Pro1x - really poor connectivity to both wifi and cellular.

[claude0001 1,271]

2 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

Just out of curiosity. What happens if you do the Aeroplane-mode trick in the Band-20 end of the apartment?

Unfortunately doesn't help. As (I think) I wrote previously, band 20 does not work, even if I enable the modem (or boot the Pro1-X) in that "zone" of my apartment. It will then directly go to the "no service" state.

[EskeRahn 5,399]

2 minutes ago, claude0001 said:

Unfortunately doesn't help.

😞
So then the big question is if it is the specimen, or Pro1X in general that does not work under your conditions??

[claude0001 1,271]

6 minutes ago, claude0001 said:

As (I think) I wrote previously, band 20 does not work, even if I enable the modem (or boot the Pro1-X) in that "zone"

Found my report from a month ago:

To repeat: I think I have seen the Pro1-X switch between LTE bands 3 and 1 without dropping dead. Band 20 seems to be the problem for me.

[Hook 2,907]

Well, I am out in the wild with my Pro1x.  T-Mobile seems to have gotten better here.  I seem to still be using band 4.  Call was fine. Using internet on data now, no wifi.  It's slow but steady.  Even downloaded Firefox.  As I said, slow but steady... no balking and quiting.  I am wondering if US problems on T-Mobile have to do with which bands T-Mobile is relying on where.

Or if there are defective units, as @EskeRahnraised, is it many or just a few? Any are too mmany for those that have them, I understand, but if weren't hanging out at this forum, I wouldn't see any reason for testing.

[jakfish 124]

Using Pro1x and Tmobile, about 90 minutes away @Hook , I'm having more trouble than he is with dropped calls on LTE. Wifi calling works well, both calling and receiving, but LTE is problematic--phone rings, I pick up, the call can drop to the point of disconnection, or there's a blank period when caller cannot hear me or vice versa.

OTH, the gps is hanging in there. If the data is dropping packets, Waze has already downloaded enough to keep me on-route, and police/traffic warnings seem to be in real time.

[lycancatt 2]

i recently got a pro1x because it has a keyboard, i'm totally blind so this is very important to me, i had a galaxy s relay till tmobile killed off all 3 and non lte 4g around me.  I read that callers cant hear this phone and found i have the same issue, was a fix ever found?  Thanks for any info!

[jakfish 124]

@Hook has found that if you receive a call, and the caller cannot hear you, put the phone on speaker, and that may fix it. From there, there's a chance you can take off speaker and the caller can hear you normally.

But this does not always work and I am struggling with dropped calls and dead spaces of phone calls that do stay connected. For me, the Pro1x does well with T-Mobile wifi calling in the US. But such a workaround can bind you to your home router--or a portable router, as another user here employs.

There are many possible  reasons for these problems and all of them are mysterious. It could be an issue with VoLTE (voice over LTE), which would be unfortunate in the US, since VoLTE can not be disabled. Or it could be a hardware issue. No one knows for sure.

So I'm not certain the Pro1x could be your daily driver. I'm trying to make it my daily driver, but I have the same phone problems as you're experiencing.

Sorry the news isn't more encouraging.

Right now, I've set the T-Mobile Preferred network to GSM only. This seems a little better so far, call-wise, but US carriers no longer support browsing below 4G.

If browsing isn't important to you on the phone, you could try GSM only; it seems to work with texts as well, but in a perfect world, we'd like to go forward, not backward.

 

Edited March 29, 2023 by jakfish

[lycancatt 2]

thanks for all that info, i do really appreciate it.  the only reason i upgrated was because of tmobile dropping 3g and 4g non lte near me, not 1 call would go through while at home..so i've spent 600 dollars to have the same problem it seems?  thats incredibly frustrating!  it seems silly the developers of this product seem to have just abandoned any help and its down to users to find there own way.

[jakfish 124]

I agree: it's not ideal. I don't think the developers have abandoned the project, the rub is that fxtec have very little resources in the US, so they don't seem to be able to reproduce the problem. I don't know why, I've read posts from Europe complaining about the same thing.

And why fxtec didn't fly one employee to the US with a handful of SIM cards and a rental car to drive and test across the country is beyond me, considering the size of the market here.

Do try the GSM only setting in Preferred Networks--with wifi calling disabled--just to see if that improves call reception.

Edited March 29, 2023 by jakfish

[Hook 2,907]

I merged another thread here to keep information in one place...

[jakfish 124]

@Hook and I, both residents in East Coast, mid-Atlantic states, have spent time extensively testing the calling issues with the Pro1x in the United States. Our testing number is: 408-647-4636

The test center allows you to record/play messages and will also test your connection by immediately playing back your voice.

It appears the news is not good. The only successful US network for Pro1x calling is GSM. Any other choice (eg: LTE, VoLTE) will result in call failure—no connection, dropped call, or inability to hear caller. This failure is persistent.

