I have experienced that updating Device OS since 1.3.1-rc1 has resulted in Borons become totally unusable in a state of permanent disconnection. Particle has made a usable LTE IoT product in 1.3.1-rc1. Particle seems to have subsequently destroyed this product by making it impossible to have a Boron that will not enter a state of permanent disconnection where there is cell signal where there is intermittency to said signal like in virtually every place.
Anecdote #1: 8/1/2020
My trusted Boron 1.3.1-rc1 was performing FLAWLESSLY at “Site A”, three hours from my house, from September 2019 to June 2020. Last month, I was doing renovations at “Site A” and figured I’d place a new, fresh Boron with Device OS 1.5.2 (Warning: This was a HIGHLY stupid decision. I should not have trusted particle updates). This was “the June 2020 swap”.
Prior to the June 2020 swap, the 1.3.1-rc1 Boron would occasional disconnect due to legitimate cellular signal fluctuations, and it would ALWAYS faithfully reconnect. All in all, I bet I had about 95% uptime. Perfect.
The June 2020 swap to 1.5.2 significantly and noticeably killed uptime. It was only a few days until “The 8/1/20 Upgrade”, and admittedly 1.5.2 always did reconnect, but it was offline for MUCH more time. Same spot, same antenna, same everything except Boron unit and Device OS.
Then, on 8/1/20 during another renovation visit, I got the even stupider idea to update to V2.0.0-rc1. I was enticed by Particle’s self-advertised, alleged cellular improvements as part of said update. Oh the cruel irony.
After updating the new June 2020 previously-connecting Boron to 2.0.0-rc1, it would not connect. I left the site. I still have not had one single successful packet upload 2.5 days layer. The cloud API indicates a brief (few minute) connection a few hours later on 8/1, and then total disconnected death ever since.
Anecdote #2: 8/3/2020
I have a local test Boron on my deck, testing for a new deployment. It is V2.0.0-rc1 and is in good suburban cell reception (not really challenging the reconnect behavior). It was uploading for a few days.
Then, last night at 1am, it disconnected.
Then, this morning at 11am, it was still disconnected flashing green and never having once reconnected, despite perfect cell signal, for ten whole hours. It completely failed to reconnect. 10 hours of power and perfect cell signal, and no reconnect.
Then, at that moment at 11am this morning, I power cycled said flashing-green Boron. Within 30 seconds it connected to the cloud. (Proving that it is a Particle software issue, and not any hardware or external factor which is the cause).
Why is this happening? Does Particle offer me a usable product where I can upload IoT data over cellular?
To make matters more laughably worse, I cannot even downgrade to V1.3.1-rc1 on said Boron: Entire Boron platform for me is destroyed: cannot use Boron with older Device OS versions
Any help is appreciated.