New England Cellular Sites :: LG Phone Field Test

Field Test

For all LG VXnnnn (where 'nnnn' denotes most numbers) CDMA phones, the Field Test Mode menu can be accessed by pressing the following on the phone's keypad:

Press the 'Menu' button.

Press the '0' (zero) number.

A screen should pop up asking for the 'Service Code' and show six question marks '??????'.

Enter in six ZEROS like '000000' and you should have access to the 'Services" Menu.

DO NOT GO CHANGING ANY OF THE VALUES IN THIS MENU UNLESS YOU KNOW, WITHOUT A DOUBT, WHAT YOUR DOING.

IF YOU ACCIDENTLY CHANGE SETTINGS, YOU COULD RENDER YOUR PHONE UNUSABLE.

If for some reason the six zero service code does not unlock the services menu, then your phone has been programmed by your wireless provider phone manufacturer.

US Cellular customers have the service code different on every phone. You can find out what it is by using BitPim (available at www.sourceforge.net)and (for the LG 4400 and 4500) viewing the file nvm/nvm/nvm_0000. Look on the second line (begining with 00000010 in the right hand side near the end. For a code of 000000 it looks like this: .......000000...

If you have another carrier's phone, you will have to scout around on the 'net to find this other code. We don't have it here.

The 'Services' Menu offers the following items on the LG VX-4500:

Item 2 will put you into the 'Field Tests' menu with the following options:

1. Screen

2. Test Call

3. Errors

4. Clear Errors

5. Voice S0

6. gpsOne

7. gps Air Test

Item 1 will put you into the field test screen real time display. The following fields will be shown:

(Thank you to Rich M. @ http://www.richmazz.com for the following info!)

SID = System Identifier. They're in various databases on the Web; http://www.mountainwireless.com has a good one, and, for systems that show up as "Verizon Wireless" or "Extended Network," http://www.justalurker is good.

Ec/Io (pronounced "ee-see over eye-not") is basically a measure of how well your phone can hear the tower over all the other traffic on the channel. (Don't forget, you are sharing the 1.25 MHz channel with many other users).
A reading near 0.0 is very good. You can find low readings late at night on weekdays when traffic is low. When the reading is high (-12.0 to -15.0), quality will drop and you may even lose the call.

Note: On the VX4400, VX4500, and VX6000, the RX reading will periodically jump to "-106" and the Ec/Io will sometimes display "-31.0", these are both false readings.

If you want to get technical, another definition is as follows:
A strong signal strength does not necessarily indicate a strong Ec/Io, depending on the interference level. Ec/Io is the ratio of the signal energy within one chip duration of the pilot signal to the power spectrum of the interference + noise. Ec/Io is the CDMA specific measurement of choice for the forward link. This measurement essentially ignores the overall strength of the signal and instead concentrates on how much better the desired pilot signal is to the noise that conspires to interfere with it.

Mode = Presumably the mode. C = CDMA, A = AMPS. I've seen "S" on the VX4500 and don't know what it means, but it probably means Scanning.

Channel = The particular 1.25MHz channel on which your phone is communicating with the tower.

AC State = I think this is the amount of power the phone is using, in some form that is understandable only to LG.

Rx Power = The strength of the received signal in dBm.

Tx Power = The strength of the transmitted signal in dBm.

P_REV_IN_USE = Protocol Revision in use.
3 = IS-95A
4 = IS-95B
6 = 1xRTT CDMA2000 (sometimes called IS-2000)

Active Pilot - The particular panel of a sectorized tower or the particular tower of an unsectorized tower to which your phone is communicating. In a call, there can be more than one. (See the first page of this thread at the bottom.)

Temperature - Internal temperature of the phone in degrees C.

Battery - Battery power, in volts.

Notes:

All you need to look at is the RX power, Ec/Io (how well the phone is hearing over all the other traffic on the channel) -00.0 is good, -15.0 is pretty bad. Readings of -31.0 are false.

Active Pilot is the Pseudo Noise offset your phone is hearing. This varies by market but usually, as you go clockwise around a tower from the north, the number will advance by +168. You can use this to determine if you are going between sectors on the same tower, or switching between 2 different towers.

During a call the phone uses the Active Set of signals from up to 3 (or 6) tower sectors simultaneously. The phone adjusts the signals for their different time delays and adds them together into a single stronger signal.

At idle the phone can monitor only one pilot signal. Each pilot signal is unique, so it doesn't’t make sense to add pilot signals together. But the phone is continuously scanning all possible pilot signals and tracking the Active Set, Candidate Set, Neighbor Set, and all the remaining possible pilots.

The strongest pilot can change within a few inches or with very slight changes in how the signal travels through the air. As the various sectors get weaker or stronger the phone promotes and demotes them within and between the sets.

Receive FER % is Receive Frame Erasure Rate Percentage, the fraction of the frames of information being received that were bad and had to be thrown away. Normally you need FER below about 2% for good call quality.

There is no FER when nothing is being sent because there is nothing that needs to be erased.

Pressing CLR or END will exit you out of the Field Test screens.

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Field Test

For all LG VXnnnn (where 'nnnn' denotes most numbers) CDMA phones, the Field Test Mode menu can be accessed by pressing the following on the phone's keypad: