Pro1x - really poor connectivity to both wifi and cellular.

[Casey 321]

On 11/7/2023 at 12:44 PM, Vitamin C Plus Plus said:

I'm having a problem when making calls on my Pro-1X.  During a call, my voice cuts off sporadically.  I can hear the other person just fine, however.  This happens even when I have full service strength, and the problem tends to get worse as the call goes on.

Phone Info

• O.S.: Android 11 (reinstalled after I had trouble with Lineage, if that makes any difference)
• Country: United States
• Service Provider: Consumer Cellular

What I've Tried

I can use the S.I.M. card in my old phone without issue.

I've double checked my A.P.N. settings.

I've used the voice recorder app to test the mic.  It works exactly as it should

I've tested it with some of my friends' S.I.M. cards with the following results:

• AT&T: Exact same problem.  My voice would cut out, but I could hear the person on the other end.  The S.I.M. card's owner had her data turned off by AT&T later, with them claiming the phone wasn't compatible with their network.  Apparently their system thought it was a 3G device.
• Google Fi: The person on the other end of the line couldn't hear me at all.  I could hear them perfectly well, however.
• T-Mobile: Same as Google Fi.  Interestingly, if I pressed any numbers on the dial pad, the person on the other end of the line could hear the dial tone.

 

Does anyone know what's going on with my phone?  Any advice or insight would be greatly appreciated.

I think @Hook previously had this problem before and found a work around. During the call, try to on/off speaker and see if your voice returns to normal.

[claude0001 1,339]

So, it appears that I was able to repair my Pro1-X's radios.

Previously, telephony and mobile data wouldn't work for me, as documented earlier in this thread. WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS had always worked perfectly.

It turned out that my Pro1X was missing most of its "antenna" connector springs. My main antenna (aka. USB) board was missing two of its three connectors, and the last one broke off while I was diagnosing the problem. See picture attached.

It appears these things are really fragile.  Also my "diversity" antenna board was missing one connector, which I found rattling in a different place of the device.

So, if you have mobile connectivity issues, carefully open your Pro1X and check whether your "main" and "diversity" antenna boards look exactly like the pictures posted by @Casey here:

Long story short, I ordered both, a "main" and a "diversity" antenna board from F(x)tec. The USB/main antenna board is very easy to replace. Replacement of the diversity module requires soldering work that scared me off. So I rather re-glued the broken connector spring in place and keep the spare part ready for future repairs.

In result, the Pro1X now performs similarly to my Pro1 when it comes to mobile network connectivity.

[raymo 177]

unbelievable ! you did it ! Fxtec lack engineers like you.

If my pro1x ever comes one day....

...but however thank you ! 🙂

[Rob. S. 1,660]

3 hours ago, raymo said:

unbelievable ! you did it ! Fxtec lack engineers like you.

If my pro1x ever comes one day....

...but however thank you ! 🙂

@claude0001 👍 Fully agree!

[foxfreejack 60]

On 11/8/2023 at 4:44 PM, claude0001 said:

So, it appears that I was able to repair my Pro1-X's radios.

Previously, telephony and mobile data wouldn't work for me, as documented earlier in this thread. WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS had always worked perfectly.

It turned out that my Pro1X was missing most of its "antenna" connector springs. My main antenna (aka. USB) board was missing two of its three connectors, and the last one broke off while I was diagnosing the problem. See picture attached.

It appears these things are really fragile.  Also my "diversity" antenna board was missing one connector, which I found rattling in a different place of the device.

So, if you have mobile connectivity issues, carefully open your Pro1X and check whether your "main" and "diversity" antenna boards look exactly like the pictures posted by @Casey here:

Long story short, I ordered both, a "main" and a "diversity" antenna board from F(x)tec. The USB/main antenna board is very easy to replace. Replacement of the diversity module requires soldering work that scared me off. So I rather re-glued the broken connector spring in place and keep the spare part ready for future repairs.

In result, the Pro1X now performs similarly to my Pro1 when it comes to mobile network connectivity.

Wow... I suspected something like this.

I'm not sure why there's glue for those contacts on the board, but they should be soldered as well.

To me this means soldering wasn't great (or non existent!) to begin with and will induce all sorts of noise for cellular and wifi signal inside the phone to begin with. This will definitely cause all sort of connectivity issues and explains why some was never able to use it properly with their provider or wifi and others could.

[EskeRahn 5,459]

On 11/8/2023 at 10:44 PM, claude0001 said:

It turned out that my Pro1X was missing most of its "antenna" connector springs. My main antenna (aka. USB) board was missing two of its three connectors, and the last one broke off while I was diagnosing the problem. See picture attached.
.
.

