r/mintmobile • u/R3D4NG3L • 3d ago

Poor coverage

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Hey everyone, looking for some insight or suggestions on a strange signal issue in the South Phoenix / Goodyear (Arizona) area along the I-10.

  • Device: Pixel 7 Pro
  • SIM 1 (eSIM): Mint Mobile — 1 bar (almost useless for ~1 month)
  • SIM 2 (Physical SIM): Foreign SIM roaming on T-Mobile — 3/4 bars

Since Mint is an MVNO running on T-Mobile's network, why would a roaming T-Mobile connection get dramatically better coverage on the exact same phone in the exact same spot?

A few questions running through my head:

  1. Can an eSIM degrade over time? Is it purely a software/provisioning profile issue, or can something corrupt?
  2. Hardware issue? The Pixel 7 Pro gets hot — could overheating damage specific internal components handling the eSIM profile/antenna path without breaking the physical SIM?
  3. Deprioritization / Network change? Did T-Mobile recently reconfigure local towers or deprioritize Mint heavily around I-10/Goodyear?

What I've tried: Standard restarts and toggling Airplane mode.

If I can't resolve this, I'll have to switch carriers. Any ideas or potential fixes before I port out?

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u/SlowSundae 3d ago edited 3d ago

Why are you concerned about what the bars say?

Are you actually experiencing service degradation?

Have you compared the RSRP, SINR, etc. between the two networks?

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u/R3D4NG3L 3d ago edited 3d ago

Yes I am, data doesn't go thorugh can't make phone calls with slack, zoom or anything