Nokia halts 1308 firmware update for AT&T Lumia 920, citing connectivity issues

By Daniel Rubino
last updated

Earlier this week we addressed the ongoing connectivity problems users are experiencing with their Nokia Lumia 920s, specifically on AT&T (global users do not appear to be affected, though we’re not certain). The issue results in slowed down data connections, missed calls/test messages or on occasion no data at all, even if only temporarily and it is tied directly to the recent firmware update that rolled out in the last 10 days on AT&T.

Nokia Care US has now responded in a tweet to a customer regarding the update (and future fix) with the following:  “We're aware & update has been temporarily paused. New update will be available in the near future. We'll keep you posted.”

In an accompanying poll of Lumia 920 users on our site, 71% of those on AT&T were exhibiting “issues” with connectivity on their device following the update (compared with just 30% of international users; there were 1,381 respondents for AT&T).

Poll Results

The good news we expect this to be a rapid-response fix once the problem is quantified, meaning users should be prompted in the near future for an over-the-air update to quickly patch the firmware--having said that it can be frustrating for Lumia 920 users on AT&T, especially in LTE areas, who are experiencing random, reduced performance of their flagship phones.

We’ll follow up with more as it comes in.

Source: Nokia Care US (Twitter); Thanks, Jeroen S., for the tip!

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.

124 Comments
  • Good, because now my Live Tiles aren't working either.
  • That moment when WP8 meets WP7.8, interesting.
  • Your Live tiles should have nothing to do with the update. If you've done a soft refresh, the Live tiles may stop working. Try doing a regular reboot
  • I did a soft reset multiple times, still have the connectivity and Live Tile issue.
  • I know this will sound crazy, but try clearing your browser history, and then do a soft reset.
  • You have to restart phone once you soft reset it. Otherwise, live tile does not work.
    If still does not work, try to clear IE cache & re-pin them.
  • Are you sure? Because I just noticed the same thing.
  • My live tiles have stopped working along with my ffffound lock screen pic changer as well. Will give these fixes a try. Good to know a fix is on the way.
  • Oh crap this is happening to me as well. I've noticed the wpcentral live tile doesn't update automatically as well. Same thing with chronos calendar. You think this update has something to sk with it?
  • If you truly have this bug then that makes sense as your live tiles may need the web to update...
  • Yup...Weather Flow, WPCentral, Endgadget, Nextgen Reader, all not updating, very annoying.
  • Oh, and Draw Something is completely broken now too, keeps throwing a network error back at me when I try to submit a pic, then closes out the game and deletes the pic...that sucks.
  • Try thus to fix live tiles not updating: Unpin tiles in question.
    Uninstall apps of said app tiles.
    Clear IE history (clears cache and such as well)
    Restart/soft reset
    Reinstall apps
    Re-pin tiles
    Give it an hour or two to get back in sync. Had the same problem and this cured it for me.
  • Uninstalling is not necessary. Do this: settings>background tasks
    Disable all tasks and check the box to turn them back on upon opening the app
    Clear IE browsing history
    Turn phone off and then back on (soft reset doesn't help)
    Open each app to enable background tasks Make sure you don't have more than 6 background tasks going.
  • Yeah mine is the long version, some people have said just unpinning and clearing IE history didn't work so the added uninstall step is a worst case scenario.
     
