About six months ago I gave my wife my old Galaxy Nexus phone. When I gave it to her I didn’t wipe it clean, I just added her username to it.
For the past month she had been complaining that her phone was getting a worse and worse signal. She claimed that internet access only worked on wifi and that all other data was out the window as soon as she lost a wifi hotspot.
I played with a bit and initially I thought she was wrong because I was able to get data using the cellphone (turning wifi off). I explained to her that we lived in a very remote area where cellphone data was spotty and that once she got to a city, things would be better.
However, as days progressed, it got to the point where NOTHING worked and I could not even get it to work. The catalysts was this message when she was using Google Voice: “google voice there was a network error while trying to sign in”
The message would only happen when off wifi. I looked at her APN settings and compared them to mine, there were a couple of fields missing (namely proxy server and proxy port) and I set them. I tried again and nothing… same issue. I then swapped SIM cards and nothing. I then thought, perhaps it’s her account, so I tried with mine… no luck. I too got the same message (even though it worked perfectly on my phone).
Keep in mind, all along she had internet access and we could even do a speedtest. That’s what was so mind-blogging. Why was Google Voice traffic being treated differently than browser traffic (yes, I know that was possible, but WHY?)
Anyway, finally I decided to wipe the phone clean and that did the trick. Suddenly, her phone was working perfectly. Everything worked, and as far as data was concerned, it was even faster than before.
So next time your phone becomes a little buggy over time, it may time to wipe it clean.