[Android General] ronbo76:
T-Mobile advice on getting a 3G signal

I thought about this all day and if I was stuck in your position here is what I would do:

1. Go into recovery (Volume Up held first and then a simultaneous depress of the Power Button) and backup your phone to an SD card.

2. Power down the phone and remove the battery, SIM and SD cards.

3. Replace the battery only and boot into recovery.

4. Navigate to the wipe cache settings with the volume buttons on the main recovery page and perform them by pushing the power button.

5. Navigate to the advanced settings and perform the cache wipe on that page.

6. Remove the battery.

7. Boot into recovery and do a factory reset. Be patient and let the screen come to a complete stop.

8. When it's done, remove the battery.

9. Replace the battery and boot normal for three minutes without any SIM or SD cards present; watch boot to see if SIM card not found message is displayed - could be indication of your past problem.

10. Shut down the phone and remove the battery.

11. Replace the SIM card and SD cards along with the battery last.

12. Power on the phone with the caveat below:

CAVEAT

Your main objective is to get a 3G T-Mobile signal now. If I were you, I would only power on my phone either near a cell tower or in a highly populated area like a shopping mall where I know I will get a great signal. With no SIM card in your phone, you could power it on now to be sure your SIM slots are being found. If not, then you're going to have to rewrite them and I am not the Sheriff for that stuff. HINT: If you know where a cell shop that retails T-Mobile, that would be where I would boot after going through all those steps. As an aside, I live right on the overlap cusp of two cell towers. Although one is slightly closer to the northeast, it is obscured by buildings and I get my signal from the tower to the southwest which is next to a police tower.

12. Wait for the phone to boot completely and see if it finds a T-Mobile signal.

Don't know how much you know about T-Mobile but if you read Wikipedia's article the gist of my knowledge is pretty much summed up there: up to till this year, much of T-Mobile's service is provided by other cell networks and in particular AT&T. I have always set roaming OFF as T-Mobile has a standard agreement with the other carriers to get free coverage for its phones. Bottom line is you should be able to get T-Mobile 3G service.

13. In less than two minutes, you should see that your phone has T-Mobile 3G service IF YOU PLACED AN AUTHORIZED T-MOBILE SIM CARD IN THE RIGHTMOST SIM SLOT AS YOU LOOK AT THE OPEN BACK OF THE PHONE. Supposedly, there are some sellers on ebay who selling T-Mobile comparible SIM cards but the cards are not fully capable.

If you don't get an automatic T-Mobile 3G signal and are outside a T-Mobile retailer, you could walk in and see if a sales person would be willing to help you. I used to do some P.I. work for a friend and once had to make contact with a guy who worked in a cell phone shop. I purposedly messed up my phone and basically did what I suggest here. He was very helpful and I felt bad having to be in court against him.

Your next option if you have to rewrite the SIM slots is to flash your phone. If it were me, I would look for the June 5 ROM and flash it with angelobizupdate2's zipfile followed by repartition fix. Do a search for XPFlash in this thread and you might find some of that stuff quicker.

In another forum, someone had problems with their SIM slots not being recognized either. He said that he kept removing the SIM card; rebooting without it; then replacing it and rebooting until it came back with no IMEI rewrite necessary. In essence, his procedure is somewhat similar to what I recommended about removing the battery. Johnny calls this a "power cycling" of the phone's system which some users on unclemobile claim is necessary whenever the phone is flashed or rooted. I know that with my XP laptop that if I am having problems with its system, I "force cycle" it by removing the battery while it is running after closing all applications.

Your mission should you decide to accept it is the non-negotiable right to get T-Mobile service and worship at the altar of Valeska Castillo. This tape will self-destruct in 10 seconds. Good luck, Mr. Phelps.