In T-Mobile’s Preferred Networks, there is a plethora of combined network choices, but whatever choice is made, must include GSM. Hook has better luck with a combined choice (that includes GSM) than I do, perhaps because I live in a more congested area. My best connection is GSM-only, but that disallows data usage, and more importantly, T-Mobile will terminate GSM in April, 2024.

Though I have not personally tested the outcome, I assume that calling on other US carriers—AT&T, Verizon, etc—will fail regardless of network settings, since every other US carrier has already terminated GSM capability.

Further complicating the matter is that VoLTE is now standard in the US and cannot be disabled.

Hook and I remain ready to test further, but it would seem that without a firmware upgrade (unless it’s an unsolvable hardware issue), the Pro1x is unusable as an actual phone in the United States.

Distressing, indeed.

Edited March 30, 2023 by jakfish

[Hook 2,907]

1 hour ago, jakfish said:

it would seem that without a firmware upgrade (unless it’s an unsolvable hardware issue), the Pro1x is unusable as an actual phone in the United States.

Just a note.  If it is true that the Pro1x can't use VoLTE, either because of hardware or software, there is more to it than that because my phone is not useless (at least until April 2024).  It works. One difference between my phone and @jakfish's seems to be that mine, as I said above, stays on LTE Band 4 while his seems to switch bands.  As I have also said before, if I weren't on a forum, I'd think I had a  fantastic phone with nothing to be concerned about.

I am not knowlegable about this stuff, but I hope our observations have some clues. 

[claude0001 1,271]

Dear @Hook and @jakfish, Thanks for sharing the outcome of your investigations.

It is intriguing that you get better results with GSM telephony. With my German carrier (O2), I have never been able to place or receive a call on GSM. Only VoLTE will work in the few places where the underlying LTE connection can actually be established. Note that this is not a restriction of my provider: I use and prefer GSM for calls all the time with the Pro1.

What is different in our two cases is that US T-Mobile uses the 1.9 GHz band for GSM, while my O2 Germany relies on 900 MHz for that. Also, I observe that LTE works for me only in the high-frequency bands 3 and 1, but not in band 20 (800 MHz).

Could it be that we really just have a bandwidth problem with carrier frequencies < 1 GHz?

[Hook 2,907]

5 minutes ago, claude0001 said:

Could it be that we really just have a bandwidth problem with carrier frequencies < 1 GHz?

I've seen some evidence for that.  When I set my phone preferred network to LTE Only, the phone switched to LTE Band 12 and I could not make any calls.  But, with my normal setting , I stay on LTE Band 4 and everything is fine.  I unfortunately don't get out of where I live much, but when I do I'll make more observations.

[EskeRahn 5,399]

On 3/29/2023 at 11:06 PM, jakfish said:

And why fxtec didn't fly one employee to the US with a handful of SIM cards and a rental car to drive and test across the country is beyond me, considering the size of the market here.

Though certainly an interesting idea., I guess one reason could be pure cash-flow, as they have troubles in even scraping in the money to send the devices already produced.

And at best a single trip could collect data, so repeated trips would be needed to test any firmware fix they may come up with.

[jakfish 124]

I agree, it would be initially expensive. OTH, it could have been ultimately cost-effective, given  the lack of testing has made US market rather off-limits for the Pro1x.

I think Planet Computer made the same decision about the Gemini/Cosmo, and the phones ended up having a lot of trouble with Verizon. (TMo pretty much worked.)

I've had to abandon my own efforts to make the 1x a daily in the US East Coast. Within the same hour, I couldn't make a wifi call and I couldn't receive an incoming call despite my GSM setting.

@Hook seems to be the last US caller standing. He can make phone calls even though he doesn't want to :)

 

[Hook 2,907]

Not very often, and usually first thing in the morning after it has come off charging (both of those details may or may not be relevant), I sometimes have to hit speakerphone to be heard and then I can immediately turn it off and things are fine again. I mentioned this in my testing somewhere above, but I do still have to do it occasionally. WTF is that doing?  It's like it somehow wakes something up that's needed for the other end to hear me?  It just makes no sense unless, when the microphone for speaker phone is engaged, something is changed with the normal speaking mic.  (If they're the same mic, then it's the amping up that changes things).

Lol.  It's like having to turn on your high beams before your low beams will work on your headlights. 😄

[Hook 2,907]

On 3/30/2023 at 5:27 PM, claude0001 said:

Could it be that we really just have a bandwidth problem with carrier frequencies < 1 GHz?

