cletus

I was just going to say...what is up with the 2 line paragraphs.  I had to wheel scroll on my mouse several times just to get down to the end of the post.  Can't imagine being on a 4 inch phone and having to scroll like crazy.

Maybe he was on legacy 3g and only had bandwidth for 2 lines at a time 

I just wish once you were off contact (eligible for a new phone) your rate would drop like you had BYOD. As it stands now June I will get a new phone because the monthly fee will be the same either way. I know I will have to pay maybe $200-300 out of pocket for a Note 3 or something. If my bill was say $20 a month  cheaper I would wait a few months  for something better  to show  up in  September 2014.

 

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 4

 

I agree. I moved my lines to Ting because of that very issue. In addition after 45 days I am treated like a new customer for rebates at Sprint so it seems to be win win (referral code available if you want it) I may just stay on Ting because as long as I use under like 4 GB it seems to be a better deal than Sprint. However, I do think it is possible for me to use more than 4 GB if I was streaming youtube/twitch.tv videos.

well, right now there is a deal with Sprint for a BoGo on the One, and the price is now $99.  so that is a $300 savings which puts them about equal. 

 

Not to turn this into an argument, but the variation and availability of phones and their prices make the point of the phones almost moot.  so say you paid for neither phone for either company, you save ~5% on T-mobile.  it's up to the customer at that point.

Hmm, You are correct about the BoGo HTC One.It is about a $200 savings so new math is below. I will say that 2 for 1 pricing is not the usual price for a new smartphone but as a direct comparison it is a valid one. I'll also add the cost if you buy one off of ebay at a normal price and bring it to T-Mobile:

Look at the monthly pricing between Sprint and T-Mobile now for 2 HTC One smartphones with unlimited data + insurance.

Sprint: $172.00 monthly + 398 (phones @199) = $4327 over 24 months

T-Mobile: $182 monthly + $20 (sim card x 2)     = $4388 over 24 months

T-Mobile with upgrades every 6 months! $186 monthly + $20 (sim card x 2)     = $4484 over 24 months

T-Mobile BYOD ($425x2) + $8/mo Insurance + 120/mo= $3746

1. Those early upgrade plans are ripoffs.

2. My Way is the general plan name but they are two different plans. One marketed towards the single person the other marketed toward family lines. And the site is pretty straight forward about saving money with each plan.

3. You save less than $100. Big deal. By this time next year, LTE will be ubiquitous while your experience on T-Mobile will be the same network that drops to EDGE in the middle of the city while in the middle of the city on Sprint you'll be on Clear LTE.

 

It's all a matter of perspective.

1) Somewhat agreed, except for the T-Mobile Jump plan.

2) I get that but I feel the actual implementation of the plans is clumsy and not well thought out on the Sprint site.

3) You save less than $100 while changing phones every 6 months vs being on a 2 year old phone on Sprint. If the latest tech is important to you then T-Mobile beats the other options hands down. If you BYOD to T-Mobile or just buy ebay phones instead of doing the JUMP program then you also end up ahead of Sprint in terms of pricing. (Obviously judging by my own Evo3d it is not a big deal to me but I don't see why Sprint doesn't offer ANY kind of fast upgrade option). By this time next year we could also be on 1900 mhz deployment with Clear/2500 LTE sparsely populated on former WiMax towers while Sprint struggles to get the remaining towers deployed.

The thing i see with the numbers here is that you are saying with T-mobile you get a free phone and you just have to pay for the SIM card.  Unless you are bringing a phone from another carrier, you're still buying a phone somewhere.  This makes your numbers skewed.  Even with the T-mobile upgrade whenever you want plan, you are STILL paying for the phone.

 

Say you go to sprint with no phones, with the pricing you put, you could find a deal and get the phones for free or less then the $199 a piece.  That would put it closer if not cheaper then T-Mobile.

 

Like they say in stats, "the numbers don't lie, just how they are presented."

That T-Mobile pricing includes the $20/mo phone payment and I chose new HTC Ones from both carriers. The difference is the phone price is built in to the T-Mobile monthly payment and if you cancel your service you need to pay the remaining balance on your phone. It is an ETF by another name but the flipside is that your monthly payment does go down once the phones are paid off OR if you buy the phones outright.

I wasn't trying to be political, just a harmless comment. Sorry if i have offended anyone. Can't we all just smoke some salmon and get along?

Get along? I remind you that this is the internet and the only real thing is proving someone else WRONG.