    And about the 6 background task thing, that's not a limitation on WP8 so it shouldn't be the cause of any tiles not working.  I have had 8-10 going since November with no problems.
  • I'm going to try all suggestions when I get home from work, I'll advise in a few...thanks for the tips everyone.
  • Live tiles stopped working,
    Simply plugging L920 into pc worked for me. No idea how or why, but it did.
  • Hmmm...
  • The product support for Nokia is absolutely night and day compared to my old Dell-Venue-Not-So-Pro.
  • Yup
  • +1
  • I've noticed it but my calls and texts still send with no problem. Nice to see a fix coming probably in the next month.
  • I just hope it comes soon so I don't have to switch phones. I really WANT to love Nokia, but I never had issues with my HTC phones. Had these and many other problems on each of my Nokia phones.
  • I hope it's sooner than one month. My 4th Lumia 920 is on the way and this is just one more issue that is making me second guess things.
  • Good because it just stops pulling data and does nothing or randomly becomes a hot mess.
  • Nokia is on their $h!7.... Terrific support!!
  • Releasing broken untested updates is Not terrific support. It's pathetic support.
  • 3D pie chart? Really?
  • Complaining about a 3D pie chart? Really? 
  • Lol +1
  • Complaining about complaining about a 3D pie chart?  Really?
  • Calm yourself, Daniel, it was only in jest :)
    As a PhD candidate (or maybe you got it already) who is very careful about controlled testing (see here), you should be aware of the data skewing that 3d pie charts present. I'm only looking out for you and your data, buddy. We're all people here. I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles, and we could all eat it and be happy.
     
    SHE DOESNT EVEN GO HERE.
  • Was a PhD candidate ("ABD"). Now I write about phones in my PJs :O and fair enough on the criticism
  • look at all that front camera dust.
  • As I've stated previously, it's where I keep my cocaine.
  • Now why didn't I think of that? Thanks Daniel!
  • Lolol +5
  • You crazy mofu. I knew you had big nostrils for a reason. (I think that's how you spell it) ;)
  • LOLOLOLOLOLOL +1
  • lollol
  • Is the update rolling out for all lumias or is this strictly for 920s. Because I have an 810 and have absolutely 0 free space and I can't get a straight answer.
  • Nothing for the 810 yet. Just follow our site and we'll tell you when that happens.
  • Just got 33Mbps off ATT LTE on 920 so no issues there, but my battery life seems worse after the update.
  • My battery has been horrible since the update.
  • The problem with the update isn't the speed, it's that the connection is unstable. Constant changes with LTE/4G/nothing harms the batteries since it's struggling to keep the signal.
  • I can get over 40 Mbps on my 920 in Vegas on AT&T. Other times, I can't get it to connect, even with three bars. It clears up with a reboot (usually), but it's very irritating. But I'm glad to see they're responding quickly to it!
  • *sigh*
  • Does anyone know if it is possible to deactivate LTE on the 920? If that's the problem, I'd rather turn it until the issue is resolved. Getting phone calls and texts is more important that fast data when I'm away from WiFi.
  • You *used* to be able to do this through a menu trick, but ironically it was disabled via the 1308 update. So short answer is "no" :/
  • Have you notices wpcentral app live tile not update by itself??
  • Not just that, other apps too(at least in my case) + Battery draining faster than usual, aaaand the most annoying thing I just noticed is my LTE -> 4G -> no bars -> E -> LTE and back to 4G and on for the last 20 min straight. And, when I do have LTE, I test call and guess what? The phone doesn't ring. I have a freaking brick for a phone. WTF!
  • I hate it when I miss my "test" messages too! grrr so angry
  • Agreed. This is pretty bad.
  • Daniel why you no fix typo!?
  • Nokia and Microsoft QA need to step it up a bit here. Once you get a reputation for crap updates it is very hard to reverse that in the public's mind. First the 8858 debacle and now this. It's unacceptable.
  • I can't help but think that these are the kinds of things the carrier should catch. Alternatively, having a larger population of beta testers in the wild would be helpful. In exchange for reporting detailed metrics for a week, give early access. Randomly give half the users the update and watch for statistically significant drops in connectivity, increase in crashes, battery usage, etc.
  • I agree - this is totally unacceptable.
     
