I've been particular to the US Cellular radio after the first time flashing I would get a GPS lock in my basement, with no direct line of sight to any window, in about three seconds. It also runs cooler than the early Sprint radios and rivals the Telus radios in signal quality. I also noticed that with the Sprint radios (barring the 1.11.00F because I don't recall), you are only able to obtain a maximum of 8 satellites maximum, while with others you can obtain the max of 10 on the device.
Now I'm going to try the 1.12.31F from Cellular South and see what I can do. Note I just got a new (refurb, but still manufactured in Feb) Sprint TP yesterday so I'm tinkering.
And if anyone wants to know what SMV is, it stands for Selectable Mode Vocoder, and it is a newer voice codec than EVRC, which is what carriers use currently. It isn't as new as the 4GV standard EVRC-B or EVRC-WB, but it has noticeably better call quality than EVRC while being more bandwidth efficient. EVRC-B is even more bandwidth efficient with higher call quality than EVRC, but in most opinions isn't as good as SMV. EVRC-WB (WB stands for WideBand) is the sister codec to EVRC-B and is a 4GV standard, but I haven't tested it much and the only way to enable it is through QPST. I haven't had much luck with the TP and EVRC-WB and Qualcomm won't say exactly what MSM chipsets support it. Let's just say I need to test EVRC-WB more to say it is useable. If it is, then it would be the preferrable vocoder to use.
To enable SMV, you need to punch in ##PST#, select edit, put in your MSL, and select CDMA settings under the "View info" menu. Set
EVRC Enabled to "Disable," set
Home Page to "SMV," and set
Home Orig to "SMV." Roam Orig is optional and you can use EVRC or SMV, but to avoid any problems when roaming, I'd advise keeping it set to Voice 13K.