[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stimoceiver:
[Q] changing engineermode "band mode" settings on S7589 + request S7589 factory rom

I recently picked up a Star Kingelon S7589 from an ebay vendor. This is actually the 2nd one, the first one I had to return due to a hardware failure.

My problem: I'm in Chicago where I had no problem getting UMTS/HSPA speeds on the replacement phone with AT&T as my carrier. But AT&T's pricing is a major burn. So I switched to T-mobile.

But the replacement phone had its own problems. The stock factory rom had problems with the face camera. So I requested an updated rom from the vendor - idiot vendors gave me the rom for an entirely different phone! (an unrelated ZOPO model as it happens. Gave me a nice black screen at bootup while playing what I can only describe as Chinese Video Game Music. GRRR!). So I had to mess around with trying various roms from needrom and other sources. Managed to find a relatively recent rom that flashes using the SP_Flash_Tool at boot time, but I've been unable to sideload any of the mods via adb in recovery mode, though I can get adb working for app installation and shell commands when the phone is fully booted.

Now having switched to T-mobile I find I can only get about 2.5G speeds. I inquire in a few places and learn they only use 2100/1700 WCDMA-AWS for HSPA+ in the Chicago area.

Upon going into "engineer mode"->BandMode,

I find all four GSM modes ticked. But under UMTS modes the only ones selected are WCDMA-IMT-2000, WCDMA-CLR-850 and WCDMA-800.

The rest, which includes WCDMA-PCS-1900, WCDMA-DCS-1800, and the mode I believe I need to use T-mobile, WCDMA-AWS-1700, are greyed out, in addition to a few others.

So next I explored the Android Testing Mode, and selected the option to "Change Radio Band."

On my list I have "Automatic", "EURO Band", "JAPAN Band", "AUS Band", and "AUS2 Band".

No USA Band.

So my questions are:

* On "Change Radio Band," does the lack of a "USA Band" choice there reflect a limitation of the baseband hardware? Or could this have changed when I flashed the phone? (I only learned about EngineerMode and Test Mode after flashing.)

* Are there any ways to un-grey the greyed-out UMTS modes in EngineerMode, especially WCDMA-AWS-1700?

* Is there a utility to query the phones baseband functionality and display the actual capabilities of the phone, as opposed to relying on data displayed in "engineermode" and "change radio band"?

* Finally, on the main EngineerMode menu, beneath BandMode is a greyed out option "BSPTelephonyDevTool". Any info on what this is? Even if its not relevant to my problem I'm still curious.

For what its worth, post-flashing a new rom from needroms:

The face-facing camera DOES work. However:

* the default language is now Chinese. It was easy enough for me to navigate to the appropriate menu to change it to English. But I don't know Chinese. Phone is encrypted and about half the time after a reboot the boot-time password prompt to unencrypt the phone is in Chinese.

* the phone as it currently stands reports its baseband as MOLY.WR8.W1248.MD.WG.MP.V6.P4, 2013/04/12. (I dont expect that would have changed from flashing.)

* Phone perhaps incorrectly reports its model number as GT-N7102. I say perhaps incorrectly because GT-N7102 roms do not work on this phone. (Im not quite sure what was in this field before flashing, but I seem to recall it was something like S7589.)

* Build number is Star7589-2013/04/20 by laoxu321 .

If anyone has an english language factory ROM image for this phone I'd be grateful.

Also, at this point if I can't turn on WCDMA-AWS-1700, I'll probably offer the phone for sale.

Best,

stimoceiver