three sim not working in my phone.

litmus paper

hi i have a htc desire hd, in which i tried to use a 3pay sim card. when i insert the sim card, i get no coverage at all. i spoke to three and car phone warehouse people and they say my phone is not properly unlocked. i have used 02, vodafone and meteor sim card in my phone, they all work properly. i got this phone in england, not from a network provider but a independent seller. and i also used orange sim in england, that was working fine. please help and tell me what can i do. any help would be appreciated.

jenno86

Is it a 3G compatible phone? If not, a Three sim won't work.

litmus paper

yes it is a 3g phone, its a htc desire hd phone. i do know that three sim only work in 3g phones. but this is not the issue in my case. thanks anyways for replying.

Kensington

Is it a SIM with a new Three number or did you request to port your number over?

litmus paper

kensington, it is a brand new sim. i spoke to the helpline, they say 3 sims only work in 3's handsets.

Davy

litmus paper wrote: »

kensington, it is a brand new sim. i spoke to the helpline, they say 3 sims only work in 3's handsets.

This isnt true

srsly78

They mean they only support 3 sims in a 3 handset running their modified software. Even if you could get support it would be from India tho so nothing is lost. Never worked properly for me (always lost 3g etc) so I rageported.

Kensington

litmus paper wrote: »

kensington, it is a brand new sim. i spoke to the helpline, they say 3 sims only work in 3's handsets.

Not true.
It sounds like the SIM is faulty - bring it back to the shop and get them to replace and check the new one works.

srsly78

Yes kinda true.

3 use custom radio on their phones. Not the same as a competitors device. No guarantee everything will work properly, and no support. But sure, even a non-3 phone should connect to network and have basic functionality.

Tbh just avoid this network, not worth the grief. Don't be suckered in by the too-good-to-be-true pricing.

BostonB

custom radio - wha?

srsly78

3 customise the software on their handsets. The radio software on their phones is not the same as if you were to buy the same phone off expansys or clove sim-free. Their network has some funky setup with domestic 2g roaming on vodafone. Slightly different from other networks. Note how 3 do not pass along device updates straight away, rather they wait until they can mod the update to work on their network. This is as opposed to other carriers like Meteor for example, that allow their customers to use stock updates.

If you use normal radio it should work ok, but you will probably be plagued by device not handing back to 3g from 2g. It never worked properly for me, but I never had a 3 handset. They ****ed up their own software update for sgs2 it seems, and even their own software is now not returning to 3g correctly. **** network, **** support. 2+ years and they still won't acknowledge their network problems. See 3 forum for many irate posts etc. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1367

Also, 3 problems only happen in Ireland. Abroad their network is perfect. Shows how little they care about the Irish market, they can't be arsed spending money to fix their network, instead they will just string the dumb paddies along for as long as they can.

BostonB

Good to know. Though I've found problems on O2 with handsets being confused switching between 2/3G.

srsly78

I've seen it as well on other networks, but very very rarely (usually when getting off an aeroplane lol). With 3 it happened every 15 mins to me and drove me up the wall (using a non-3 htc desire and moto milestone).

litmus paper

thanks every one for the replies. now i understand. well the hell with them. i was better of with 02. and now going back to 02. thanks a lot.

blaz

srsly78 wrote: »

3 customise the software on their handsets. The radio software on their phones is not the same as if you were to buy the same phone off expansys or clove sim-free. Their network has some funky setup with domestic 2g roaming on vodafone. Slightly different from other networks. Note how 3 do not pass along device updates straight away, rather they wait until they can mod the update to work on their network. This is as opposed to other carriers like Meteor for example, that allow their customers to use stock updates.

If you use normal radio it should work ok, but you will probably be plagued by device not handing back to 3g from 2g. It never worked properly for me, but I never had a 3 handset. They ****ed up their own software update for sgs2 it seems, and even their own software is now not returning to 3g correctly. **** network, **** support. 2+ years and they still won't acknowledge their network problems. See 3 forum for many irate posts etc. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1367

Also, 3 problems only happen in Ireland. Abroad their network is perfect. Shows how little they care about the Irish market, they can't be arsed spending money to fix their network, instead they will just string the dumb paddies along for as long as they can.

The customizations that 3 have on their phones have nothing to do with the radio. What they customize with their firmware is the look and feel (theme, icons, background, new applications for examples ones for easy access to Planet 3, etc.). They also disable the option to turn off 3G on the handset, so the users don't roam onto 2G by mistake (or intention).

3G phones have a timer that starts ticking as soon as a phone roams onto a foreign network (foreign in this context can also be Vodafone 2G). After the timer expires, the phone will start searching for other networks, including the home network. If it finds the home network and the handset is not in use (i.e. no phone call and no data usage), the phone will switch back to the home network. Three might modify this timer to make the time after which the phone will start searching for its own home network as short as possible.

Any 3G phone should work just fine with Three. I have a stock Nexus One and it hands over from 3G to 2G and back just fine. I can simulate this easily by turning off 3G. After turning it back on it will take 6 minutes for the phone switch back to 3G, because the timer seems to be set to 2 minutes.

The issue with iPhones (and some other phones) not handing over from 2G to 3G is probably just a minor incompatibility that can be worked around with a setting somewhere, but Three techs are incompetent enough that they can't (or won't) figure it out. Not all phones are affected, because as I said, a stock Nexus One for example works just fine.

bd250110

blaz wrote: »

Any 3G phone should work just fine with Three. I have a stock Nexus One and it hands over from 3G to 2G and back just fine. I can simulate this easily by turning off 3G. After turning it back on it will take 6 minutes for the phone switch back to 3G, because the timer seems to be set to 2 minutes.

The issue with iPhones (and some other phones) not handing over from 2G to 3G is probably just a minor incompatibility that can be worked around with a setting somewhere, but Three techs are incompetent enough that they can't (or won't) figure it out. Not all phones are affected, because as I said, a stock Nexus One for example works just fine.

My stock SGS II hands over and back very well, I have set the phone to prefer 3G and it has worked really well. The iPhone can be a bit of a nightmare on 3, Im not sure if it is a power management thing with the iPhone or network settings (or a combination of both) but it seems to prefer 2G.

srsly78

Regardless, if you get the 3g handover issue you get no support off them anyway.

I did see the problem happen on Nexus One but that was in 2010 when it was just out, maybe newer roms have fixed this. Still lots of people complaining on the 3 forum tho, both android and iphone.