    On the other hand, I hope that this does not make AT&T go the way of Verizon/Android-phones and end up tightening up on future OS upgrades that we go back to getting them once a year again (if even that often)....
  • Hopefully soon...cause if one more person asks me why I keep double texting them.....
  • I hear ya... Same thing has been happening with my L920 since November. So annoying. 
  • I get connectivity glitches and occasional live tile update failures now, so getting a fix soon is required. I'm so glad, as ALWAYS, Nokia is on it!!! And I get the "double text" complaints too,...
  • Has anybody heard if any update is coming to Canada..I live up here and I have a Lumia 920
  • Glad to see that they're working on a fix soon. (Never doubted that they would.) I would suggest in the future that all WP users set their update settings to "let me know when an update is ready" and not to download automatic updates, because this can happen to anyone... When I was using Blackberry, I always waited a couple days to see how the update changed the OS, and if anyone noticed anything unpleasant to decide if I wanted the update. But in this case, it can help someone avoid more than just a few unwanted features. Anyway hope all is well soon. :)
  • It doesn't apply the update automatically, it just downloads them. It's like the update settings in many auto-updating software ("Download and notify me when ready to install" vs. "Notify me when updates are available, but don't download anything").
  • I wonder if they will address the issue with some phones not being able to clear out temp files. When I go into storage check, it just continues to spin.
  • Change your settings for time to lockscreen to allow that thing to spin and spin forever without the phone going into lock mode.  That eventually (after over 5 minutes) allowed it to finish and list the app sizes for me.  However, it is still pretty useless:
    - It lists the apps and their sizes, but you can't uninstall the apps from there.  So, if you want to remove a few big apps, you have to remember which ones they are and then go and uninstall them the usual way.
    - Clearing the "unknown" used space to free it up does not neccessarily make that space available to other apps or for app installations.  I had to have over 3GB free space before I could install the ~750MB Batman game....
  • Just out of curiosity, would the new update still be 1308 or something like 1309 or so? :D Getting update a little late is better than getting updated with such bugs. *India, waiting for 13xx firmware* :-\
  • I'm sure they will look into other regions and carriers for these issues and issue the patched update accordingly.
  • I have an 8x and wpcentral app is a hit and miss with updating. Most of the time it does, but I still get the black square. The funny part is that this has happened since one of either the phone update or the actual app updates, but this wasn't happening 2 months ago.
  • No problems ever.  Don't know how or why I got so lucky with this Lumia 920, but no complaints from me.
  • I've had no problems at all, EE uk and im loving the camera part of the update photos are so much better
  • Have you had any issues with WiFi? since the update my WiFi will not connect to any connection, everything else is working ok but lack of WiFi is a big issue!?
  • Good to know there is a fix and luckily I have my L900 I can use in the meantime since my phone barely works at my job.
  • Fix can't come soon enough. LTE connectivity is up/down randomly, live tiles not updating - as someone else stated...a hot mess. Hug blow for device loyalty and WP8 adoption. Apple and Google are snickering in the corner.
  • Yeah, a couple of my friends are starting to question my platform choice.
  • Nice to see Nokia finally recognizing the issues... Would be even nicer if they would do a proper firmware testing before releasing it to the users.
  • Do you think this might also fix the problem I'm having? Storage Check never showed up and all of my Nokia system apps are current. I did have random signal dropouts, but I thought it was just me, hmmm.
  • Yes, disappearing "storage check" is one of the bugs... Just in case - try to restart the phone, see if it appears... If not - wait for a fix.
  • Yeah, see, it never shows up to begin with. I manually updated the system apps through links and nothing, I haven't tried hard resetting though. Last time that bricked my phone. I have a Red L920 and I had to reflash it (first month), I curious if that has anything to do with it. I got the portico update just fine, and my phone is dev unlocked (I have an account)
  • I have this problem ,call not coming in on my phone and miss text messages
