I'm raising an issue affecting Exynos Samsung phones on EE's network when connected to Nokia RAN. The issue seems to be that certain bands are basically invisible to Exynos Samsung phones. I also have NSG logs to back this up.
As default, the network is reporting to my phone to look for two N78 carriers (646080 & 636768). But firstly, my site doesn't have N78, and secondly, it's not reporting the presence of other bands to my phone, such as N1 and N28. This appears to be a pretty wide issue on the network, affecting many users and leaving them with absolutely no NR connection, just the underlying LTE network with a ULI (aka Fake 5G, Transparent 5G icon).
When going into band selection on my phone and either locking out n78 entirely OR locking to n1 or n28 specifically, the network then reports the missing bands to my device, allowing me to utilize NR from the site.
I've specifically seen this issue in the following phones: Samsung S21, Samsung S21 Ultra, Samsung S22 Ultra, Samsung A54, all Exynos-powered phones. When using an iPhone 12, iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro, Pixel 8 Pro, and S23 Ultra (Snapdragon powered), there are absolutely no problems at all. Just to note, all the Exynos devices have no trouble connecting to Ericsson RAN or Huawei RAN.
I will attach the NSG logs below: Example of site reporting 2x N78 NR Carriers:
This has been a problem for a while now and I hope this thread gets raised to the correct team at EE. It's very frustrating having to buy a different phone just to be able to use EE 5G network properly.
ISP: BT Full Fibre 150 - Main Sim: EE PayM 24M 100GB (£13.50/month) - Phones: iPhone 15 Pro, Samsung S21
Update: Our Customer Experience Team have recently concluded their investigation. It was found that the issue is only present in handsets purchased from a third party (which do not have the EVR CSC code). Phones purchased direct from EE (identifiable by the EVR CSC code) received an update from Samsung to fix the issue back in 2023. Phones from other sellers didn’t get that update because they use a different CSC code. The exception is the Galaxy S21, this device can’t use EE 5G FDD carriers due to a chipset firmware limitation (ie this device only supports 5G n78 carriers on EE network, as the EE 5G network only used n78 at the time of its launch). Our network engineers are currently testing new software for our 5G masts that may improve the issue for other devices.
