cletus

I have thought about this before and I think its a pretty good idea. Now go and donate,

I don't plan to buy an LTE phone for at least a year. I come here mainly to view the broad strokes of Sprint's progress and thus I don't feel I gain from the sponsorship benefits. However, I am not opposed to having ads for non sponsored members (I don't run adblock).

It would also allow people to get cheaper plans by tailoring them individually. This is why it will never happen.

Ideally you would be charged a flat rate for all minutes used and data used and that would be your bill. (good luck getting a carrier to agree to that structure)

So from a non sponsored perspective I have a question:

If $1.00 donations were impacting the site then why not up the minimum donation to $5.00? Since you have placed a money amount on the Premier sponsorship it makes sense to set a price floor for the normal sponsorship. For most people $5.00 is truly trivial amount (less than eating at subway) and the difference between $1 and $5 should not drive people away from donating.

FYI those italics are direct quotes.

Dear reader,

If you are reading this please heed the warning contained in the title. If you are further tempted continue reading and I will try to assuage you of that horrible dark need. At first your eyes will be drawn to the bright officialness of the Sprint logo and the showcased electronic goodies it holds beside it. Perhaps you will glance down and to the left to see pronouncements of the glorious shipments of brand new phones headed to excited future owners.

BUT do not look down and to the right.You will not be able to resist the button to click see more and to bask in the intelligence of your fellow Sprint users. Your eyes will glance to the first posting and at first your eye will tremble and perhaps your mouse finger will twitch. Surely, you read that wrong! You quickly glance to the next topic with 48 replies and it is then you know that your fate is truly sealed. You have become locked forever in the prison of idiocy, compelled to respond to threads. Your mind burning as you fashion replies to simply understand what is not understandable. Your world spins and you think thoughts such as "Why can I feel my tongue on the roof of my mouth?" and "Is that my breathing I feel?" You will hope for the sweet embrace of death as you read unintelligible and incomprehensible statements that can only be created by wicked and cruel denizens of hell being forced into obedience by their unholy tormentors

"I just upgraded my phone to an iPhone at Best Buy and found out about the $36.00 upgrade fee. I asked if they could take that out of the Phantom $150.00 Upgrade Credit. They said no. I also think that the term "Simply Everything" means just that, but Sprint doesn't think so. It should be "Simple" but now you now add an additional $10.00 a month for a "Premium Data" package. So here is my new saying.

"Sprint Simply SUCKS"!

I will be cancelling my Sprint service as soon as my new contract is up (if not before). I also will make it my mission in life to post truth daily to the wall of this Facebook Page. OH. The reason I was at Best Buy and not the Sprint store? I was referred there by Sprint Customer Service. J.D Powers is clueless giving you guys a customer service award."

My EVO3D does this as well. I have it mounted on a vent holder so it isn't a big deal. Remember that being in the sun is a huge contributor to heat for these devices so a window mounted holder may exacerbate the problem. I noticed this on the new Ipad as well. It simply is a near unavoidable problem really. These devices use battery quite heavily and to charge them while in heavy use requires a lot of energy from the charger (my evo3d uses a 1A charger).

That aside I have owned the phone a year and have used it heavily as I check vendor facilities often for my job (I do supply chain management) and have used the nav with every bell and whistle while charging and have noticed no problems with my phone.

This is a known issue I think. I do know that it is not a weather related outage and there was also a news report on it:

http://weareaustin.c.../vid_1713.shtml

Also it appears to be just Central and parts of North Austin. I live S. near Sunset Valley and have had no outages. I did have hops into roaming frequently heading up 360 yesterday though.

edit: Confirmed 170 site outages.

http://community.sprint.com/baw/thread/89962?tstart=0

Wonderful! Thanks! However I think I would rather have an Android tablet... Any suggestions on one of those?

