O2 failure to solve Android 5.0.1 upgrade problem

[Anonymous]

After upgrading my Nexus5 from Android 4.4.4 to 5.0.1 I found it impossible to get a 4G connection (or even a 3G or any other connection apart from wifi).  With 4.4.4, 4G had worked fine. After spending most of a day trying out most of the obvious solutions I signed up for a Live Chat (written of course) with an O2 lady in India.  After asking me all kinds of irrelevant questions she emailed to me the same list of settings that I had had months before to put in manually (!) to get 4G working on 4.4.4 and which I had been entering repeatedly on 5.0.1 without the slightest success.  When I told the lady in India this, she said she would just check the data service status in my postcode area, came back a little later and assured me that there was a problem in my area, the O2 engineers were working on it and I would have 4G very soon.  I did my own check on O2 service status and found that everything was working normally.  Nul points to the lady in India.

Next I took the Nexus into the O2 shop in Wimbledon.  The friendly guy there had a casual look at it, tried putting in a new APN ("that normally works"), and when it didn't, said I would need to 'book it in' with an O2 guru at Clapham Junction where he made me an appointment for the following afternoon. 

Two hours later I showed it to my adult son, a development economist, who fixed it in three minutes flat.  (Don't ask me, or him, how.)

Nul points to the friendly guy in Wimbledon.

O2 is so good in so many ways, and so bad at technical advice and problem-solving.  Why can't O2 send these complicated settings down the line and install them automatically in the device instead of making you get the settings from O2 and put them in manually?  If Vodafone can do that, why can't O2?

Brian

[jonsie · Accepted solution]

Normally you just need to text ACTIVE  to 2020, save the settings and reboot the phone.

[anticpated]

Google is responsible for nexus updates. Try removing the apn settings and resetting the apn to the defaults.

[Anonymous]

Any luck with the advice above @Anonymous ?

[Anonymous]

>>Normally you just need to text ACTIVE  to 2020, save the settings and reboot the phone<<

Thanks for that tip.  No-one at o2 ever suggested doing that, either when I upgraded the smartphone for 4g or when I upgraded the OS to Android 5.0.1.  The eventual solution to the problem involved manually entering the o2 settings each time (both times several times before it worked).  No-one at o2 warned me that this would have to be done on either occasion.  I wonder why?  Do they think it would put people off paying extra for 4g?

[Anonymous]

Thanks -- actually there isn't any problem now, I just wondered why o2 advisers had twice failed to carry out what turned out to be quite a simple operation, and why o2 required its customers to enter these intricate settings manually.

[Anonymous]

>>Google is responsible for nexus updates. Try removing the apn settings and resetting the apn to the defaults.<<

Thanks.  I had no problem at all with Google's Android update.  The problem arose purely with the o2 settings for o2 4g, which are apparently quite different from the (Android?) default settings.  Anyway it's all working fine at the moment -- thanks to my amateur-tech-savvy son, but no thanks to o2!

[MI5]

Should you ever need them in the future, they can be found here http://www.geeksquad.co.uk/articles/o2-apn-settings#o2%20Android%20APN%20MMS%20mobile%20internet%20s...

[Anonymous]

Thanks for updating us @Anonymous I'm glad the community was able to help you Hope to see you around!

[Anonymous]

I assume that this was an automated reply as neither o2 nor "the community" helped to solve the problem at all!!!