Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Nexus 4 LTE with Fido (Canada)

I'm one of the few fortunate to have its hands on a Nexus 4 in Canada. I was with Vidéotron and the phone was working fine. But I wanted to try LTE and I got it quickly with Fido!

Here's the story:

  1. I switched from Videotron to Fido. Fido was out of LTE micro-SIM cards so I couldn't try if the LTE was working. But I switched anyway because of the potential savings each month and a bigger data plan. For a week I ran on a non-LTE SIM card without paying for it.
  2. A week later a Fido employee called to tell me they received my LTE micro-SIM card (still at no charge).
  3. I put the SIM, rebooted and registered the phone on the Fido network.
  4. I changed the APN settings to ltemobile.apn, left everything else as is.
  5. I dialed *#*#4636#*#* to enter the Phone Testing menu.
  6. In Phone information, I set the preferred network type to LTE only (to make sure I could register on LTE).
  7. The phone registered on the LTE network in literally 2 seconds.
  8. I switched the setting to LTE/GSM auto for my everyday use.
  9. I ran a Speed Test and got a 3450kB/s download and a 1957kB/s upload speed.

Here it is. I just wanted to dissipate some concerns about LTE with the Nexus 4 on Fido in Canada. I hope you're more confident to buy the phone now... when available :(

In the meantime,

See ya

22 comments:

Carlos said...

Thanks for the information. This is exactly what I was looking for.

I want to confirm that I followed your instructions. Only difference that I created a new APN copied all the settings of the Fido Internet APN, changed the APN connection as you indicated, saved it and select it. Go to the phone settings and switch to LTE/GSM auto. Make sure that the Network Type shows LTE, disabled the Wi-Fi.

Then I ran SpeedTest and I got a whopping (47425/7438)kbps. This is faster that my Shaw cable service (24186/3518)kbps. The only advantage on cable was the ping latency of 73ms instead of 218ms on Fido LTE. For reference under HSPA I get (10630/1114).

I did this in Calgary and SpeedTest connected the server Rainy Day Internet at Winnipeg.

However the next day I noticed that the bars stay grey (and of course no internet). I have to switch back to the original APN and change back to GSM until I got connected. Switch back to LTE settings and it connected again to fast speed. It last like this almost 20 hours after that I had to do the tricking again.

At the end I called Fido to "change me" to LTE. The difference is that they push the APN on your profile, the phone auto-register on this APN and somehow your account is allowed to stay on that network.

Enjoy your only $400 LTE phone.

Unknown said...

Thanks for the precisions!

Unknown said...

How's battery life on lte?

Unknown said...

Same as on 3g, saw no difference. Great battery life. Lasts a full day.

Unknown said...

curious if Google Now or MMS messaging work with you set up. I was able to get LTE working and ran the speed test but i could not get Google Now or MMS to work as well. Any help? Is it possible to truly have it all with the Nexus4? I'm also with fido.

Anonymous Avatar Anonymous said...

I tried all the steps above on a new nexus 4 with a lte micro Sim on FIDO, phone couldn't connect to the network on LTE. I called Fido costumer service asked them to reset my network settings, turned the phone off/on, still no connection LTE. I use prepaid but I bought data pass on my account so being on a prepaid should not be a problem, any suggestions?

Unknown said...

Hi guys,

Google Now is working fine for me.

I've never tried MMS though.

Carlos said...

Battery is good (not amazing). Brand new without any synchronization going on, 2 hours daily phone calls, the battery lasted 2 days 8 hours. After I activate Calendar,GMail and Reader synch, read my daily RSS, read and replied my emails and 2 hours phone calls, the battery lasted 1 day 18 hours. Normally, I charge my phone every night, if for some reason you skip the daily charge the next day with some conservative use, you could go through the whole day.

About the MMS if you didn't changed the MMSC original settings (http://mms.fido.ca) you should have no problems. Mine works fine.

As a final note, for those techies, I just rooted my phone using the wugfresh nexus toolkit at http://www.wugfresh.com/. It's super easy, and if you have other Nexus stuff, it works with those also. Just in case, there is a youtube video showing how to do it step by step.

Carlos said...

@anonymous. I have 2 lines one with CityFido monthly (now is considered prepaid), and one with the $40 unlimited, both of them with the 6GB plan. I think any other not monthly data plan is assigned to a different server that does not crossover the LTE server. Just for verification my original APN was fido-core-appl1.apn.

Carlos said...

Warning!!! Just received notification for update 4.2.2. Reading all about it and it kills the LTE capability. One more reason I am glad that I rooted my phone. I will be able to upgrade to the new version but I will revert just the radio firmware. When I have time I will try it.

Unknown said...

Yup! I can confirm this.. I updated then lost LTE capability. The same menu is available to select LTE, but it reverts automatically to WCDMA preferred.

I read the release notes after upgrading :(

The irony ;)

Carlos, if you can redirect me to some docs so I can root my phone and revert the radio that would be great!

