US Android phone not getting internet with Meteor

rmcdonag

Hi - I brought back an unlocked T-Mobile Concord ZTE-made phone from the US. It's basically a cheap android phone similar to Galaxy in interface and all that.

I put my Meteor sim back in, topped up, but I'm not connecting to any data service.

Rang Customer Care and brought the phone to a store - no luck.

All the setting are fine (APN etc) and everything is fine with my account according to the phone support and tech support people with Meteor.

Just wondering if anyone else has encountered this problem, or has any suggestions before I leave it with one of the electronic shops in town to have a gander at it.

Random

put the sim into another meteor phone to ensure the data works. this will confirm its the phone at fault.

rmcdonag

Tried that, thanks. Ive got a data connection in other phones, but not in the american, so seems its the handset.

ED E

WCDMA 850 / 1700 / 1900
GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900

Should be compatible AFAIK.

Is it a T-Mobile branded firmware? They may have crippled it software wise.

rmcdonag

I don't think the firmware is branded. The phone is advertised as their budget no-contract phone and T-Mobile unlocked it for me happily.

From what I can gather on the internet the phone receives a data connection with other networks (found a list of working apn setting for other US and Canadian networks).

The specs are here: http://www.zteusa.com/t-mobile-concord.html

Help much appreciated! Cheers

Kristopherus

You could flash a generic version of Android 2.3 Gingerbread. The basic ZTE models are very receptive to a bit of modding. Google is your friend on that score. Do you know what the European equivalent of that phone is?

hallo dare

look up "android secret codes" on the net to access the engineering menu, I think it's something like *#*#4636#*#* , type them in where you dial a phone number ,then you have to select the European radio (whatever the technical name is for it), as it's currently on the us version. something along those lines. sorry I cannot be more exact

rmcdonag

Thanks for all your help guys. Managed to get into the secret menu with that code. Played around for a while and worked out that it was set to WCDMA instead of GSM by default, as well as having a false GPRS mapping location. Not QUITE sure how I fixed the latter bit, but it's started getting data after a while anyway. Success - thanks.

hallo dare

nice one! Enjoy!

rmcdonag

An addition, for those with similar issues:

I just switched networks with the same phone and encountered problems again. Got WiFi and downloaded an a free APN settings app called Tweakker which found my network and amended my data settings (including, I reckon, hidden ones) accordingly. Entire operation took about 30 secs.