Sprint Vogue PRL Question

[ETPhHm]

My wife and I live out in the rural country but we have had a pair of old Sanyo MM-8300 phones for ever and they do nothing except make calls. We have them set to "roaming mode only" because we are out of the Sprint network at our home. But to the credit of these old phones, they get better phone reception than any CDMA or GSM phone on the market old or new (I have tested plenty of phones with alltel, sprint, verizon, and at&t). Anyway, the PRL (preferred roaming list) is periodically updated by Sprint. We've been told that the PRL tells the phone which cell towers to use (according to agreements with other carriers, traffic on the tower, and other conditions).

Well, we just recently bought two new phones, Sprint Vogues for 19.95 each (yes older than the some of the newer stuff out there, but the price was hard to say no to). However, when I am sitting in my basement office, the new HTC Vogues get 0 to 1 bars in signal strength, while the Sanyos boast 4 to 5 bars almost always. Using the *2 feature, i noticed the provider service that the Sanyos are locking onto is the US Cellular tower about 3 miles south of me (the PRL in the Sanyos has not been updated for about 2 years). The new Vogues (and other newer phones I have tried in my home) are locking onto an Alltel tower about 8 miles northwest of me.

My question is this: Is there any way for me to customize my own PRL for the Vogues so that I can get them to pick up on the closer US Cellular tower? I tried the possibility of taking the Vogue to a Sprint store and having them back date the PRL to the oldest one they had on file but that did not help so I had them put a later one back into the phone.

Thanks for any help anyone can offer to point me in the right direction.

[hooover]

I'm thinking this may be a issue of 3g vs. EVDO/1x...The older phones are probably on the Sprint 3g network where the newer phones are on the EVDO/1x network for better Internet speeds and download strength I could be totally wrong on this though...So i leave it to a expert to clue you in while I keep a eye out to gather info as well.

[la66209]

Ants' reply is on the right track.

The Sanyo MM-8300 has a tri-band radio which includes an AMPS mode and two CDMA bands, whereas the Touch only has the two CDMA bands. It is very likely that your good service in a rural area is a result of the AMPS connection. You may be able to confirm that by entering the Sanyo's field test mode (##33284# or ##debug#).

There's no practical way to get the Touch to handle AMPS signaling (although if you're determined, you might consider writing a software defined radio or grafting an AMPS chip into the device and then rewriting the supporting device software to recognize it) and hacking the PRL (generally distributed in binary) is time consuming and unlikely to reward you with the signal you desire. For several hundred hours of work, you might have something that would work specifically on these now aging handsets.

For a long term general solution that will work with your Touch or any other CDMA handset, I'd consider getting a Sprint Airave femtocell, a device about the size of a wi-fi router that essentially gives you your own Sprint cell tower. They're inexpensive (about $100) and from my experience they work very well. So well, in fact, that you may want to give up your land line if you haven't done so already.

[ETPhHm]

I was about ready to take the phone back, but I received some expert help from some folks over at PPCHaven.com and loaded the same PRL that I had on my Sanyo phone into the Vogue phone and Wow! Now the Vogue is getting 3-4 bars consistently and sometimes 5 bars in the basement of my rural home.

I would have never thought this could be done but it works great. There is one draw-back but is easily overcome. Because the Sanyo was based on 1X technology, I can not get EVDO on the Touch phone unless I flash the latest HTC PRL back into the phone and soft reset it. But since I work out of the home and don't need EVDO unless I'm out and about, I keep it on the Sanyo PRL. It takes me literally about 3 minutes to flash back and forth between the HTC and Sprint PRLs. I have both stored on the phone.

A while back I did consider the Sprint Airwave device which requires broadband internet and uses a significant amount of bandwidth. The other and more expensive option that I have been toying with is to install a repeater antennae system at a cost of about 300 to 700 dollars depending on how deluxe I care to go. But at this point, no need and I am one happy Vogue owner.

[hooover]

Well make this available instead of braggin my friend!!!LOL>>>>

[ETPhHm]

Originally Posted by hooover

Well make this available instead of braggin my friend!!!LOL>>>>

Hey no problem, er uh... make what available, the Sanyo PRL? Are you sure thats what you want? I would caution that it does wonders for me in this area where I live, but may not perform as well in another area. Plus it disables EVDO when you install it. If that is what you want, just let me know

[hooover]

yeah nevermind I just realized what i was asking for...No doubt I can't use that...