of the options work? I am seeing different levels of signals and blinking of the 'EV' icon, and want to make sure I'm optimizing mine for the location I'm in.

[midmofan]

Originally Posted by bigfire

Is there an explanation somewhere of how each of the options work? I am seeing different levels of signals and blinking of the 'EV' icon, and want to make sure I'm optimizing mine for the location I'm in.

I have not seen a full description of each option all in one place (would be a great addition to the tips PDF) but there was some discussion in a threqd a while back on some of the options. Search for ##EVDO# and see if that pulls up thd thread.

[bigfire]

Search doesn't recognize ## as characters so it brought everything up with EVDO. Not very committed to sorting through 500 some posts for the one that has ## in it.....lol

[JackG058]

Originally Posted by midmofan

I have not seen a full description of each option all in one place (would be a great addition to the tips PDF) but there was some discussion in a threqd a while back on some of the options. Search for ##EVDO# and see if that pulls up thd thread.

I can tell you that if you choose EVDO only, you will force it into data only, and not be able to make or receive phone calls. 1xRTT is the slower network which seems to be easier on the battery (akin to Edge vs. 3G on AT&T/iPhone). Hybrid A, the default, will find the best connection available, whether EVDO or 1xRTT.