HTC One preview thread (was "Any M7 takers?")

[leerage]

Someone needs to tell these guys to go and drive somewhere that's purple in Sensorly to test LTE. Particularly someone in the SF market, where there's plenty of LTE about to be found...

My thoughts exactly. I just emailed Rich Brome to see if he still had the device:

 

Rich,

 

I was just taking a look over your Sprint HTC One review. Do you still have the device? LTE should be available in San Francisco and I was wondering if the network mode was set to CDMA only? Also, if you still have the device, could you pull up the dialer and type ##DEBUG# to see if it brings up the engineering screens. From what I've read, HTC was forced to omit the awesome field trial engineering screens.

 

 

Thanks.

 

His response:

According to Sprint's maps, they haven't launched LTE in San Francisco yet:

http://coverage.sprint.com/IMPACT.jsp?ECID=vanity:coverage

It's not on their list of cities, either:

http://newsroom.sprint.com/news/4glte-launchedmarkets.htm

Rich

 

 

--

Rich Brome

phonescoop.com

[WiWavelength]

Ha, what a joke of a reply. My experience is that Phone Scoop is no friend to Sprint, but is Rich really that dense and under informed? Get that man over to S4GRU, posthaste.

 

AJ

[leerage]

Ha, what a joke of a reply. My experience is that Phone Scoop is no friend to Sprint, but is Rich really that dense and under informed? Get that man over to S4GRU, posthaste.

 

AJ

I sent him back one more reply. Hopefully he won't dodge my question again.

 

Thanks for the reply. Yes, it isn't officially launched yet, but work is definitely underway:

http://www.sensorly.com/map/4G/US/USA/Sprint/lte_310sprint#q=san francisco

 

Do you still have the HTC One? I was just curious if HTC removed the engineering screens. It is valuable program in tracking RF performance of the phone.

 

Still waiting to hear back from him.

[WiWavelength]

At Phone Scoop, I wrote a bit of a stinging post, voicing my displeasure with Rich's and Eric's (none too surprising) lack of investigation.

 

No Sprint LTE in San Francisco? Huh?

 

Sensorly definitely indicates otherwise:

 

http://i48.tinypic.com/e0xac.png

 

Any reviewer who cannot locate any Sprint LTE in San Francisco for testing is incompetent, lazy, or has defective equipment.

 

Not a good showing, Phone Scoop...

 

AJ

[lilotimz]

Apparantly the one is the first phone to have a removable sim from sprint.

 

http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/08/htc-one-for-att-sprint-review/

[bigzeto]

Apparantly the one is the first phone to have a removable sim from sprint.

 

http://www.engadget....-sprint-review/

 

And it looks like Engadget was able to test LTE in San Francisco as well.

[Mofus]

I sent him back one more reply. Hopefully he won't dodge my question again.

 

 

 

Still waiting to hear back from him.

 

Quote from the Anandtech review:

 

"My last note about the HTC One is that just like the last set of HTC devices, there’s no awesome Qualcomm field test application which you can get to via a dialer code. That’s gone on every single variant as a result of some operator request for proposals which explicitly asked for it to be removed. Operators remain the reason we can’t have nice things, even on international phones."

 

http://www.anandtech...c-one-review/15

[leerage]

Quote from the Anandtech review:

 

"My last note about the HTC One is that just like the last set of HTC devices, there’s no awesome Qualcomm field test application which you can get to via a dialer code. That’s gone on every single variant as a result of some operator request for proposals which explicitly asked for it to be removed. Operators remain the reason we can’t have nice things, even on international phones."

 

http://www.anandtech...c-one-review/15

I read that as well but I was hoping to get somebody to confirm. As AJ noted, the HTC EVO LTE was an exception when compared to the HTC One X. So hopefully with Sprint, the engineering screens will be included.

 

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/2951-htc-one-preview-thread-was-any-m7-takers/page__st__560__p__124379&do=findComment&comment=124379

[newgroundsguru]

Are we going to need a SIM card from sprint to use this phone?

[Paynefanbro]

Engadget had the courtesy to mention the fact that Sprint has LTE in cities that are not on their map. They said Sprint averaged 15Down and 7 up. AT&T was tested in San Francisco and averaged 17 down and 7 up. In downtown San Fran, they got 25 Down and 8 up.