  • After the upgrade the performance of Spotify is horrible too. Don't even think about paying it because it keeps forgetting where it left off.
  • So glad Nokia is on top of this and will be providing a fix soon.  Still love my 920.  I am home most of the time and usually turn off my data to increase battery life.
    As far as my live tiles, they seem to be working.  I don't have more than 6 background tasks running.  I finally fully restored my 920 to get rid of the Access Point function.  Now my tethering is working again.
  • My live tiles are not updating.
  • Nokia is its own worst enemy...
  • dear diary. its been 5 days since I had to go back to ios. and I hate it.
  • The pie chart footer has a date of 3/3/13, but it should be 4/3/13.
  • Nice job on the 3d polling graphic. These visuals are the exact thing that companies use in board meetings to solve problems. I remember looking for one for those experiencing dust and proximity sensor issues.
  • Still not having a problem. I must be living right at last :D
  • Thank God I haven't had issues
  • That's why I couldn't update my 3rd L920. I may wait as well and uncheck auto update. Both times the phone crashed was trying to hard reset it, figure that would be an easy thing.
  • How do you run Speedtest.net on your cellular data connection? I assume you have to turn WiFi off. When I do and open the Speedtest App, it reports a "Network Communication Issue".
  • Speedtest app is buggy... Do this: open it while using WiFi, then press on "Windows" button to minimize it, go to settings and switch off WiFi, then use "back" button until you get back to Speedtest, then run the test... Should work this way.
  • What about battery? After this update battery went to shit. And that's putting it nicely!!
  • flashed my device back to 1249 after dealing with connectivity issues for a day and a half. no issues since going back, just carefully followed the sticky in the forums for the 920, opting to use the 1249 image instead of the one mentioned in the post.
  • Glad to finally see an article about this. To the user above who lost live tile updates - so did I - I did a hard reset and then the phone showed me spinning gears for over 4 hours so I flashed my Lumia 920 using the instruction on the WPCentral forum for bricked phones. I finally have my live tiles functioning but I am showing no LTE and I live where there is LTE. This update sucked and cost me days of work. I am glad to hear they pulled it. Now they need to get my LTE back as soon as possible!
  • Sorry I meant "live tile updates" in my comment above. Also I tried everything mentioned above before I did a hard reset. Since this phone has no comprehensive backup I knew I was looking at a TON of work to get back and running. Uninstalling/re-installing, unpinning/repining, background task disablement. Many soft resets - nothing worked. I was left with a wipe which went badly and then a flash. But I am up and live tiles updating - just no LTE like before the update was pushed out. I wanted to add in case anybody needs to flash - I also used image 1249 like m0unds and am now okay. AT&T sucks for LTE in Los Angeles due to "overcrowding" (that is what they tell me) with or without the new 1308 update.
  • This update didn't fix that my 920 thinks I'm ~900 miles from where I actually am when using any app that functions with GPS tracking. Pretty awesome that it doesn't know where I am by a factor of 900 miles. Hopefully another update will fix it. Right now anything that uses GPS is completely useless.
  • Very bad connection problems since the update! Full LTE bars and texts aren't going through. Won't connect to Netflix or search the web. Oh, Nokia! What have you done to my beautiful Lumia 920??
  • Don't know if it is related or not, but I did notice since the update wifi doesn't always work.  Restart fixed it, but battery life was horrible until I restarted.
  • I had awful battery life over the weekend...I think restart fixed it.
  • My issue hasn't changed much before or after the update! 4G LTE is faster but doesn't travel through walls any better then 3G does! I am sure its not Nokia's fault! AT&T sold everyone on this crap! Unless the update from Nokia was supposed to improve it from something that wasn't working from launch LTE is just a tiny bit faster not better! At least for me and about 50 people I know!
  • Dude, chill out. There isn't a cell signal on ANY carrier that can penetrate every wall in every type of structure built. I've worked in the RF industry for 17-years and built multiple DAS for AT&T, Verizon and Sprint.They all have trouble with interior coverage, especially in high rises and apartment buildings. For the record, my LTE has been stellar before the 1308 update. 
     
