Fixing Samsung Galaxy S3 after Android 4.4.2 upgrade

I have a Samsung Galaxy S3 with Virgin Mobile. I updated to Android 4.4.2 yesterday. This afternoon, the LTE network did not work. Symptoms were that the network showed as “Samsung” instead of “Virgin Mobile.” Reboots of the phone, and pulling the battery out/waiting/reinstalling the battery did not work.

I found some postings online which suggested that a manual PRL Update followed by a Profile Update would fix the problem, but it did not.

The cure seems to be a phone restart, then enter ##72786# and wait while the phone does some background updates and automatic reboots. Eventually, on the 3rd reboot, the annoying Virgin Mobile “rave dance” wallpaper/music played and my phone connection appears to be working properly (shows that it’s connected to “Virgin Mobile” network now).

Update June 20, 2014: After doing the above fix, I lost 4G (LTE/CDMA) connection, and could only connect via CDMA. Doing a Profile update, then a PRL update, then another Profile update seems to have restored the LTE/CDMA.

In addition, the 4.4.2 Android update seems to have brought Bluetooth tethering ability to the phone! More investigation of this to come…