[Nokia Lumia 920] rustybob:
Some quick background information. I had a Rogers Lumia 920 that was used on both Wind and Mobilicity (both AWS HSPA providers in Canada). The phone had multiple digitizer replacements, as well as a housing replacement. After doing a screen replacement, I noticed that I started having signal issues. Eventually, after further inspection of the motherboard, I had bent some of the antenna pins to the point that they were useless. I bought another Rogers Lumia 920, and kept the other one to use as a parts phone.

I happened to come across an AT&T Lumia 920 on Craigslist that said it only needed a battery for $50. It also said that rotation and Glance were not working. The guy threw in a Nokia wireless charger, so it was actually quite a deal at $50. I went and put my battery in the phone before purchasing it, and it did power on, so I took it.

Both the Rogers and AT&T Lumia 920 have the same part number, but only the Rogers one is pentaband. I’ve seen people on XDA theorize that there is some kind of software lock on the AWS HSPA, or that it physically comes with a different transceiver. While this phone was flashed with the Rogers firmware, I highly doubt the elaborate flashing methods others have tried was done o this phone. The phone definitely seemed to act like how I expected an AT&T Lumia 920 to act when I first put in a Mobilicity SIM card.

Since it didn’t come with a box, I have no way of truly confirming this is, in fact, the AT&T Lumia 920. With that said, the ad did say this was an AT&T Lumia 920 that was flashed with the Rogers firmware. The digitizer glass does have the AT&T logo. Also, when I got home and put in my Mobilicity SIM card, a network search only brought up CDN Roaming (Rogers), Bell, and Telus. This suggests to me that AWS HSPA was disabled.

With the battery issue resolved, I set out to fix the rotation and Glance issue. From what I’ve seen, these issues are usually due to dust under the screen around by the proximity sensor. I did notice some dust in the front camera area. While tearing the phone apart, I noticed that some of the antenna pins on the motherboard seemed to be unusually low. Learning my lesson for damaging my last phone, I raised up the pins that seemed to be low.

Before working on the Glance issue, I was connected to CDN Roaming and completed a call without issue. I always had to manually search for the network to connect to it, it would never automatically connect at startup. After I’d attempted to fix the Glance/rotation issue, I started up the phone, and attempted to search for networks, expecting to once again connect to CDN Roaming. It came up with “Search Failed”. I thought I’d screwed up another phone. But about 20 seconds later, the phone showed as being connected to Mobilicity. I completed a call, and data was working, and a run of speed test produced the expected results.

I rebooted the phone, and it didn’t connect to a network immediately. Initially I thought it was a fluke occurrence that it connected. But after it popped up a message that it couldn’t connect to my selected network (Mobilicity), about 10 seconds later, it connected successfully. Calling and data once again worked fine.

I did a hard reset of the phone, since I wanted the phone to load the backup from my other Lumia 920, which can only be done during initial setup. After the hard reset, the phone was immediately connected to the Mobilicity network after booting up. Calling, texting, and data all worked fine. The phone has continued to keep a connection to the Mobilicity network since last night.

What I think gives further credence to being the antenna pins being pushed down being the cause of AWS HSPA being disabled is the signal fluctuation I’m getting. With my other two Lumia 920s, with Mobilicity, when I’m on my couch, I always get 5 bars. The worst I’ll get in my apartment is 4 bars. The signal on this AT&T Lumia 920 is quite sensitive to the way that you hold it. On my couch, 4 bars are what I am getting on average, but it would fluctuate in between 2 and 5 bars. After work, I am going to further lift up the pins that were pushed down, and see if that improved/stabilizes the signal. I suspect that it will.

The rotation/Glance issue I suspect is software-related. My first attempt at a hard reset, when trying to enter my Microsoft account info, it froze. Another reset did allow me to enter my Microsoft account info, but now, the camera doesn’t work, while it did before I did the hard reset (even after getting AWS HSPA working). The flashlight program I use refused to install because it says there’s no camera present. I suspect that the proximity sensor is not being detected due to a software issue. The screen doesn’t turn off when making a call. Glance relies on the proximity sensor as well. Under Settings, Glance says there’s an update available, but going in brings up a blank screen, and no update comes in through the Store. I will be performing a full downgrade to the original software after work, which should fix all the software issues on the phone.

If anyone else wants to try get AWS HSPA working on their phone, the pins on the motherboard that appeared to be pushed down were the ones on the far right, above the WiFi antenna cable, as well as the ones near the top left hand corner or the motherboard. If anyone else has any success with this method, please let us know.