Poor signal on giff gaff

413x

413x

413x

Caporegime
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Got an issue I can't solve!

My GFs phone cannot get any decent signal on her giff gaff sim

GFs phone is an EU Samsung S7
I have a UK Samsung s7 edge.

My EE sim works fine in both phones
Her giff gaff sim works fine in my phone.
But her giff gaff sim only gets 2g in her phone.
This happens everywhere

Things I have checked
APN correct
LTE enabled

Things I have thought of
EU version is missing the carrier band that giff gaff uses.

If anyone has any ideas?

Edit.
Can only figure the 4g band for giff gaff is faulty on her device.
 
Last edited:
Giff Gaff is a virtual operator who use the O2 network, not EE. Giff Giff operate on the following bands:
  • 800MHz used for 4G
  • 900MHz used for 2G/3G
  • 1800MHz used for 2G
  • 2100MHz used for 3G
If she has the S7 SM-G935f model than it has the following bands:
LTE band 1(2100), 2(1900), 3(1800), 4(1700/2100), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 12(700), 13(700), 17(700), 18(800), 19(800), 20(800), 25(1900), 26(850), 28(700), 38(2600), 39(1900), 40(2300), 41(2500)

So should be compatible. Have you checked the coverage in your area for O2, it’ll even show your local masts:
https://www.o2.co.uk/coveragechecker
 
While i appreciate giffgaff are cheap, they are not so great from a technical point of view (in my complete, solo opinion). Their agreement last time i checked with O2 is for over-capacity only with low minimum guaranteed access.

Imagine a pipe from O2 to the internet. it can go from 0 to 100% capacity. As I understood it, GG have let's say, 5% reserved for them and if the total amount of all o2 customers doesn't cover the other 95% then they can also go above 5%. There's likely more to it (total peak allowances vs con-current maxes, maybe a total limit for a day with a rolling average) but as you can see - this type of agreement is super bad in peak periods (8-10am, 4-9pm).

While your point seems to be that her device might have an issue with the SIM (does it get 3G? what is the max transfer speed you get with her GG SIM in your handset?) the fact that GG is such a poor network type means you can have a ton of issues and really never know if it's you. O2 arguably have the worst spectrum coverage of all networks now too - this wasn't such a big deal back when the licenses were first handed out but now with the rise of youtube, snap, insta and facebook (these 4 account for pretty much 90% of all traffic) bandwidth and optimisation of it is super important.
 
If I place her sim in my phone I get 4G+ and better ping and speeds than my landline broadband.

Her phone gets 4G with my EE sim

So it's only the GG sim only in her phone where the issue lies

Because of this I can only see it being one of the bands used by GG being faulty in her phone. If that's even possible


Is it possible for one band to be faulty in a phone?
 
Orcvader said:
Can you go to Settings -> About phone and see what the model number says for it?

Does she not even see 3G/H?
Click to expand...

930F. So may the European s7 like I have for my edge version.

Nope. Tiny bit of edge (signal) only.
I'm assuming the 4G band that GG/O2 use is inaccessible in her phone, but the same in my phone that band is fine. But the band EE use for 4G is fine.
 
So it should be the single SIM version. Was the phone ever locked?

F definitely supports all the UK frequencies so it's a bit of a weird one. You could try a SIM swap with giffgaff and see if a newer SIM works with the phone.
 
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