Back on topic and speaking of proving someone WRONG:

Does anyone else find Sprint incredibly slow to respond to market trends? Let me list the ways:

1) Faster phone upgrades: Verizon Edge, AT&T Next, T-Mobile Jump, Sprint? Nothing

2) Simplified plans:

T-Mobile: website gets me there in one click and the options are super easy to understand

AT&T: has website herpes and no matter how they try to clean it up it remains infested with superfluous information but once you choose your phone it is quite easy

Verizon: provides nice graphic examples though the navigation could be easier. Streamlined experience with clear pricing options.

Sprint: My All-In vs Unlimited My Way sounds like they are two separate types of plans that Sprint offers rather than just calling it ONE NAME and adding Family at the end.I hate the new branding because it gives the impression that Unlimited is eventually going away. Once you choose a phone suddenly you can choose the non unlimited option. Why is that not presented earlier?? Oh and $11/mo for phone insurance is a complete ripoff.

3) Communication. T-Mobile has been very proactive about promoting network improvements and future plans.  The reason we are all here is because Sprint is really pretty terrible at letting us all know what is going on. Finding towers slated for improvement is fun and all but what difference does it make when it takes 6 months to see any kind of change? Further, I fully expect LTE 2500 to remain underwhelming for some time on Clear towers due to terrible backhaul on the Clear network.

4) Contract free plans: T-Mobile has positioned themselves as the anti-carrier but beyond that has been effective in putting the (truthful) thought in people's minds that carriers who lock you down with contracts are a BAD DEAL. They don't even mention Sprint in their ads and it accomplishes the same thing.

Basically these 4 points boil down to this: T-Mobile is a huge threat. Anyone who doesn't think T-Mobile isn't in a position to leapfrog Sprint is kidding themselves. We can make all the arguments to the contrary about "b-b-but SPECTRUM" and "b-b-but COVERAGE" but that changes nothing. Most people don't leave city limits 95%+ of the time and T-Mobile may well fit their needs. I tried it but couldn't deal with lack of coverage in the Texas hill country. Most people see it is faster than Sprint without contracts. I've moved my service to a Sprint MVNO (Ting) and being contract free has really opened my eyes and I may never go back to Sprint itself after the family plan changes and continual Network Vision delays. With how fast phones and the cellular market is changing I find myself questioning if I ever want to sign a contract again.

Look at the monthly pricing between Sprint and T-Mobile now for 2 smartphones with unlimited data + insurance.

Sprint: $172.00 monthly + 398 (phones @199) = $4526 over 24 months

T-Mobile: $182 monthly + $20 (sim card x 2)     = $4388 over 24 months

T-Mobile with upgrades every 6 months! $186 monthly + $20 (sim card x 2)     = $4484 over 24 months

I am rooting for Sprint but so far their execution on every level pretty much sucks. If they want to offer non unlimited plans, fine but making the difference $30 for unlimited vs $20 for 1 GB is pathetic. 

that is because Wimax and CDMA are on separate transmission paths.  CDMA and EVDO (3G) share the same transmission path hence no 3G while talking.

 

I have the Moto Photon and I am able to use 4G and talk at the same time but not 3G and talk at the same time.

Yeah I get that but my poorly made point was that being able to get data from Clearwire towers is only of "limited utility" until you consider how many towers they will be putting 2500 LTE on vs how many Clear towers currently broadcast WiMax. I think it would be of great use to do this but I doubt it will be available.

Looks like it could theoretically support SVLTE on BC 41 (ex-Clearwire TD-LTE 2500), since those use completely separate antennas, but whether the radio and baseband will support doing that is a different question entirely. And that would be of limited utility in most markets anyway.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

I dunno, on my WiMax device I find Clearwire 2500 fairly useful (I can use WiMax while talking but not 3g).

So there apparently WILL be some carrier customization to this phone as Verizon will get wireless charging. http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/15/verizon-g2-wireless-charging/

I wonder if Sprint will change it up as well..

I agree that B26 should be last priority from a network standpoint once LTE is deployed on all bands and the ordee should be B41, B25, B26.

 

I think what makes this community so great compared to other sprint forums is that a lot of the members share information on their findings especially with network vision progress (permit maps and pics of sites in progress, etc) and i think we are all just trying to look for evidence that LTE 800 is underway. We have evidence of LTE 2600 deployed and thats great but what most sprint customers care about is LTE 800 which is really going to be a game changer with indoor penetration and also usable data for those that are just outside of 1900 mhz range.

 

Sent from my Motorola Photon 4G using Tapatalk 2

I personally care more for 800 mhz voice than I do LTE. Low signal kills battery life and I often find myself having to go nearer to windows on the current Sprint 1900 mhz signal I get. 

These days I believe GPS is only actually used when required for an app and not scanning otherwise. I leave mine on 24/7 with my evo3d and notice zero difference in battery life versus leaving it off. I assume this is the same case with the newer phones as well.

