Poor Cell service ( bad signal strength after switching from Iphone 6 to Samsung S7

[gdawson]

For over a year I was using an Iphone 6 using Public Mobile.  It worked great.  I could email, text and make calls from inside a hockey rink, and got good coverage where I lived near Charlottetown, PEI.  Over Xmas I bought a Samsung S7 online through Amazon.  It was in great shape It was a used phone that has T-Mobile references still to it.  But was told that should not effect my coverage as the SIM is public Mobile etc...  The Android version is 8.0.0,   Problem is that now everywhere that I use to get 1 to 3 bars at LTE  I get nothing... NO SERVICE.  Has anyone experience this.  Does anyone have any suggestions on where I could start to troubleshoot, upgrade etc.... 

[computergeek541]

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@Derekmcl wrote:

With Android phones, whenever you change service providers, you have to do a factory reset for the new service to work. 

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Sorry, but where did you hear that from?  That simply isn't true.  As srlawren was saying, some of the LG devices would only work properly after a factory reset, but that is something specific with the LG software.  And even then, I beleive it was only to get data working. 

With Android phones, users do sometimes need to tinker with the APN settings for data, and things such as the voicemail retrival numbers and SMS Centre.  There are also cases in which people need to delete an SMS message thread and start a new one with a contact before SMS messages can be sent to that person.  But none of this requires factory resetting.

For the vast majority of Android phones, what you say is completely unnecessary.

[srlawren]

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@Derekmcl wrote:

With Android phones, whenever you change service providers, you have to do a factory reset for the new service to work.  

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@Derekmcl this is just not true for the vast majority of Android models, with the exception of some LG models (most notably most of the G-series).  

[will13am]

@gdawson, the problem is due to the model of S7.  There are several.  The one that is AT&T compatible is the best solution for use in Canada.  If you use this site and compare the available bands on the iPhone 6 and S7, you will find that the S7 has less compatible bands.  It could very well be the missing band is what gives good signal in the area.  Contrast this to the S7 for AT&T which has much greater compatibility.

https://willmyphonework.net/

[Derekmcl]

With Android phones, whenever you change service providers, you have to do a factory reset for the new service to work. 

Use the backup feature on the phone first, so you can restore your settings later.