tij664

I have one. For fitness tracking and reading/deleting emails on the fly I think it's a big time saver. I'm sure it will only get better when os2.0 comes around.

You can just buy the Apple store unlocked 1524 or 1586 iPhone 6/6+. It will work with any carrier in the US including Sprint and has all the TD-LTE bands for when you're in China. But no, you can't just insert another SIM card into a phone you buy from Sprint, it has to meet the requirements for unlocking before they will unlock it for you.

It is. Unless the roaming agreement specifically blocks out LTE which used to happen in the early days of LTE. Now as long as you're roaming on a postpaid plan you get whatever best network is available if your phone supports it. Each phone expresses this mode differently. Some Android phones allow you to choose between LTE/CDMA mode or LTE/GSM/UMTS mode. iPhones will usually have an option to turn off international CDMA roaming which then by default will use LTE/GSM/UMTS.

I just went to Japan and while roaming I had LTE on SoftBank. It didn't occur for me to check what band I was on as I was preoccupied with other things but considering Band 41 is the dominant frequency for SoftBank LTE I doubt I was restricted to not having access to band 41. I had LTE everywhere.

How do you figure B41 roaming is not included with this add on?

You mean other than Japan? Not a lot of places that use it other than maybe east Asia (China, etc..). Right now your phone will use whatever best signal is available on SoftBank while in Japan. If it's a newer Sprint branded smartphone then it will use B41 because the majority of the coverage in Japan on SoftBank is B41. As a sidenote at least Sprint is getting competitive with roaming. Just noticed they are going with T-Mobile's approach on international roaming: unlimited 2G data, text, and 20 cent/min for voice. Not a ton of countries available right now but certainly the popular ones are. Not sure where they stand on pricing for standalone but they're bundling with the unlimited /Galaxy S6 lease plan.

that's it. Basically it's unlimited while on the SoftBank network. Hence why you must set the phone to GSM only.

This last coverage map is much much more realistic. The previous one was horrible and way too optimistic.

With the couple of times I have been over there I have rented a SoftBank SIM card. It's coverage is on par with say Verizon or AT&T here in the states. Probably even more dense network and works well even on a moving 200MPH train. It was unlimited but they do reserve to manage the network if necessary a.k.a. throttle. I didn't experience it though. It's pretty much LTE just about anywhere even deep inside buildings. I had very good service on my iPhone 6 Plus. Considering most of their spectrum is band 41 it's pretty remarkable how robust of a network they built with band 41. Sprint does offer a $5/month add on which includes unlimited voice/text/data. It's newish, not really advertised, and supposedly for corporate liable lines but international care can likely add it for you: they did add it recently to my personal account.