Tim Yu
Sprint 4G Rollout Updates
January 12, 2018 - 5:30 PM PST

"New year, new me. Am I right?"
     ~ signed Samsung

Samsung has decided that the beginning of the new year is a great time to change.  Samsung has decided its newest flagship Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus devices must meet with the FCC OET for certification far earlier than usual. With ever watchful and prying eyes, S4GRU staff discovered the twin filings for two devices with FCC IDs of A3LSMG960U and A3LSMG965U which follows the   previous Samsung numeration of the Galaxy S8 / 8+ (950u/955u) and Galaxy S7 (930u/935u) respectively. In addition, previous leaks for purported international Galaxy S9 variant have captured the ID of 960F and 965F respectively. 

To keep this short and simple, the Galaxy S9, to date, is the most technologically powerful device we've seen at least for Sprint and possibly other entities and the following technical specifications should demonstrate why.

CDMA BC: 0 / 1 / 10
GSM: 850 / 1900
WCDMA Bands: 2, 4 , 5
LTE Band: 2, 4, 5, 7, 12, 13, 14, 17, 25 , 26 , 29, 30, 38, 41, 66, 71

Downlink Carrier Aggregation (DL CA)
5xB41 (up to 5 B41 carriers aggregated)
B25+41CA (up to 2 B41 carriers - 3 total carriers aggregated )
B26+41CA (up to 2 B41 carriers - 3 total carriers aggregated )
B25+26CA (up to 2 B25 carriers - 3 total carriers aggregated )

Uplink Carrier Aggregation (UL CA)
2xB41 

256 / 64 QAM Downlink/ Uplink

HPUE

CAT 18 Modem
4x4 MIMO B2, 4, 25, 30 , 41, 66
12 spatial streams

Holy bonanza!

This phone supports up to 100 MHz of LTE spectrum being aggregated together from 5 individual Band 41 carriers!

To add to that, it also supports FDD and TDD LTE carrier aggregation by utilizing Band 25 1900 MHz or Band 26 800 MHz as the primary component carrier which would contribute to downlink and uplink while Band 41 is aggregated to it would be downlink only secondary component carriers. Remember the saying of having B25 or B26 uplink with Band 41 downlink, anybody?

Plus  there is expansion of FDD carrier aggregation to that of between Band 25 and Band 26.  This will help a ton in areas where Band 41 and its oodles of capacity does not reach. As the recent CDMA refarming nationwide on PCS spectrum has allowed Sprint to fire up an additional Band 25 carrier,  this means in many Sprint markets there currently exists two Band 25 carriers in addition to a Band 26 carrier. This additional carrier is not forgotten and can now be used alongside the other Band 25 and Band 26 carrier for carrier aggregation.

Last but not least, this phone is "Gigabit Class" by having up to 12 spacial streams means that 4x4 MIMO can be used for 3 separate B41 carriers when aggregated together instead of 2 in the previous generation which supports only 10 spacial streams. Though it was a moot point as the entire generation of Samsung flagships from this past year did not support 4x4 MIMO on Band 41, until now!

A phone this size should not be able to pack so many technologies...but yet it does! A splendid phone and surely a must have for the S4GRU and other tech adept users!