Learn: giffgaff Top Tips

[vincent]

Hi mikemackey,

You have deduced correctly that I work for giffgaff.

I am the Community Manager here

You can recognise the staff at giffgaff as they all have this symbol in front of their name:

I have send you a private message which explains how to get to your support messages. I hope my attempt at making a tutorial makes sense anyway

You can find your forum private messages here:

Just click on the little number next to the envelope (you might have more than one).

There you can also reply to me and give any feedback you like. I look forward to receiving it. Also the negative feedback as we use it to improve giffgaff, as hopefully many here can testify.

Cheers,

Vincent

[mikemackay]

Eureka

There is no  word in orange (indicating where i am), but yes, below that there is indeed an envelope icon.

Thank you.

M 

[mikemackay]

Thanks Vincent.  This instruction (to the envelope icon) is visible to me and works.

The instruction to me on the private messages channel, doesnt work.

Thanks

M

[vincent]

Continued via private message.

[mikemackay]

Vincent and other Nexus One / Giffgaff users:

For some 6-8 weeks Ive been using the settings listed at the top of this thread.

With partial success.

The data:  

The trend that I see is as follows:  on power up I get 3G service, and then sometime between power up and 1 hour 3G service drops (but I can still call and text) and does not recover unless I power down and back up again.  Now this isnt universally true but is generally true.  From time to time when 3G service drops the phone picks it up again automatically though this may be c 10-20% of the time with a power-off re-boot required the rest of the time.  After a power-off re-boot in general 3G service resumes,  where it doesnt resume Ive been concluding rightly or wrongly that thats because  Im not in a 3G coverage area

My assessment:  

Firstly Id tentatively conclude that the giffgaff settings are the right giffgaff settings and that thats not at issue - though I may be wrong on this.  Secondly, I had heard somewhere that the Nexus One has an internal setting that was about signal strength and that if 3G signal strength was below a certain threshold the Nexus One would drop that connection.  Id also heard that this setting was configurable (but how ?).  So Im wondering if this is the root of the problem, and having dropped the connection for signal strength reasons for some reason it is (often, but not always) selecting to not attempt to reconnect.

My ask:

The reason for this post is to solicit others experiences, incl Vincent who I know has a Nexus One running giffgaff here in the UK, and advise.

Please

Regards

MM

[vincent]

I know what you're saying about the phone mike, and it's very frustrating. There's very little useful information on the Nexus One out there to be honest.

As for the 3G connection, it sometimes seems to me that I loose the 3G connection, but as soon as I start using the internet, by opening up a browser window etc., the 3G comes back again for me. So I've personally not had the issues that you've had.

It almost seems to go on a sort of standby 3G connection mode with me. 

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, not everyone with a Nexus One seems to have these problems, but a lot are reported.

According to Gizmodo and the fine people over at XDA Forums a leaked firmware upgrade for the Nexus One seems to address the 3G issues many users have been complaining about. The firmware is obviously not ready to be pushed out as it seems to be an old ROM with a revised radio.img . People have been able to hack it into CyanogenMod and report a much steadier 3G signal. This shows that the problems many users have experienced are software based and thankfully not hardware related as many have speculated. It also shows that someone out there is on the case and a solution is coming soon.

Which was posted on the 14 of February. But I haven't seen or heard anything about a firmware upgrade yet. Although admittedly I haven't been looking very hard, so that might be of interest for you?

Just checked for the firmware upgrade, but it doesn't seem it's out yet.

[mikemackay]

Useful Vincent.  And thanks.

Just one thing,  I see posted two versions of the recommended giffgaff settings for Nexus One.  The first version is listed at top of this thread and thats the one Im using.  A different version is listed in the giffgaff wiki page.  Which version do u use / recommend ?  Pls

MM

[mikemackay]

Vincent, about the Nexus One firmware, you say "Just checked for the firmware upgrade, but it doesn't seem it's out yet."  Can I ask where you are checking for this kind of thing pls. That way I can too. 

MM

[vincent]

I simply checked by searching on google

As for the settings I use, it's these: http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Learn-giffgaff-Top-Tips/Definitive-APN-Settings-list/m-p/1279#M8

Although I have not been able to make MMS work.

[paul_shirley]

---

vincent wrote:According to Gizmodo and the fine people over at XDA Forums a leaked firmware upgrade for the Nexus One seems to address the 3G issues many users have been complaining about. The firmware is obviously not ready to be pushed out as it seems to be an old ROM with a revised radio.img ..

---

You can get the radio image from The Official Nexus ROM, scroll down a bit in the 1st post and they have it, the original image and installation instruction links. Looks like you'll have to unlock the bootloader and install a new recovery but AFAIK you can just install the radio image on a stock ROM without problems.

Backup any data on the phone 1st, its going to get wiped if you do this...