In result, the Pro1X now performs similarly to my Pro1 when it comes to mobile network connectivity.

This sounds like a very important find. I marked your post as recommended, and would love to hear some official comment on this. @Casey perhaps?

At the least that could explain why some sees this issue and some not, as it thus seems to be related to specimens, and errors in assembly (and QC).

[claude0001 1,339]

2 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

At the least that could explain why some sees this issue and some not, as it thus seems to be related to specimens, and errors in assembly (and QC).

Let's not jump to conclusions prematurely. I had opened the Pro1-X multiple times, so I cannot exclude that I broke these contacts off myself. One I definitely did, as noted above. That's also the reason why I did not try to make a warranty claim out of this.

Then again, two of the connectors seem to really have disappeared, so maybe they were missing from the start indeed. For sure the Pro1-X had its connection issues since the first time I put a SIM in it.

Lets see if others affected by the issue find the courage to open their devices, and discover similar problems.

12 hours ago, foxfreejack said:

I'm not sure why there's glue for those contacts on the board, but they should be soldered as well.

To me this means soldering wasn't great (or non existent!) to begin with and will induce all sorts of noise for cellular and wifi signal inside the phone to begin with.

Indeed, the contact springs are glued to the board. I cannot see any solder on my broken one.

I am no expert on RF signals. But I can imagine that, at the high frequencies involved, the capacitive reactance of the contact will always be very small, even if the ohmic resistance is non-zero. After all, the actual antenna is the metal body of the phone. And that is also not soldered to the circuitry, but just pressure-contacted by those springs ...   

[EskeRahn 5,459]

You are right we should not jump to the conclusion but it certinly sounds like a reasonable explanation why it is working for some and not for others.

And on this one

On 11/8/2023 at 10:44 PM, claude0001 said:

Also my "diversity" antenna board was missing one connector, which I found rattling in a different place of the device.

I wonder what havoc that could make, depending on where it 'lands'?. It does not have to be a 0 to 3.8V short circuit to cause trouble, could be 'anywhere' exposed.

[jakfish 133]

What an interesting turn of events. Way to go, @claude0001

If this is indeed the solution, there is absolutely no way I could do it myself. I couldn't solder two telephone wires together, let alone parts/wires of a circuit board, etc.

I SUPPOSE that fxtec might take on the repair as warranty work, if only because said work would produce a phone (the original idea) rather than a pda/hpc that many folks are currently sentenced to.

[Casey 321]

On 11/9/2023 at 5:44 AM, claude0001 said:

So, it appears that I was able to repair my Pro1-X's radios.

Previously, telephony and mobile data wouldn't work for me, as documented earlier in this thread. WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS had always worked perfectly.

It turned out that my Pro1X was missing most of its "antenna" connector springs. My main antenna (aka. USB) board was missing two of its three connectors, and the last one broke off while I was diagnosing the problem. See picture attached.

It appears these things are really fragile.  Also my "diversity" antenna board was missing one connector, which I found rattling in a different place of the device.

So, if you have mobile connectivity issues, carefully open your Pro1X and check whether your "main" and "diversity" antenna boards look exactly like the pictures posted by @Casey here:

Long story short, I ordered both, a "main" and a "diversity" antenna board from F(x)tec. The USB/main antenna board is very easy to replace. Replacement of the diversity module requires soldering work that scared me off. So I rather re-glued the broken connector spring in place and keep the spare part ready for future repairs.

In result, the Pro1X now performs similarly to my Pro1 when it comes to mobile network connectivity.

It's hard to say whether these antenna connectors were broken when shipped, or due to disassembly on your part. Have  you've heard the antenna rattle inside the phone when you first received it? Would that be the reason why you took apart your device to check?

On 11/9/2023 at 5:44 AM, claude0001 said:

Long story short, I ordered both, a "main" and a "diversity" antenna board from F(x)tec. The USB/main antenna board is very easy to replace. Replacement of the diversity module requires soldering work that scared me off. So I rather re-glued the broken connector spring in place and keep the spare part ready for future repairs.

The antenna springs are indeed fragile. Not like other devices we see in the market, they normally have antenna pins pointing upwards, not sideways that contacts the frame. This can be especially seen in devices that have metal enclosures. The antenna springs on the Pro1-X are surface mounted via SMT, and the glue is to fix it in place during assembly factory to add sturdiness. So in cases where you do have antenna broken, it is unlikely even soldering would work (unless you're a pro), so the recommended solution is the purchase the antenna boards from us.

