How to Force Android Phone to Use 3G Network Only

3G network is much faster than 2G and your phone might automatically switched to use 2G when phone guess 3G signals are weak. But, weak 3G signal may be better than strong 2G network. So if you want to stop Android phone from switching data from 3G to 2G then you can do that by accessing Android Device Testing menu.

See also: Save Data Usage on Android

Note: You have to be careful when changing any phone settings by following instructions below. Please don’t attempt until you know what you are going to do, we are not responsible for any damages.

This guide is testing on Samsung Galaxy S4 and S3, I hope this will work on different Android phone.

Force Android Phone to Use 3G

• Dial *#*#4636#*#* from Android phone dialer and you will see a Testing menu.
• Tap the “Device Information” option to open the settings.
• Here, you will notice device related information like, IMEI number, Network name, Signal strength, Data network type and lots of technical information.
• Scroll down and find  “Set preferred network type:”, Tap the drop-down menu to see the list of network type.
• Select “WCDMA only” option from the list to force phone to use 3G network only.

After changing this settings, now you are forcing phone to use only 3G data network. Remember when you don’t have 3G signals around this will not switch to 2G network automatically and you have to change the settings to “WCDMA preferred” option.

Also remember the above mentioned code *#*#4636#*#*  so you might need it frequently.