 

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

Hmm, my friend has a Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime (he calls it Tranny, ugh) that I have found quite slick. Asus in my experience has the best feel and overall complete package of the producers of Android tablets. Full disclosure though many Primes did suffer from low wifi and GPS performance.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4277/asus-eee-pad-transformer-review

This is also a good choice and has a chart listing the differences between the Asus products

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5756/asus-transformer-pad-300-review

Generally I personally would stay away from the Toshiba Thrive, the Droid Xyboard, the Xoom 2. The new Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a stale refresh of the old one.

Even as an Android fan the best bet if you are not interested in loading ROMs etc and are primarily using this for youtube and Netflix is probably still a refurb/used ipad 2.

Thanks for all the replies guys! I do have a desktop at my home and really the only thing I NEED it for is Microsoft office, torrents, music, DVD editing/burning, internet browsing etc... oh also rooting and flashing with my ET4G! So what would be a good tablet to look into. Wifi only would be just fine

 

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

Yeah absolutely a tablet would be okay for you then. A tablet as it currently stands is really for consumption of media and not suited for production of media. For having around the house to watch Netflix on a bigger screen wherever you are it is cheaper than buying a second TV, etc. However, if you are just buying a tablet for this purpose then keep in mind a new Ipad is probably more than you REALLY need power wise so I would recommend a used ipad 2 or a comparably priced android tablet. The Kindle fire is unsuited for HD video watching (loaded DVDs, Netflix is compressed HD) and stutters occasionally so I do not recommend you consider that tablet.

In my experience, no. A tablet cannot replace a laptop quite yet. And when it does it requires nearly as much bulk as a laptop does (Asus transformer with keyboard dock, Padphone, etc). The IPAD is a slick piece of hardware but I returned mine after a week. Why? Because it simply was not quite there yet. Want to watch Netflix? My phone (Evo3d) does that just fine. My laptop does it while I can adjust the window size and get work done etc.

I guess I just don't get tablets.They do, however, make great presenting tools and are much better than laptops for this specific use.

If the phone wasn't constantly searching for LTE it would have gotten better battery life overall. They may have purposely did this to try to discredit the bigger battery, or they were just being dumb. I'm sure it gets better battery life overall once it's always connected to LTE.

Really? I was under the impression that LTE was an overall battery drain. My friend has a thunderbolt (not known for it's battery longevity, granted) and he leaves his LTE radio on 100% of the time but the majority of the battery drain seems to happen when he is actually using the phone to transfer files etc. As a mobile hotspot he said it lasted 2 and a half hours for him.

The Verge review:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/11/3012990/htc-evo-4g-lte-review

I've notice this is the case only when sending to friends who use Verizon (as the roaming is on verizon)

If I am not mistaken, unless the person you are calling has an HD voice capable phone as well you will not notice any difference.

 

I think twospirits reported from a Sprint event that the sound quality was excellent. The post is somewhere on the site.

 

Source: http://www.phonescoo...cle.php?a=10404

Yup. My wife and I are both on Sprint as are most of my coworkers (employee discount) so it will be a really good change if this rolls out to all new sprint smartphones.

Looking foward to the HD voice review

I agree. To me this is better news than faster processors or faster download max speeds on networks. I don't own a landline and unlike many people actually use my smartphone as a phone. I hate the low voice quality over cellphones and I am really excited for this to become something more standard in the market.

On the orig Evo 4g, when you recorded video, the audio would distort if you were in a loud environment. Has this Ben fixed on the new lte?

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Well considering the audio part of recording on my EVO3D was much better than my friend's Evo I would assume that this would be even more improved in the device. I haven't seen a review where they posted a video recorded on it though.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/10/htc-evo-4g-lte-for-sprint-review/

Fair review as at release it is effectively a 3g phone.

They're just mad that they actually have to recycle their spectrum for future technologies (in other words take down the edge network).

 

With regards to data prices up by 30%. I bet they went from 10 cents a gig to 13 cents a gig.

It is most likely MUCH less than that. I believe Netflix pays 2.5-3 cents per GB currently.

+1 Im sitting this one out also. Waiting to see end of yr or early next yrs releases.

