questions about gs3 problems

[wvdroidman]

1: I went to a baseball game and my friend who went with my had a Samsung stratosphere and I have my galaxy s3. Ok so I take a picture and try to send it and it fails and shows I only have 1 bar of 4g service. Can't access facebook or anything but text. My friend was sending pictures and checking email and everything. His phone had full bars 3g.
Why would I have this problem and how can it be resolved?
2: Also I am having problems with battery life. I downloaded gsam and it shows
kernel at 12.2%
google service at 8.9 %
Facebook at 6.2%
Android system at 5.6%
Messaging at 2.1%
a few others too.
How can I fix this?

FYI I bought this 3 weeks ago

 

[wcjeep]

Not all cell towers are created equal. It could be local 4g cell tower issue. Had you forced the phone to 3g it probably would have worked. Did the phone work ok later when you moved to a new location? If the GS3 is on Verizon you need a separate app to force 3g. Sprint GS3 has an easy to find toggle to force 3g.

 

[wvdroidman]

yes it works fine on 3 g at home. Haven't really thought about it until I tried to send a picture and it wouldn't send while my friend sitting right next to me was sending pictures with no problems.
I tried restarting it 4 times still no luck. I am on Verizon but would only having 25% battery left cause the problem or would the problem cause my battery to drain super quick?

 

[wcjeep]

Battery level should not have affected the ability to send. Unless, you have a custom setting. All towers are different. I've seen cell towers with great speed. Some towers are terrible with Vpn encryption. Other towers have great signal, poor data. Others have poor signal/great data. To many variables to comment on battery power.

 

[legalkill]

The signal issues could also be the cause of the battery issue. If your signal is weak and keeps dropping between 3g and 4g then the constant search for 4g signal with the lte antenna drains battery quickly. I can always tell when i drop 4g for longer periods because my pocket gets warm.

One of the apps wcjeep mentioned for turning off 4g on verizon is called "phone Info" (which is apparently not the one in the play store).

 

[wcjeep]

I was on my phone earlier. The app is no longer easy to find. The original version of the app was deleted. They are now free or pay. I did find an apk of the app on XDA Developers. I have not verified the posted apk. To force 3G, look for CDMA (auto prl). The app worked differently in Android 4.0.4. To get LTE back in JB, look for LTE/CDMA. Might also have to look for Network settings on the phone. Then select LTE. Previously only one setting change required to restart LTE. I'm still using the old deleted version.



https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tw.myc.android.PhoneInfoV2Ad&hl=en


XDA thread
Where to find Phone Info (sc@taiwan) ? Gone from market - Page 2 - xda-developers


apk shortcut
http://forum.xda-developers.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1605079&d=1356927496