[Epic 4G General] femmegeek:
OTA Radio, OTA Gingerbread Release, or Something Else OTA/Sprint-related?

I've been sick and really out of the XDA/Android news loop for a few months now. Also exhausted from a recent move, I just sat down this morning to do a bit of troubleshooting research when I discovered news of this issue, as I've mainly been trying to figure out why Gmail hasn't been syncing properly on my Epic 4G (among other recent+major device complaints) over the last few weeks.

I happen to be using Build FROYO.EC05 Kernel version 2.6.32.9 Baseband version S: D700.0.55.EC05

on Hardware version D700.0.5 with my SPH-D700 and I'm having similar issues as those other Epic 4G/EVO users that claim started when Sprint pushed Gingerbread OTA late September.

G-mail updates on it's own maybe once a day. I just discovered a couple of days ago that my Samsung-branded USB cable is worthless and no longer supports device recognition for PC push/file transfers NOR charging (whereas before, it was the *only* usb cable that worked properly with my Win7x64 Alienware M11X system, only on USB ports on the right side) and the only cables that actually charge the phone now are an off-brand LG wall charger (which freezes the touchscreen until cable disconnect/reboot, which does the same to a VZW Droid 2) and an AT&T-branded half-sized USB cable plugged into the same USB ports on my laptop (which I got from a friend awhile back who has the AT&T brother to this version of the Galaxy S, the Samsung Captivate).

I know that before the OTA push, I was running a Verizon roaming PRL because I had moved from the Oklahoma City metro and had been staying in a rural outlying area in Northwest Georgia between June up until the end of this September.

For some reason I'm not running the Verizon PRL anymore, though I never got the kernel update...so something had to have updated on my phone even if it didn't get Gingerbread.

Up until now, I figured this change in data service had to do with my recent move (September 30th) a few miles away to the middle of a less-rural town just outside the Atlanta metro. Like I said, being out of the loop, I didn't think this had something to do with anything that happened worldwide one day as a result of a network issue or an OTA update. A couple of days ago when I was discussing biquad wifi antenna hacks with a friend back in Oklahoma City, I tried to upload a couple of photos of my current project to a website (compressed/re-sized for upload) which took me over an hour to complete successfully after multiple failed attempts. He then told me his Sprint data services "sucked as of late" as well, so bad to the point he was looking for a way out of his contract and a new carrier. (That's coming from a Sprint fanboy, who for over a year until I reluctantly switched back over to Sprint again, compared/argued data network transfer rates with me almost every time I saw him at work. He had been a customer somewhere over 9 years back then.) I really only switched carriers myself to begin with a year ago, because I stubbornly wanted the Epic 4G--a Samsung device with a hardware keyboard I felt was the only worthy replacement for my aged G1.)

I've also been using my phone to wifi tether data to my laptop ("Wireless Tether" app - android-wifi-tetherDOTgooglecodeDOTcom - using v. 2.0.7). At first in the new house, my connection sucked but was slightly better than at the other place outside of town (averaging 60-80kbps instead of 20-40kbps). Last weekend, it was amazing in comparison to the usual, and I was getting download speeds averaging 150-200kbps sitting in my living room. Now I'm sitting in the same spot on my couch in the living room, no environmental changes inside with weather slightly cooler outside, same number of bars on 3G service, and it's not even the sub-dialup speeds I got in the bottom of a valley in a heavily wooded area, with the cell tower on the other side of a small mountain.

Yesterday I tried loading a simple page over at HomeDepot.com to look up dimensions for something, and it took me over an hour and countless tries before I just gave up and called them, after it refused to load anything but a single product image. On my phone, the page refused to load entirely. Having the phone plugged in on power or unplugged makes no remarkable difference in terms of network upload/download speeds.

Perhaps it's a bad Sprint radio update?

Still, even if it were a new radio that everyone got instead of Gingerbread causing the Gmail sync and intermittent data problems, this doesn't explain why all-of-the-sudden everyone has device-selective USB charging and file transfer issues with their handsets. Is there something non-device specific but isolated to certain types of Sprint Android smartphones (HTC/Samsung) outside of a radio or an Android kernel/build that would affect both data and adequate power to the USB ports on the devices (since we know that without adequate power, these phones don't like to connect properly to other systems for data read/transfer)?

I don't know. I have developer access and thought of investing a good chunk of time playing with the most recently released Gingerbread source code from Samsung, but with Verizon Epic users lacking similar issues, I really don't think it will make a difference.

(Sorry... couldn't post actual URLs because I'm limited to "newb status" since I'm one of those forum readers that hardly ever finds opportunity to post anything...typically because others have already answered whatever I'm seeking to figure out or offer.)