When I posted that, I thought they meant:

"We're not going to going to expand to more than 52k LTE towers"

 

But it turns out what they meant was:

"We're not going to expand our LTE footprint past 37k towers without 600 MHz"

 

http://edge.media-server.com/version/1375971396/m/a/6obxvmjt/iv/f9b984f7964c7c6e2369000091bb800e41913954/?token=da8811ac0a6777c6b1694268b7f1bf352167144

Slide 10

 

2014 - 225 million LTE.

 

They don't say "end of" or "mid" 2014.

Just 2014.

 

Booooo.

 

How do they plan on surviving the onslaught from sprint and ATT prepaid brands?

I agree but on the other hand population trends in the US are on T-Mobile's side. Every year more and more people move to cities and rural (ie not major highways) coverage becomes less important to fewer people. Roughly 81% of people in the US live in what is classed as an Urban area. http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/2010_census/cb12-50.html

However, T-Mobile's issue is that it has not kept up with the size of cities that have expanded in both population and SIZE such as Austin, San Antonio, Las Vegas. Austin city center is great on T-Mobile but heading beyond the "city limits" from 15 years ago and you will find tons of dead/roaming only areas. 

I never specifically said anything about t-mobile users, so I'm not really sure what you're trying to get at there.

 

Secondly, sure, there are general discussions about wireless spectrum and networks, but in particular Sprint & Network Vision. I suppose that only makes a bit of sense given what the "S" in S4GRU stands for. 

Right but it makes sense to me that T-mobile users might come to this thread because it has tons of information but also don't really care for Sprint users, myself included, pointing out network flaw etc.

It always makes me wonder why folks that apparently have such a low opinion of Sprint bother hanging around a site that focuses on...Sprint. 

As this 67 page thread illustrates, we focus on more than Sprint. This is a pretty informative thread with extremely knowledgeable posters and because there is no real equivalent to S4GRU for T-Mobile users it makes sense that T-Mobile users may find their way here.

Of course it matters, user accessible sims means that it will be a world edition phone once you can get it unlocked through sprint or through other ways if you're rooted.

Ah I wasn't aware. I thought it was only used to provision LTE on Sprint phones.

I know everyone is concentrating on the radios and I like this discussion.  But I did not have enough time to read through 16 pages of the thread to find an answer to this.  Does anyone know if the SIM is soldered on like the initial batch of LTE phones?  I thought I would simply ask and see if anyone knew this info or not. 

Just curious but why does that matter? Sprint devices are locked to Sprint and require preauthorization from Sprint to be activated. 

I think if I do switch it will be either the end of this year of the beginning of next year like others have suggested so the change isn't that dramatic from blazing fast AT&T LTE. Also my current ETF is $265 and there aren't or not that many tri band phones which would give me similar speeds and coverage.

I would wait. We all like Sprint here but the network is not quite up to par with the duopoly in terms of speed. I'd place Sprint firmly in 4th place for network speed. Over the next 6-12 months that will most likely change but that is the current reality. If you are happy with AT&T I would wait out the contract and then reevaluate. 

Heh, rumors. That's exactly what they were.

 

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

Actually there are two versions of the LG G2. The international version has a non removable 3000mah battery and no SD slot. The Korean market version has a 2610mah battery and an SD slot which was the manual that apparently leaked and lead people to believe it had SD capability.

But, by the time this phone comes to Sprint (Sept or Oct), it won't have the distinction for much longer (if at all).

True for the Note 3 which should have the same processor. 

Luckily for the continued existence of the universe, there are many options for charging phone batteries when traveling from big name companies like Energizer. 

No removable battery, No SD card? Well, unless I am mistaken this phone offers something that the entire Samsung/HTC/Apple lineup currently does not: Triband LTE. 

My wife is going to love this phone. Her biggest complaint right now is smartphones are too cumbersome for her small hand to hold and power on etc easily and she doesn't like the side power buttons.

Event is live: http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/07/lg-g2-livestream/

No speakers at work so I am following here:

http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/07/lg-optimus-g2-liveblog/

Not sure how I feel about the power button/volume button on the back as I tend to pocket my devices but I will have to see how reviewers like it. 

To me the most important thing for this device is RF performance.

IIRC, Softbank isn't planning on giving Sprint any more money beyond the $5 billion specified in the buyout agreement.

I believe it is highly likely that Sprint will seek money through Softbank financing due to the access Softbank has to cheaper financing on the Japanese bond market.

Logically, Sprint should ignore Ergen and Dish. But given Sprint's management's decision history (e.g., Nextel), I wouldn't put it past them to make a deal with Dish. Beggars can't be choosers, unfortunately...

Good news then. Following the Softbank purchase, Sprint has moved from beggar to Welfare recipient or Sugar Baby depending on your viewpoint.