     
     
     
     
       
     
  • I was very happy to get this tweet from Nokia. Now let's hope the update arrives very soon!
  • I am an international user in Dubai, UAE and I have experienced this issue since the update of Nokia's Network+ system app on the March 19. The network dropped for hours during the day and I thought it would be solved by updating to 1308 firmware. So I used Nokia update software for retailer but the issue remained as is. This is frustrating and I had many fights with my wife as she could not reach me on my phone. Please Nokia fix ur Network+ app!
    I like your phone and I don't want to change it for some ugly android or a boring same-old-look iPhone.
  • thank god im not the only one, im also an international unlocked phone user bought fr dubai, and i had issue i think after updating network+ , this has been going for the past week and im not even on att or in 1308 firnware
  • I found a temporary solution to this issue. Go to cellular under settings and change the data connection to 3G. Switch off your phone and go back to cellular options. Change to 2G data connection and after few seconds change back to 3G. The network will come back and you can make calls. Everytime the network drops changefrom3G to 2G and back to3G again. No power cycle is required. The problem is that the network gets dropped from the phone without notice and you have to keep an eye on your Lumia.
    It's frustrating!
  • It doesnt work for me, im so pissed now bec my phone has became useless 98% of the time with no cellular connectivity. Hows yours so far? I hope nokia will also see our problem bec it must be different fr what has caused att users connectivity issues.
  • I have updated to 1308, remember? My case might be different than yours. It works for me momst of the time, and when it doesn't, i reboot the phone and it connects after 2 to 3 minutes. But to be honest, some times it does not work and I keep on trying for like an hour.
    I am thinking about rolling back to the previous release without updating network+ system app. I don't know what the drawbacks might be, but I am willing to risk anyway. It is getting on my nerves.
  • How would you roll back?
  • I got the update and I'm not having any problems, hmmm. I'll get the update when it comes, but I liked what they did.
  • Really hope a fix comes soon data is sooooo slow
  • some malaysian user having gps problem
  • This is crazy, cmon... is this hw you treat your flagship?
    cannot get anything done on mine. please hurry up MS, you dont need the bad publicity do you?
  • I'm frustrated, but atleast my data connection is working. Won't hook up to Wifi or even detect any networks, but the data works. Just using up my allotment, that's all. 
    Come on Nokia! This cannot wait. I don't want to erase the phone for a reset either, I'll just wait patiently and bash them in the forums.
  • can some tell why my lumia 920 want reboot
     
  • Txt messages dissapearing
  • I've lost connectivity a few times after updating to 1308. Restarting the phone fixes it for me. Now i know why at least :)
  • My tiles seem to be working normally again, thanks for the tips!
  • Update, for a day earlier problems seemed to cease. Noticed the location circle was no loner poping up and everything seemed fine. Now the circle is showing itself and battery is draining extremely fast at idle. Lte comes and goes. Trouble sending SMS with attachments. Apps are loading slowly. Seems as att are changing service's, possibly looking for a solution. I hope so.
  • I just realized that I've been having the same LTE connectivity issues after the 1308 update. It seems a restart will fix it temporarily, but it will reoccure and start acting up not to much later.  I hope they get the new fix out soon.  Before the LTE was blazing and next to no lag!
  • My 920 has connectivity issues using ATT in the SF Bay Area.  Three bars with LTE and no data!  Sometimes the GPS puts me across the country in NY!!  Hurry up Noikia and fix it.  You've been great so far.  
  • Is this why I haven't been able to access Nokia Music the last few days? I'm ready to dump it.
  • I haven't been able to use my phone around my house since the update.  Almost 2 weeks and I basically have no phone.  It kinda sucks and I'm beginning to wonder how long until a 'fix' is available and I get working phone again.  I have been considering trying Android again with the release of the HTC One.  That being said, I think April 16 may be decision day for me if there is no fix by then.
     
     
     
  • guys, my front camera icon dissapears after updated to 1308^^""" now my lumia 920 has no front camera function :( anyone face it too? is there any solution?
  • I've had no app updates since the 1308 upgrade.  Hope that this is just a coincidence.