Patent ID: 8099125

Claim:
A wireless device, comprising: a transceiver configured to transmit and receive communications signals; a processor in communication with said transceiver; a memory in communication with said processor and configured to store a preferred roaming list containing information associated with communications carriers arranged in a predetermined order and a signal strength threshold value indicative of a communications signal being a marginal communications signal by the communications signal being received by said transceiver having a signal strength value below the signal strength threshold value, the marginal communications signal being defined by a quality of service level degrading beyond a threshold level; and a plurality of software modules executed by said processor, including: a signal strength measurement module configured to measure signal strength of a communications signal received by said transceiver; and a signal search module configured to: in response to a manual user request, determine whether the signal strength of a first communications signal of a first communications carrier currently being received by said transceiver is a marginal communications signal; in response to determining that the first communications signal is a marginal communications signal, select a second communications carrier in the preferred roaming list positioned in a first direction from the position in the preferred roaming list of the first communications carrier having a second communications signal with a higher signal strength than the signal strength of the first communications signal; and in further response to determining that the first communications signal is a marginal communications signal, switch said transceiver from receiving the first communications signal to receive the second communications signal from the second communications carrier in response to determining that the first communications signal is a marginal communications signal.