LG VX 4500 Phone Reboot Issue

This article was originally posted on www.howardforums.com on 07/29/2004 and has been modified for updates since. This page last updated April 21, 2005.

Help! Verizon CDMA VX4500 reboots constantly in one certain cell

Carrier: Verizon

Phone Info:

LG VX4500 Phone: S/W Ver. T45VZV02, PRL 50233, ERI 50018.
This is my 3rd replaced 4500. The first one did the same thing, as did the 2nd.
Been to Customer Service in person multiple times. Exchanged the phone twice. Still no luck.

Symptom:

Phone will reboot on it's own in 1X or IS-95 STANDBY MODE within a specific Verizon home area macro cell. I say macro-cell, as it's a cell that serves a very large region of Southern New Hampshire (the tower is on top of an 800 foot hill and has a swath of miles in every direction). The phone only exhibits this in this cell. No other cells I have traveled in demonstrate this problem (in NH, MA, NY, etc.), at least thus far anyway's.

Along a certain road (Rt 101A in Amherst and Milford, about 2 miles long), the phone will CONSTANTLY reboot, over and over again, in STANDBY/IDLE mode. If I can make a call quick enough, it wont reboot while in a call (but most of the time, I can't even make a call because it reboots so fast once it has service again in standby idle mode).

It seems to do this on the edges of this macro-cell more often with lower RSSI/Rx Power levels (I know it's the same cell by doing Field Test mode with this and other phones in the months and years past). I have also had it reboot once or twice in this cell when being very close to the tower with RSSI/Rx Power levels in the low -50's. BTW, in all reboot cases, the phone reported that it had service, albeit marginal, all times.

Also, I have tried forcing the phone into IS-95 mode (P_REV5) and the same thing happens.

All of my other CDMA phones never demonstrate this behavior, only this LG phone, and I'm puzzled as to what's happening.

Update April 21, 2005: I have contacted LG USA, and they state that they connot help me either.

I have BitPim and have used it to look at some of the error log files on the phone. I don't know what I'm looking for, though. I want to see if there is a reboot reason or some cause codes stuck in one or more of those log files so I can nail down what the heck the phone is doing. Anyone know?

I have not tried *22899. The PRL and data transfer stuff has nothing to do with this behavior of the phone. The phone does this in a native VZW market (SID 28), and only in IDLE mode (no voice or data being transferred, other than the IS-2000 protocol.

Anyone out there who has any insight, I would very much appreciate. I would love to put the phone into field test mode, connect a data cable, and get real-time data dumps in any format so I can see what's going on. Is there some other Service Menu item that I can use to help debug this?

Specific Help Asked for:

If there was a way, in debug mode, to have the phone pump out it's Field Test data to the serial port, that would be helpful.

Also, with BitPim I can see the error log files and their contents in the phone, but I don't know how to interpret the raw data and error codes in there. If someone who knows can share this information with me, I will be eternally grateful.

My Hypothesis :

My latest hunch is that when the phone generates it's CDMA Walsh Code, derrived using the Phone Number, combined with the Pilot Channel on ine of the sectors on this cell site, it blows chunks. I have recently read cases of this, and people had their phones numbers changed and the problem went away.

At this time, I cannot change my phone number. Maybe in the future when I switch wireless providers.

If you can help in any way, I'd like to hear from you!!

www.necellularsites.net