Multiple Issues

[egpowers]

Bought my S6 middle of May. Having two major issues.

First, at my home, I'm surrounded by 4G towers, yet my signal constantly jumps from 4G 1 bar, to 3G 1 bar, to 1X full bars. This is continual, indoors and out, some hours of the day are worse than others. Multiple calls to Verizon and trouble tickets opened, no solutions yet, any thoughts?

2nd problem, just popped up today, when making a phone call, I cannot access data activity. My dad called and asked me to search out something for him, since I was on my headset I tried to search, phone was in 1x, as soon as a I hung up, phone went into 4G mode. 40 minutes on the phone with Verizon, no resolution. Thoughts?

 

[StormyHeather]

Can't help with the first issue but for the second issue you need to activate the Advanced Calling under Settings. I noticed the same thing after I got my S6 and I tried to use my GPS and make a phone call at the same time. I was afraid I was going to have to return my new S6! The Advanced Calling allows you to use data and voice at the same time. There is no additional charge for this service. Personally I think the VZW person should advise you of this feature and advise you of the need to activate it when they are helping you with the phone setup.

Good luck!

 

[FoxKat]

The first issue has been noted. I would suggest as a first attempt to resolve this, that you try to boot your phone in safe mode first:

1. Turn the device off.
2. Press and hold the Power key.
3. When ‘Samsung Galaxy S5′ appears on the screen, release the Power key.
4. Immediately after releasing the Power key, press and hold the Volume down key.
5. Continue to hold the Volume down key until the device finishes restarting.
6. Safe mode will display in the bottom left corner of the screen.
7. Release the Volume down key when you see Safe Mode.

Now that you're in Safe Mode, observe and see if the network switching issues continue. If they don't, then it's a software conflict of some kind with a user-installed app. Then you'll need to do a process of elimination to identify what app or combination of apps is causing it. The faster way to be 100% sure you've gotten the offending app out of the way is to do a Factory Reset, but that means backing up all personal data, photos, videos, call logs, MMS/SMS, before you do. There are lots of great apps in order to accomplish this, but my favorites for the call logs and SMS/MMS are two written by Ritesh Sahu, Call Logs Backup Restore - Android Apps on Google Play and SMS Backup Restore Pro - Android Apps on Google Play

Those two apps have NEVER failed and I've been using them for years now. They both also support backup to the cloud, such as Google Drive and DropBox, for example, with plugins to do so.

One other possible solution is to go into phone "settings", "mobile networks", "preferred network type" and change from GSM/LTE/CDMA to LTE/CDMA. This may reduce or eliminate the problem. This fix has worked for S4/S5 and other phones, both Samsung and other manufacturers'.

Edit; Looks like your phone may not allow LTE & CDMA without GSM... (source; Choosing network mode for my mobile phone - Samsung Galaxy S6... - note, this is from an Australian site so it may be that you can still do so with phones here in US).

Other than that, I'd say it could be hardware issues and they should then replace the phone if you've done what I describe above and it still does this network switching without any apparent reason.