@EskeRahn Thanks for your message here and email. While I do recognise the antenna springs are fragile and prone to break and can definitely affect signal strength/connectivity, I am not leaned towards this as a conclusion of the wide-spread connectivity issue. In my opinion, there are two main factors that impact signal in the Pro1-X: the metal enclosure itself and modem. For the former, we used another design house completely remade the main board and antenna boards for the Pro1-X, although the antenna tuning reports indicated better results than the Pro1, unfortunately paired with a not-so-working-well modem, there has been a lot of cases with poor signal receiving. Though we are working with a modem developer to fine-tune and optimise the firmware wherever we can. If successful, we'd be able to OTA the new firmware to everyone.

 

[claude0001 1,339]

15 hours ago, Casey said:

It's hard to say whether these antenna connectors were broken when shipped, or due to disassembly on your part. Have  you've heard the antenna rattle inside the phone when you first received it? Would that be the reason why you took apart your device to check?

Hi @Casey. Thanks for your thoughts on this problem.

Indeed, as I tried to make clear above, I cannot really exclude I did break the antenna contacts myself. One I certainly did.

No, I did not track this down because I heard something rattling inside the phone. I had previously opened the Pro1X's main body several times in the context of the battery depletion bug I had experienced, and because of the right-speaker-noise-at-full-charge issue. At that time, I did not pay much attention to the state of the contact springs (I did not even know what their purpose was). Though I do not remember breaking/loosing any, I cannot say for sure. 

It was only after reading your above-cited post (where you explicitly mentioned the fragility of the contacts)

I figured this could be the reason for my long-standing mobile network problems.

I wonder how many folks affected by radio problems have actually previously opened their phones, unaware of how careful one needs to proceed, and that you should never insert your prying tool into the short sides of the phone ... The Pro1/X were much advertised as being easily maintainable. They aren't really in this respect ...

But do not get me wrong: I am not complaining. Thanks for providing me with those spare parts. For now, the Pro1X's modem seems to perform similarly to my >3-year-old Pro1's, at least in my living region. For the first time, and despite the former's remaining issues, I am actually now looking into configuring it to be a successor to the latter ...

[foxfreejack 60]

55 minutes ago, claude0001 said:

Indeed, as I tried to make clear above, I cannot really exclude I did break the antenna contacts myself. One I certainly did.

Given how tight it fits in the shell, yes breaking something is more likely.

However, when a piece like this is soldered properly, it is more likely to peal the contact from the circuit board than break from the solder.

On your picture we can see all three contacts on the circuit board pretty much intact. Knowing enough about how radio works (not an engineer) you can have too much solder and induce other problems as well, so it's fine balance.

On 11/8/2023 at 4:44 PM, claude0001 said:

 

[Vitamin C Plus Plus 0]

On 11/8/2023 at 3:41 AM, Casey said:

I think @Hook previously had this problem before and found a work around. During the call, try to on/off speaker and see if your voice returns to normal.

I gave it a shot and it didn't work.  Either way, thanks for the suggestion.

[mangled 21]

Is there a way to pick specific radio network bands? Wcdma work perfectly and I realised NR works good as well. LTE does not work and the only option available is NR/LTE/wdcma

[Hook 3,016]

43 minutes ago, mangled said:

Is there a way to pick specific radio network bands? Wcdma work perfectly and I realised NR works good as well. LTE does not work and the only option available is NR/LTE/wdcma

I assume you are talking about the list of Preferred Network Type for your carrier under settings, Network and Internet?

NR certainly doesn't work since that is 5G. So likely, you are just getting Wcdma.

If you are not getting LTE, any string that doesn't include LTE or puts it near the end of the list will probably work. My Pro1x does fine with LTE on Ting Mobile (T-Mobile MVNO) where I live in the US, but I know there are others who don't get proper LTE service on their Pro1xs. 

[guss 13]

On 9/21/2023 at 11:06 AM, aaroncv3 said:

SImilar for me.  I have one of the springs that you're missing:

 

I will try using a small bit of metallic tape to bridge the presumed connection to case edge.  Will report back.

i 've just open mine to change screen, and see some spring are missing not, all that same like yours, and i have one spring broken (copper unstick from PCB)

Wifi was not excellent, 4G LTE not realy good (wcdma often better), and NFC not working

 

 

 

[guss 13]

i saw somthing interessting, there is 3 metalic parts, on the back cover of the phone

One on the top, an other on the center, and last at bottom.

