Force LTE or HSPA only

Although Pantech Burst is the cheapest LTE phone, it supports fully both AT&T and T-Mobile networks. Its built-in hotspot is the most featured I've seen - you can change the IP address from 192.168.43.X to anything you like and it can automatically select an available WiFi channel. It is very similar to the Pantech Element tablet, you may refer to that article for how to unlock it, root it, enable hotspot and etc.

In my area, T-Mobile HSPA and LTE signals are spotty, T-Mobile phones can only pick up the bad tower (CID) that gives only 0.3 mbps speed, but the cheap Pantech can pick up the right tower that gives 8 mbps speed on HSPA. LTE is too weak to be usable, but sometimes the phone still switches to it, resulting slow speed (theoretically LTE is faster than HSPA) and fast battery drain (too fast for charging to catch up with).

Therefore, I have been looking for a way to force the phone on HSPA only. I have found many methods and tried them, but this is the only way that works:

• Install Secret Code Revealer app, this is the same app that we use to enable hotspot.
• Run it, search codes and then go to the list.
• Launch the 368368 code, then click on RAT mode, there you can see it was set to automatic by default. You may change to UMTS (HSPA), GSM or LTE, then it won't switch automatically between them.

See this video for details: