Gadgetory

Google's Nexus 4 is essentially an lg optimus G which has LTE support so why don't we I'm Joe Levi for pocket now and we're Android power users here's how to get LTE on your Nexus 4 first up some disclaimers this information has been around for a while a lot of you may be saying this is old news there have been some recent advancements and that's why we're sharing it right now the initial problem was the Nexus 4 doesn't have LTE in it it's not entirely true see it did when it originally came out you just have to go in and turn it on and set up your APN correctly well that would stick around for a little while and then no longer work and then Google pressed out a patch that turned that off so we couldn't do it anymore after that certain hacks were released that let us do that again but again it's been somewhat difficult the biggest hurdle so far and the reason that we've put off showing this to you until today is Android 4.3 see one of the problems with this hack before we get into the problems let's get into the guts of why why this isn't in the phone to begin with it's not in the phone simply because it's not FCC approved to be in the phone and Google wanted to cut some corners and save some money with LTE that makes sense right so there's not all the stuff that you need to get LTE in the phone at least not optimally some people have said there's no LTE amplifier there's no LTE antenna blah blah blah the chip is there the firmware for the radio exists the settings obviously exist so what's the problem well that FCC certification is really needed to do that in a legitimate way of course it's the same essential hardware as the Optimus G which does have FCC certification so I'm not too worried about it first set of problems the bands are somewhat limited Rogers you should be ok t-mobile LTE yep you're good AT&T some others it may be hit or miss probably not keep that in mind you can go ahead and try this it's not going to hurt anything if you don't have LTE for that particular carrier or that particular band rather so you may as well give it a shot last problem is Android 4.3 support now the reason that this is taken so long as up until just well not long ago if you wanted to use Android 4.3 and this hack you had to give up voice audio on your phone calls at least on t-mobile which I have and it was painful and I wasn't really prepared to show you this and say hey this is great until the upgrade and then if you do you're kind of out of luck now that's changed there are some new hybrid radios out there that combine 0.27 and point three three or the point eight four and blah blah blah yeah it works now so there's no reason not to show this to you right now and get you going there's the long intro hope it was worth it to you let's get down to flashing first up you're going to need a rooted phone this does require root I have rooted this and I'm booted up into recovery mode the next thing you're going to need one of two different zip files to flash that's a new firmware for your radio like I said there are two versions now the point to 7/8 for hybrid and the point 3 3/8 for hybrid either one of them worked for me the point 3 3 worked better for me but your mileage may vary so try them both and see which performance you get better enough with that I've gone ahead and downloaded this so let's go ahead and flash this we want to install zip from sdcard do that we'll choose the zip from sd I'm user 0 and it should be in my downloads and right here you can see these are the old versions I'm running on 0.33 right now point two seven I had in there as well the one that we want now is the point three three eight four hybrid so we're going to go ahead and select that one do we want to install it yes now I'm going to have links to all of this the thread is very helpful the download links I'm going to have those in the article over at pocketnow.com the links down in the descriptions as you can see here it's writing the modem image this takes just a second to go through and do and it's just that simple we're done all we got to do now is reboot and make sure that our settings are correct so that we're utilizing that new radio next we need to make sure that 4G or LTE is turned on you can see mine already is but this is how you need to go through and do that sometimes this happens automatically sometimes more than often it does not especially the first time so we go into settings and we're going to come down in here to more under Wireless and networks once we're in there go to mobile networks and then we're going to want to change our network mode so that preferred is LTE GSM WCDMA hey if you just do this one you're not going to get HSPA or your 3G speeds if you do this you're going to get that and then fall back to edge so make sure you keep that in mind select that and one more thing and we're all set next up also underneath the mobile network settings is our access point names tap that and here's where you'll need to possibly add an addition to do that just click on the plus sign and you can add that in there here's what it needs to be very simple all of this other stuff you don't have to worry about all you've got to do is make sure your APN is set to fast dot t - mobile comm once that's done you should be good to go you'll want to go ahead and reboot at this point just to make sure everything's all set and then you should see if you're in a 4G area like I am your H should take and change over to 4G that can take a little bit of time the first time around next thing we need to do test our speeds so before running your speed test net which is a great app I love it make sure you turn off your Wi-Fi if you're not you're going to be testing your Wi-Fi speed not your LTE speed so you can see here I've got full bars I'm going to go ahead and begin test you'll notice a few minutes passed that's because I was getting some updates to apps and I didn't want that to happen as you can see 12 megabit per second coming down that's not too bad now in this same location during off-peak times like you know the middle of the night I'll easily get 30 megabit per second down and 9 to 10 megabit up so really really impressive let's run that again just in case you don't believe this again no Wi-Fi there this is just for G 1415 megabit per second down switch over to up and eight to nine megabit up and this is now 8 a.m. so it's starting the workday when everybody's starting to use this so wow I'm impressed one other thing I do want to say battery life on LTE I always thought was going to be hideous it's actually better than HSPA in my experience so if you're not getting these kinds of speeds try to get at an off-peak time of day and if you're still not getting them try flashing the other run again this one is not the other run the other radio this one is 0.3 3/8 for try the point to 7/8 for see if it performs better for you if it does go ahead and switch to it use that one there's really no reason to use one over the other whichever performance works best now like I said the reason we haven't showed you this before is there was an audio problem so when you were getting phone calls you wouldn't be able to hear the other person or more likely they wouldn't be able to hear you this all-in-one fixed that but Android 4.3 broke that again until these hybrid roms so now you can use it on both Android 4.2 and Android 4.3 without any problem at all so that's how to get LTE on your Nexus 4 I hope you found it helpful if you did give the video a thumbs up to share that helpfulness with other P well if you like seeing these tips please subscribe also why not share it with your friends on your favorite social media networks on Twitter we're at pocket now and I'm at Joe Levi thanks for watching catch you next time