So I have home internet via my house-mate's Franklin R850 (Sprint hot spot device). The internet gets disconnected very often - random, automatic disconnects.
I'll be browsing on my laptop, and suddenly there's no internet connection. I go look at the R850, and it has turned off on its own. (It has the battery removed, it's plugged into a wall outlet, so then I have to turn it on by pressing the ON button). Some days this happens quite often. Other days it doesn't happen at all. It was purchased new, not refurbished.
Has anyone else experienced this when they used the Franklin R850? Any way to solve this problem?
I don't think the power can get interrupted. The cord is the original cord that came with it. The R850 sits on a nice, stable table, where nothing can move it or tug on the cord etc. Wonder what's going on. Could it be Sprint-related?
I am inspired! Isamorph's link mentions - "If the mobile network signal is low on the R850 Mobile Hotspot, or if devices connected via Wi-Fi have low Wi-Fi signal, the connection could be slow or freeze." So maybe Chelle's band-selection idea is the answer to my problem!
But how do I find out which Sprint bands are fast or slow in my area? (Scratching-my-head emoji here!)
I doubt a weak signal would turn off the hotspot, so I'd try the device reset first. You could try different bands while seeing how many bars the device gets on each one, but checking up and downloads speeds on each band using speedtest.net would be more precise.
I think both Chelle and Isamorph have pointed towards where you should look first: the power supply.
From your reports, peterquinn, the device is shutting off, not running slow or freezing. Tips regarding those things are useful once you get the R850 to remain powered up.
I understand that the cable and power supply are new, and in a stable location. They're exceedingly cheap devices that are way more reliable than one might expect from the cost, but also prone to failure. (And electrical outlets can also become intermittent.)
I'd start by gently wiggling the power supply where it plugs into the wall outlet, the cable exiting the power supply, and the last inch or so of the cable plugged into the hotspot.
If that doesn't reveal a problem, install the battery and run it for a couple of days. (Or long enough that you would normally have seen a couple of shut-downs.) Or, run it only on the battery through a couple of charge/discharge cycles, and see if it stays powered up reliably.
My brief reading on the R850 finds many suggestions to run it without the battery installed (including that suggestion from 4G Community), so that seems like a logical approach. I'll only note that in my trials with other hotspots, some would run, but not run reliably, without the battery. (With shutdowns or bootloops as a result.) Whether or not a hotspot will reliably run without the battery installed is a matter of electronic design.
On a couple occasions, the internet got turned off while the hotspot device was still on. Another time, it turned off by itself. So no, problem not solved as yet
Thinking of trying to check band strength, but I'm not sure I know how to do that. How exactly do I go about doing what Isamorph had suggested? -- "You could try different bands while seeing how many bars the device gets on each one, but checking up and downloads speeds on each band using speedtest.net would be more precise" Do I use a Sprint phone, or go to speedtest.net on a laptop?
If you have access to Google play store on the phone, you can download the speedtest.net app and check the speed of the internet connection while the hotspot is on one specific band or another, or do the same with the laptop by going to the speedtest.net website and running the speed tests. You might want to run the speed tests more than once since internet speeds differ from moment to moment and at different times of the day. You should have settings on the hotspot where you can set it to use a specific band and then do a speed test. Then reset the hotspot to use a different band and do a speed test on that band... and so on. I can't remember if you can set the hotspot to a specific band using both the device itself and the online portal or just the latter. Anyway, below is a link to the settings.