Thanks

Anonymous Avatar Anonymous said...

Do you know if will work on Tmobile? I wonder if the Nexus4 sold by fido is the same as those sold on Google play...

Carlos said...

For my understanding at moment there is only one Nexus 4 hardware model. From my experience with the Fido Nexus S, the phone was the same as the one sold by Google (although there were 4 hw models), however the firmware was different, so updates were coming from Fido. Reflashing the phone with the Google firmware, I was able to get updates directly from Google.

This time Google has decided to only manufacture only one model avoiding the Verizon kerfuffle and bypassing the Carriers approval updates. The 'hidden' AWS LTE is also a reason Google do not want that officially exists. If not they have to create different firmwares for the carriers (additional to increase the cost of the phone to pay the LTE licenses and certifications).

If I remember T-Mobile was suppose to deploy AWS LTE (like in Canada), I not sure if it's already active. If it's this trick will work. Anyways, I will recommend to keep your phone ready when it's available.

Important; read my next post of how to revert your radio if you get the phone already with a new Firmware.

Carlos said...

Mike sorry for late answer, I hope this still relevant to you.

I did run into some snag reverting the radio, but it was due to a new security permission on the 4.4.2 firmware. The Wufresh root-kit was not ready for this version yet.

First you need the Nexus Root Kit from:

http://www.wugfresh.com/

The most important part of this process is unlock the bootloader to accept individual changes of the firmware. Unfortunately doing an unlock, will wipe your phone. Make a backup of photos and other files. I will recommend leave it unlock, for future changes, so you don't have to restart putting back your data.

If you are on 4.4.2 read this about the security problem that I was talking about:

http://www.wugfresh.com/faqs/how-to-fix-adb-device-is-listed-as-offline-on-android-4-2-2

My problem was because the screen after a while goes off and I was not able to see the message and touching the screen was dismissing the message with the wrong answer. I will recommend additionally enable the "Stay Awake" check under Developer Options.

The new version of the root-kit should take care of this, but you will need this for the later manual commands. The amazing part of this root-kit is that it takes you step by step until your phone is rooted.

After you are unlocked, I will recommend to read this post on XDA:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2087227

The 0.33 version is on the last where the LTE works.

Prepare your phone again for USB debugging.

Because from this point you will need to work directly with the command prompt, to avoid problems, I will recommend to put the radio firmware under the same folder that the root-kit contains the required commands. In my default x64 installation is at:

C:\Program Files (x86)\WugFresh Development\data

Unzip and extract only the modem.img file and put it on the data folder. Now open the command prompt and move to root-kit data folder.

Then type the following commands to first to go the bootloader, later to flash the radio and finally reboot:

adb reboot-bootloader
fastboot flash radio modem.img
fastboot reboot

If everything goes fine your phone will reboot properly. Check the baseband version under 'About phone', it should end with .33. Now it will be able to stay on LTE as it used to be.

The only thing that doesn't work for me is the LTE tethering, I have to revert to HSPA. I'm not sure if it's working before as I didn't tested before 4.2.2 . If somebody can confirm that the LTE tethering works on 4.2.1 or older, I will like to further investigate the issue.

Unknown said...

Great thanks a LOT!

I can confirm, when I had LTE, that tethering was not working. Had to fall back to HSPA to use tethering.

Thanks again!

Carlos said...

Thanks for the confirmation.

It looks like some people on the XDA are examining the radio image of the LG Optimus G, and trying to create a hybrid radio firmware. Of course this will not make it full LTE (only AWS LTE) as the Nexus 4 still lack of the extra LTE amplifiers and proper antennae.

However this hybrid could fix the tethering problem.

Unknown said...

I am fully running 4.3, LTE on Fido Aka Rogers.

67.71 Mb/s Upload 20.07 Down.

http://www.speedtest.net/android/568047740.png

Unknown said...

When I go to LTE only it doesn't register. What do I do?

Unknown said...

The newest updates on the phones are preventing us from picking LTE :( I'm sorry

Unknown said...

Mike, Liam, long time I do not post on this thread. Recently I moved to the Nexus 5.

However before I donated my Nexus 4 to a co-worker, I did the full update to 4.4.2, root it, flash the radio 33_98_hybrid, modified the apns-conf.xml and build.prop to automatically provide the LTE and finally added an script that fix the firewall to allow tethering over LTE.

All these procedures, tools and files are on the http://forum.xda-developers.com site. Do a search for them over there.

If after you have done your research still have questions, write me a note, I will try to point to the right direction.

Happy new year.

Unknown said...

Wow thanks I'll try it!!

JF said...

Mike, everywhere it states that this hack works only with LTE band 4...and I see that fido is not on band 4. I have tried to do your procedure but it keeps coming back to wcdma preferred...Any idea how to overcome this? Does it have to be rooted? Do you have cyanogenmod?

Regards

©2009-2011 Mike Gleason jr Couturier All Rights Reserved