The black lines are not only for the beauty, this is insulation 

[Au-user 8]

For anyone in Australia using 3G and worried about the impending shutdown of Telstra's 3G network, I finally figured out how to enable VoLTE. I am with Aldi Mobile (Telstra) and have been using the  "GSM/WCDMA preferred" up until today (and have needed to use dodgy hacks as mentioned in this thread of enabled/disabling speaker phone when performing a call).

So I've seen many places where you put this code in the dialer:
*#*#4636#*#*

But its VoLTe is always greyed out no matter what. I am not sure if Telstra have some whitelisting going on or what. Anyway, what finally ended up working for me is I had to root the phone using the Magisk method described here:
 

Then using these properties as a reference:
https://github.com/symbuzzer/Volte-Wifi-Calling-Enabler/blob/main/common/system.prop

I connected to the phone using adb shell and ran the following:

su

setprop persist.dbg.volte_avail_ovr 1         
setprop persist.vendor.dbg.ims_volte_enable 1
setprop persist.radio.volte.dan_support 1     
setprop persist.radio.rat_on 1                
setprop persist.radio.data_ltd_sys 1          
setprop persist.radio.data_con_rprt 1         
setprop persist.radio.calls.on.ims 1          
setprop persist.radio.VT_ENABLE 1             
setprop persist.sys.cust.lte_config 1         
setprop persist.rcs.supported 1 

After that I set the preferred network to LTE Only in the phone settings (Settings -> Mobile network -> Preferred network type -> LTE)

I don't remember the exact sequence of things after that since I was testing by calling voicemail and doing trial and error but I rebooted and shutdown and turned it back on but eventually when I noticed is that under "Settings -> Mobile network " I now have a "4G Calling" setting that was enabled. Now when I make a call I can see a little "HD" indicator in the dialler when I connect so I assume that is Volte. In any case, so far it seems to be working

Note when I dial *#*#4636#*#* it still doesn't say VoLTe enabled though

 

Hope that helps and helps someone out. I was dreading having to buy a new phone because I think the physical keyboard on the phone really does change everything about this device. If you use this as a portable computer running this with Termux + Box86/Box64 + Wine make this very powerful. You can run Blender, Linux software, x86 games via Box86 + Wine and that would be stupid without physical buttons 

[jakfish 133]

Your breakthrough is amazing. I had given up the Pro1x as a phone long ago, and simply use it as a computer.

But now...

Thank you for your post and please post back should you discover more.

[Maz 7]

Did fxtec ever fix the problems or release a new firmware? I haven't seen anything but I haven't been checking regularly.

I've had a pro1x sitting in a drawer for nearly 2 years because it can't reliably make or receive calls.

[jakfish 133]

Do keep charging it 🙂

[Maz 7]

I was, but after seeing that fxtec is out of business, didn't release a firmware update and didn't release anything useful to let the community solve the problem I may as well throw it out.

[Hook 3,016]

4 hours ago, Maz said:

I was, but after seeing that fxtec is out of business, didn't release a firmware update and didn't release anything useful to let the community solve the problem I may as well throw it out.

I understand your disappointment, but  it's a fine PDA. That's how I use mine even though my phone and data work okay.  I have Lineage 21 (Android 14) on it and it is so much more productive than a slab phone.  My slab phone only serves as a car phone (paired with Android Auto).  My Pro1x is my daily driver for everything else. I have a Pro1 also, but I prefer the Pro1x (mostly because so better Qwerty keyboard decisions for my use).

If it still can charge, I would maintain it. Or at least sell it.  But don't toss it (You may have meant that not literally, I don't know).  But, yeah, if it is power drained and can't charge, not much you can do.

[Rob. S. 1,660]

On 6/17/2024 at 5:05 PM, Maz said:

Did fxtec ever fix the problems or release a new firmware? I haven't seen anything but I haven't been checking regularly.

I've had a pro1x sitting in a drawer for nearly 2 years because it can't reliably make or receive calls.

From what has been discovered only fairly recently by @claude0001, it seems that there might be a hardware related issue at the core of those connectivity problems, so firmware wouldn't help.

 

Edited June 18 by Rob. S.

[stlpaul 5]

Just another "me too" here. I've received my pro1x a few days ago, i haven't tried cellular (and don't plan to), only using it on Wi-Fi, but it is really awful. Sitting 2 meters away from the access point in the same room, direct line of sight, it fails to maintain a Wi-Fi connection; it frequently disconnects. Speeds are less than 10 mbit at that distance, when it can connect at all. Even a simple ssh session to another computer on my local network lags, stalls, and disconnects to the point of being unusable. 😭

(I have never disassembled it and there's nothing rattling.)