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ks-man

S4GRU Member
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  • Phones/Devices
    Galaxy Note 2
  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Chicago
  • Here for...
    4G Information

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  1. Reopening this old thread of mine. Was reading that Sprint now may limit video streaming to 1mbps and I read on some other forums that they have always been doing this. It certainly seems that way based on my experiences.
  2. While I'm disappointed about Sprint's LTE roll out in Chicago based on what was promised (and recently read about the 1mbps limit for streaming video which seems like bull based on earlier promises) I will admit that their phone reception has improved significantly. In the past Sprint would drop calls so frequently that they weren't a viable cell phone provide IMO. Now while their data performance in congested areas is pitiful I can at least hold onto calls so I can use my phone for what it is mainly intended for. Sprint is a cheaper service provider and we can see that the promise of a better network was pure marketing spin, however if you don't want to spend more for Verizon or AT&T then Sprint can be used which in the past was debatable.
  3. I work at the Sears Tower and often find that I'll have a great LTE signal (sub 90 RSRP) while outside, especially near the Quincy El stop but my internet won't work at all or will be painfully slow (sub 100kbps). When I'm out much later at night though I'll get much better speeds and very usable internet (5-10mbps). Is this a sign of the network already being saturated? If I have that strong of an LTE signal confirmed in the engineering screen but still getting such poor speeds could it be anything other than network saturation?
  4. Definitely been seeing improvement with LTE connectivity in downtown Chicago the past few weeks. Sprint seems to be adding 4G towers in-between the first run sites and it appears to have a nice impact. Still far from perfect but I would say the likelihood of having an LTE connection downtown (Loop area) is now over 50%.
  5. I work at the Sears Tower and I connect to that site when I'm in my office but not at ground level. Currently have an RSRP of -99. Got 3.9Mbps down and 2.8Mbps up. 47ms ping. Not great for LTE but hopefully the speeds will improve with time and it will also work at ground level. --Edit-- I should mention that this LTE connection is brand new at my office. I first connected to it yesterday.
  6. No, but the internet was virtually unusable. It took close to 2 minutes to load Google's webpage so I'm pretty sure the results were accurate. There was another test I ran (same server) that was like 30kbps for download with a 450ms ping but it then stalled out. All internet was very slow, not just the tests.
  7. I was at Ft. Lauderdale airport today and got results of 400kbps with 4G and an RSRP in the low 90s. Just wondering why this would happen. I've attached my screenshots to illustrate.
  8. I have an official Samsung case. Not sure the exact name of it. I'll try and use it without the case and see if I notice a difference. Not really sure what to say. I drive from the northern suburbs to the loop everyday. Depending on traffic I'll take either the edens to the kennedy or the tri-state tollway to the eisenhower and no matter what way I go I will never have lte "all throughout". I'll certainly occasionally have LTE but it comes and goes. Connecting is hit and miss as sometimes I'll map my trip on Sensorly and I can see anywhere from 60% of the points mapped as 4G and other times only 20%. Even still my main post isn't about if I'm connecting to LTE but how the network is performing. The one thing I do want to investigate a little more is if the issue is with my slingbox as that really does account for the bulk of my usage and what is forming my opinion.
  9. I've posted before about stuff like this and unfortunately I still feel the same way. I live in Chicago and commute from the suburbs to the city every day on three different major highways depending on traffic. All three highways on the LTE site maps would make you believe that the trip would be 4G heaven. The performance has been very disappointing. My evidence is through streaming music (usually Pandora) or video (my slingbox) during my commute. Definitely the music is better than the video but neither is great and the slingbox streaming is downright poor. Not from a quality point of view (often I do audio only since I'm driving and can't watch the picture anyway) but from the stuttering, disconnections etc. I came from AT&T and an iPhone on 3G and both performed far better than my Sprint Note 2 has. I would have issues with the slingbox but far less frequently and never had issues with Pandora. I don't know if I'm not connecting to 4G or if the 4G performance is poor as I'm driving and can't check and truthfully it doesn't even matter. The main thing is that it doesn't work well and often is completely unusable. I also work in the loop and 4G becomes virtually impossible to find down here. Now don't get me wrong, there are definitely times that I'll have a strong LTE signal and browsing the net will be very speedy. I also don't regret coming to Sprint as my bill is almost half what I was paying before thanks to a family plan. In terms of speed though, I've heard that it will continue to get better and I certainly hope it will but I definitely thought by mid-April considering the Chicago push for Sprint the performance would be better by now. I can't speak much to voice quality/dropped calls as I just got a PRL with 800SMR so I want some more time to observe how my reception is before commenting.
