Android Mobile phone help needed - admin level changes

[3anascooter]

Problem
18 mths back we were on hols in an area where roaming wasnt included and was very expensive. A fellow holiday maker said ah you need to do xyz to stop it from using the local provider and running up charges. He then suggested going into some sort of admin mode and doing some magic behind the scenes.
This did indeed stop any usage/billing, but....

Now my phone will not roam at all. Voda has tried all sorts of things (which then can only do while I am roaming) without success, meaning the last 3 trips to europe were spent on phone/chat with Voda getting nowhere.

Also the options under Settings, Network & Internet do not show what you would expect. There is no "enable roaming" or "select network provider", in fact when picking Mobile Network is just shows "Use SIM" and a slider for on/off

I backed my phone up and set it back to factory....which gave me back all the network options i would expect.
However when i restored by phone from the backup, the settings promptly disappeared again. Now I could go back to factory and manually set eveything up (app. data etc) but that would be a PITA, but could be done as a last resort

Question
Does anyone know what magic needs to be undone to fix this? thx

[Your Dad]

If you include the make & model of phone and version of software it's running then someone may be able to assist, as not all Android phones are the same.

[SydneyBridge]

Factory reset?
Manual network selection rather than automatic, or the other way around?

[d_a_n1979]

3anascooter said:

Problem
18 mths back we were on hols in an area where roaming wasnt included and was very expensive. A fellow holiday maker said ah you need to do xyz to stop it from using the local provider and running up charges. He then suggested going into some sort of admin mode and doing some magic behind the scenes.
This did indeed stop any usage/billing, but....

Now my phone will not roam at all. Voda has tried all sorts of things (which then can only do while I am roaming) without success, meaning the last 3 trips to europe were spent on phone/chat with Voda getting nowhere.

Also the options under Settings, Network & Internet do not show what you would expect. There is no "enable roaming" or "select network provider", in fact when picking Mobile Network is just shows "Use SIM" and a slider for on/off

I backed my phone up and set it back to factory....which gave me back all the network options i would expect.
However when i restored by phone from the backup, the settings promptly disappeared again. Now I could go back to factory and manually set eveything up (app. data etc) but that would be a PITA, but could be done as a last resort

Question
Does anyone know what magic needs to be undone to fix this? thx

As already states; which phone is this?

Add that info and we'll be able to help better

Roaming is managed under SIMs generally, where it mentions mobile data etc... But that's on Google phones. It's probably slightly different on a Samsung as an example

[3anascooter]

Thanks all for chipping in.

The handset is a Moto G9 Plus (so yeah probably due an upgrade !!)
Its running Andoid V 11

I tried the reset Wi-FI, Mobile & Bluetooth option but that didnt achieve anything :-(

[3anascooter]

Also on this
"Manual network selection rather than automatic, or the other way around?"

the option to select manual or automatic doesnt even show up anymore !

and this "Roaming is managed under SIMs generally, where it mentions mobile data etc... "

under SIMS there are no options at all, other than enable/disable SIM

[Dave.]

Settings > Network & Internet > Sims > Roaming

Should be something like that?

[3anascooter]

as mentioned above there are no options at all under Settings, Mobile Network (this is where roaming, selecting provider etc should appear, but dont since the developer level magic was done)
This is all i see... a slider to turn the sim on/off

[SydneyBridge]

Have you tried another sim in the phone to see if that is any different and/or tried the voda sim in a different phone? Can then figure out if problem is with sim or phone, maybe need new sim

[Dave.]

3anascooter said:

as mentioned above there are no options at all under Settings, Mobile Network (this is where roaming, selecting provider etc should appear, but dont since the developer level magic was done)
This is all i see... a slider to turn the sim on/off

I don't think there are any Developer Mode settings which impact the function of the sim.

Do you have Vodafone or Sim app in your app drawer?

I reckon it was a USSD/MMI code he used to disable roaming.

[Bluevanman]

Go into settings,then security - and look for device administrators,it maybe in a sub menu,and tell us what the options are

[3anascooter]

Settings, Security, Device Admin Apps says “No active apps”
I don’t see any other admin things

[3anascooter]

SydneyBridge said:

Have you tried another sim in the phone to see if that is any different and/or tried the voda sim in a different phone? Can then figure out if problem is with sim or phone, maybe need new sim

I did order a new sim monday so should arrive tomorrow with luck. That resetting the phone and the options came back makes me think it’s not sim related….the options all disappeared after doing a phone restore from backup

[3anascooter]

Well just to close this out
Replacement SIM made no difference, having backed up phone, wiped it, changed SIM the n restored backup
Still had same issue

So just wiped phone and manually installed all my apps again and accepted that phone call lists, SMS history etc would be gone. Thus far the SIM options all seem to be back to normal so something in the backup/restore process was bringing back whatever weird settings had been changed to disable all the SIM options.
Amazing how many apps you need...of course would have helped a lot had I written down all the apps I had, but wasn't that smart, so gradually adding more as I need em

Edited by 3anascooter on Saturday 6th July 21:32

[jimmyjimjim]

You could also restore your backup (and get your issue again), then use SMS Backup & Restore to backup SMS messages before defaulting the device again. Then restore from this separate backup.

At work I run some apps that pull configs from cell phones for troubleshooting this sort of issue (not strictly my day job, but occasionally useful to check things that should have been checked before it got to me).

It would be interesting to have seen a before and after snapshot of the roaming cfg.