[WiWavelength]

Are we going to need a SIM card from sprint to use this phone?

 

For LTE service, yes. The micro-SIM will come with the phone -- as it has with all LTE phones. But this micro-SIM will not be embedded.

 

AJ

[newgroundsguru]

For LTE service, yes. The micro-SIM will come with the phone -- as it has with all LTE phones. But this micro-SIM will not be embedded.

 

AJ

 

What do you mean by embedded? Sorry, i have never had a phone that needed a SIM card.

[WiWavelength]

What do you mean by embedded?

 

It is inside the device body, clipped or soldered to the board and not readily removable.

 

AJ

[Bob Newhart]

I wonder what the signal quality of this HTC One phone is?

[leerage]

I wonder what the signal quality of this HTC One phone is?

That's the million dollar question. No reviews (from what I've found) went in depth on RF performance specifically on the Sprint network and compared it to other devices such as the GS3, Note2, and EVO LTE.

 

You can bet there will be tons of comparisons once the One gets into hands of S4GRU users.

[Bob Newhart]

Yes, there was a lot of talk about the EVO LTE before than came out, how great it is, how amazing it is, then it turned out to a buggy phone.

It sounds very much like that same phone again. On that review, it did have the update that said battery life on the HTC One was poor, "but it was pre-release firmware", we have heard that before.

 

As we know, you can't fix broken hardware with software.

[WiWavelength]

Yes, there was a lot of talk about the EVO LTE before than came out, how great it is, how amazing it is, then it turned out to a buggy phone.

 

Not a very apt parallel. The EVO LTE was a great handset at the time in many respects. But who claimed that the EVO LTE is a great RF performer? Not S4GRU.

 

AJ

[HTCandroid]

Quick question off topic. Does anyone know the difference between "clear storage" and "factory reset" in the booterloader on the EVO LTE

[Bob Newhart]

I didn't say that this site said it was great RF performer. I asked about which was the better phone on offer for RF, the SIII was popular for that.

[MReiser4670]

 

 

Not a very apt parallel. The EVO LTE was a great handset at the time in many respects. But who claimed that the EVO LTE is a great RF performer? Not S4GRU.

 

AJ

 

I'm now on my 4th day having a Note 2 alongside my EVO LTE. The Note 2 is a known LTE powerhouse, and my observations on signal strengths in both phones bear witness to that fact. However, I have also noticed that the EVO very rarely hangs onto an unusable signal, while the Note 2 will keep dragging -114 to -124 dBm instead of switching back to EVDO. Of course my market is still in the infant stages of LTE rollout. Perhaps there's a happy medium & the One can fill that gap?

[Thomas L.]

Has anyone else noticed that Engadget and a couple of other sites have stated that Sprint's HTC One will support WCDMA on 700mhz and AWS? Do we think that's a mistake? As far as I know there are no deployed WCDMA 700 networks, and even if there were I can't imagine why Sprint would integrate such a rare band into their version of the product. It's very odd.

[HTCandroid]

Has anyone else noticed that Engadget and a couple of other sites have stated that Sprint's HTC One will support WCDMA on 700mhz and AWS? Do we think that's a mistake? As far as I know there are no deployed WCDMA 700 networks, and even if there were I can't imagine why Sprint would integrate such a rare band into their version of the product. It's very odd.

 

Since we know HTC had to make a specific model for HTC so they could have just added to it to make it work, it was probably cheaper to leave it in similar to the nexus 4 supporting few games of late from the similar parts from the optimus g. If this is the case, it may have the hardware but will never use it.

[jsa]

Inferring from the Josh's wall article on the new Samsung phone that passed through the FCC, if Wifi and Bluetooth share an antenna, they cannot be used simultaneously. And from looking at AJ's post on the One, it looks like they share an antenna on the One. So does that mean Wifi & BT cannot be used simultaneously on the One?

[leerage]

I got Dana Wollman from Engadget (review: http://www.engadget....-sprint-review/) to confirm the Sprint HTC One does have the engineering screens.

 

 

Edit- I do hope they had a final build unit and all retail units will still have the engineering screens.

[WiWavelength]

Good work, leerage. Yes, let us hope that the final build retains the engineering screens (or that the FieldTrial.apk can be sideloaded from the EVO LTE to the One).

 

AJ