  10. Thanks for confirming that. So I guess the only other thing to make of what I see then is that whether or not a tower that sometimes does output LTE and strong LTE is very temperamental from day to day. I often determine how my speeds/performance should be based on my location and where I know there are towers that put out LTE. Sometimes they do but other times they don't. Often if I'm in an area that I know has a tower nearby and where I've gotten strong results in the past I'll look at my phone and see LTE and full bars which is why I assumed it was accurate. If I'm getting poor performance it means that either I'm connected to a tower much further away and the tower nearby isn't sending out LTE at that time or that the tower is sending out LTE but for whatever reason i have a very weak signal from it. These towers that I'm referring to have been broadcasting LTE for months so I don't think it is an issue of it just being turned on and them still doing regular work on it.
  11. Supposed to be 60 degrees and heavy rain
  12. It's tough for me to get into the engineering screen as usually this is when I'm driving so I don't like doing too much with my phone. There are times when I'm at stop lights or bumper to bumper that I can do a quick glance or pull up the Field Test app. Most of my experience is driving on the highways into Chicago (where I work) and I'll often have my phone running my Slingbox so I can get the audio feed of a sporting event. For most of the ride on one of the major highways there "should be" very good LTE coverage. There are a ton of towers that have been upgraded and were upgraded a while ago so most of the kinks were likely worked out. Despite this I get very poor performance with constant freezes and disconnects. The performance is much worse than what I had with AT&T 3G. My thoughts are with even a weak LTE connection I should be able to hold onto a few hundred kbps of download speed but that doesn't happen and I'll disconnect once I go sub 100. I haven't seen any real improvements over the past few months. I'll get occasional great performance and phenomenal download speeds but for the bulk of the trip it isn't usable. I do realize that this is probably a poor gauge of performance as driving is likely the most difficult thing for a network to handle well do to all the pass-offs between towers but I'm really just comparing what I used to get before switching. Don't misinterpret this post and my past few. I'm very happy to have switched over to Sprint and have no intentions of leaving. I just had thought we'd be getting a little better consistency in the performance considering just how far along the Chicago market is.
  13. Robert, with all due respect, what are you basing this on? Do you have a document or something that says the Note 2 doesn’t show LTE strength? I really feel like my device is showing LTE bars based on my own logical findings. Essentially I will have full 4G bars when I am near known LTE towers. As I move away from those towers the bars will go down until there is only 1 bar or no bars left but I still maintain the 4G icon. Shortly thereafter it will switch over to 3G usually with full or 1 less than full bars. Whenever I have full 4G bars (which I can corroborate with my known towers in my area) I can then check the CDMA Field Test app and see the RSRP and it will typically be between -78 and -90 or so. When I have half 4G bars it is usually around -100 to -110 and if I only have 1 or 0 4G bars it will be less than -110. If I was seeing 1x or 3G strength with my bars it wouldn’t make sense that I always jump from virtually no 4G to full 3G. It would instead go from 0 or 1 bar of 4G to 1 or 2 bars of 3G or I would at times go from full 4G to full 3G as you are claiming I didn’t really have full 4G. None of this ever happens. I do sometimes go from full 3G to full 4G but I think that is b/c my phone will only switch over to 4G when there is a strong signal nearby. Finally, the bulk of the time I have a strong 4G signal (full bars) I will get very strong download speeds and when I have a very weak 4G signal (only 1 bar) it will be much slower. My earlier comment that started the debate is just the occasional finding but what I normally observe with 4G speeds and number of bars only seems to further cement in my mind that I am seeing the correct number of bars for 4G. You definitely are far more knowledgeable about all of this than I am but based on my experience I’m pretty confident that my phone is displaying 4G strength in the bars. I guess I’m just wondering why you believe that the Note 2 doesn’t show 4G bars. Is it b/c you haven’t heard yet of any Samsung device being confirmed as doing this or do you have some notice or information directly from a source that proves this?
  14. I have a Note 2 so the bars are LTE strength. I often will confirm it with the CDMA field test app. I've had the 500kbps even with a RSRP of -85 to -90. Using that app you can also have it show you the RSRP in the upper right hand corner. Typically if I can get that in the -70s (-77 or -78) Ill get the 25Mbps or higher numbers. Realistically though you need to be right next to the tower for that high of an RSRP.
  15. Sometimes I have strong LTE and 20Mbps and other times I have strong LTE and only 500kbps. I can't really understand what is going on with Sprint LTE. I don't really think it is tower issues as I'll see this in areas where LTE has been live for 3 months. While Chicago is the most developed Sprint LTE market I really think stable performance throughout the city won't occur until all the empty pockets are filled in. In fairness, most of my experience is in a car where I may be handing off between towers which is probably more difficult to keep steady LTE vs. being in a single spot with strong coverage.
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