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I bought this phone in India and brought it home to USA. In India I had no issues in connecting to 3G network but after coming back to USA I am no longer able to connect to 3G network (AT&T). I know the phone operates in a different frequency but I wanted to know if there is a way to tweak this.

I got excited when I saw a similar link posted on another forum but that did not work on my phone.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks...

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1 Answer

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AT&T's 3G works in the 1900 MHz and 850 MHz frequencies.

Even though HTC Sensation XE is listed as supporting the 850 MHz frequency, it is only using it for slower 2G (EDGE) speeds. For 3G it's using T-Mobile's HSDPA bands 900/1700/2100 MHz. Unfortunately no amount of tweaking in the phone's software will make it work on AT&T's 3G bands, since this is a hardware difference in the phone's modem.

There are very few phones that work on both T-Mobile and AT&T's 3G frequencies - those are called "penta-band". The new Samsung Galaxy Nexus is one of them, along with older Nokia models E7, N8 and N9 phones, for example.

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Fun fact, the T-Mobile Vibrant only uses 1700/1900/2100 for 3G and works on AT&T as well. It's quadband 2G though. – Matthew Read♦ Jan 24 '12 at 14:41
Interesting! I haven't seen other phones that are in both 1700/2100 AND 1900 3G frequencies. Do we have a community wiki question on carrier bands for 2G/3G/4G? If not, we should definitely start one up. – Chahk Jan 24 '12 at 15:38
So that I understand it correctly... If I change my service to T-Mobile I might get 3G speeds on my phone. – logik6 Jan 25 '12 at 11:53
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@logik6 Yes, you should be able to get 3G speeds on T-Mobile. I would suggest trying a friend's T-Mobile SIM card or walking into a T-Mobile store and asking them to confirm by using one of their cards. – Chahk Jan 25 '12 at 13:53

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