So, I'm seeing more and more evidence of this.  Last week when I did a quick test, selecting just LTE as my preferred network, LTE showed me jumping to Band 12 and I couldn't make any calls.  Today, I tried again because something was bothering me about the "it's just gsm" explanation for why I could make calls.  I set the preferred network type to just LTE this morning and it stayed with Band 4 instead of jumping.  Now I can make and recieve calls just fine.  I can hear them, they can hear me.  As I have said, VoLTE in settings is grayed out.  But it is grayed out in the on position.  I know Ting/T-Mobile use VoLTE.  It really looks like this phone can do it, but not for all bands/frequencies.

I will keep this set up for a while since I don't care if the phone works or not and see, if/when it fails, it has switched to a lower frequency band again (on my normal setting, a string of every network including LTE, I never switch from Band 4). 

I'm beginning to see why this is so hard to nail down. 🙄

[Name_not_avail 64]

FWIW, i just did a long return drive from for almost the entire length of Interstate 5 on the West Coast of North America, Los Angeles to Vancouver BC, using my T Mobile sim card.

i have never been able to rely on my Pro 1x, so left it in  a drawer and used another phone with LTE Discovery running and logging.

The following bands are the full scope of LTE bands that my 1x would have had access to, anywhere along the Interstate 5 corridor: bands 2, 4 (also 4 roaming on Telus in Canada), 12, 17, 66, and 71.

The 1x specifications page does not list band 66 or 71 as available, but by far those two are what T Mobile most frequently liked to connect me to on the West Coast. So maybe their coverage on the bands useable by the 1x is spotty.

I don't understand why some T Mobile users have had reliable success on any bands at all, I never have. And elsewhere on this forum I've previously documented my poor results in 3 different countries, with 3 different cell providers, but to be fair I was not logging the bands with LTE Discovery while doing so.

[EskeRahn 5,399]

9 hours ago, Name_not_avail said:

I don't understand why some T Mobile users have had reliable success on any bands at all, I never have. And elsewhere on this forum I've previously documented my poor results in 3 different countries, with 3 different cell providers, but to be fair I was not logging the bands with LTE Discovery while doing so.

Though we still know too little on the cause, we should not rule out the possibility that there COULD be some hardware issue that does not affect ALL Pro1X. I mean that it is totally feasible that some batches are better/worse than the rest. That would explain why some have problems and others not. though it is obviously not the only possible explanation, until we have a situation with a spot where one Pro1X consistently fails and another is working flawless (or at the least much better), with the same sim/provider.

[claude0001 1,271]

10 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

we should not rule out the possibility that there COULD be some hardware issue that does not affect ALL Pro1X.

True. However, the reports of connectivity failure are so widespread, both in time and location, that I suspect something is just designed too much on-the-edge with the Pro1-X's RF system.

Meanwhile, I must admit that I find the "cannot reproduce" attitude of F(x)tec on the topic increasingly hard to believe. As @jakfish suggested, they could just fly a dev with a handful devices (from different batches) to one of the reported areas and test away. As you write, one possible reason they do not do this is money. Then again: if they cannot afford a boarding pass to the US or continental Europe, could they afford to have their upstream Android provider fix any problems they might discover? 

Unfortunately, my personal opinion is that, with all the devices they have meanwhile sold via regular Internet shops, it has become necessary for them to keep customers hoping for that magical OTA fixing everything, rather than to admit that there are issues with the RF hardware of the phone (in which case all those customers were entitled to warranty claims).

Edited April 5, 2023 by claude0001

[Name_not_avail 64]

4 hours ago, claude0001 said:

Unfortunately, my personal opinion is that, with all the devices they have meanwhile sold via regular Internet shops, it has become necessary for them to keep customers hoping for that magical OTA fixing everything, rather than to admit that there are issues with the RF hardware of the phone (in which case all those customers were entitled to warranty claims).

I am starting to reach that pessimistic conclusion, too, but I surmise that the glitch with the microphone not working until speakerphone is toggled, is a software problem amenable to an update. They seem like two distinct problems.

If they could even fix just that microphone unreliability aspect of it, then I might have the patience to pull it out of the drawer and try it as a GSM or VoWiFi phone where that's feasible.

[PoongZY 15]

By the way how long is pro1-x warranty? My pro1-x already sits in drawer for 5 months.

[Hook 2,907]

1 hour ago, PoongZY said:

By the way how long is pro1-x warranty? My pro1-x already sits in drawer for 5 months.

1 year. 

[DieBruine 397]

On 4/6/2023 at 12:26 PM, PoongZY said:

By the way how long is pro1-x warranty? My pro1-x already sits in drawer for 5 months.

Same here. Even worse, I also have a 'brand new' QX1000 lying next to it.

Are there any forum members involved in beta-testing? If so, is there like a NDA or something. I find it curious that there is no mention of imporvements nor are there any updates on the progress. I ask because jjoining Telegram would require me to buy another prepaid. Not a problem if I had some more positive feedback of it being o any help...