I am sitting this one out as well. My EVO3D serves my purposes fine for now and Austin has pretty decent wimax coverage. I am holding off for a phone that will support multiple LTE bands and waiting for maturity in Sprint's LTE network. Also because I don't get an upgrade until Apr. 1st 2013.

Does anyone know if there are multiple shipping centers for their phones, or do they all come from the same warehouse?

 

I'm hoping they all come in through Long Beach and ship from California

 

BTW, I am having mine shipped to my work address, and my order wouldn't go through until I called them to verify this. If yours is not being shipped to your billing address you might want to verify your order status.

When they did the EVO3D first shipments most people reported them shipping from Louisville, KY if I recall.

I get that Sprint is hurting for revenue etc but c'mon this combined with the family plan changes will up my monthly bill by $11/mo. or $132/yr. So basically I am paying an additional month for my service. What do I get for the increased cost in terms of utility? It doesn't drop my deductible (it increases). It doesn't increase my network speeds (they have decreased). It doesn't give me faster phone upgrades (they have lengthened the period between upgrades).

I am actually getting fed up with Sprint right now because this bill creep keeps happening and I am frankly tired of it. Network Vision sounds cool and I hope it turns out well. However, what also sounds cool is paying $10 more than Sprint will be charging me AND having a complete network on Verizon.

I'm reading people getting conflicting reports from sprint, may 10th,14th 17th & 18th.

 

I guess it'll be a waiting game for the shipping confirmations....

 

Gl and congrats everyone.

 

From Another poster :

 

I pre-ordered the 4G LTE on sprint.com, and then checked my order status... I got a message that some additional validation (or something like that) was required on the order, and to call an 800 number to expedite things.

 

...so I called, and answered a few questions (mainly identity verification stuff like address, number of lines on my account, etc.), and the representative said it my phone was in the warehouse now, and that it should be arriving in "two to five days".

 

Of course, he could've been horribly mistaken, but now I'm damned excited. Anyone else have any info/stories like this one?

 

 

Sent from my PG86100 using Tapatalk 2

I got my EVO3D 3 days before stores sold it because Sprint shipped it to me so it is indeed possible.

Depends on how you would use it. If you do lots of streaming of audio and/or video in a car or commuter rail, I would not recommend WiMax. WiMax hand off between sites is very poor.

 

So if you are staying on 3G anyway, you should go with a LTE device. However, if you would only largely use WiMax in stationary situations, then it may be OK for you.

 

Robert - Posted from my E4GT with ICS using Forum Runner

Question: By handoff do you mean the ability to say continue a youtube video between towers? I was under the impression that WiMax did not do this.. ever. I've never been able to stream content from WiMax tower to WiMax tower OR from WiMax tower to 3g tower. I think the fact that I am surprised this is even able to be done between WiMax towers is testament to the horribleness of Sprint's current "4g" network.

Last 6 months:

• 
  

  2

  data capacity upgrades
  

• 
  

  1

  data speed upgrade
  

Completed:

Next 6 months:

• 
  

  1

  voice upgrade
  

• 
  

  1

  data capacity upgrade
  

Planned:

So, that is what has been done to my area. As Robert stated in his linked post I went from being unable to use my data connection at home to having the ability to use it for a few months before seeing speeds decrease as more people realized this too. The end result is that while speeds are marginally better now from what they were 6-12 months ago the overall customer experience currently is that it is nearly unusable again. Oddly enough I can pull amazing numbers from the towers 5 miles away in one direction and go straight to 3g roaming 5 miles the other direction.

This is in south west Austin, TX.

I'll try to answer your questions

 

So my question is this: Why would anyone buy a current phone when it won't support the full list of bands that Sprint plans to use in the future? Could someone clarify for me?

 

Despite the LTE phones in 2012 only supporting 1900 MHz band, lets not forget that the 1900 MHz band is very wide from blocks A-F. Sprint will be deploying its LTE primarily in the 1900 MHz so you don't need to worry about getting slow speeds or lack of support for LTE. Reasons for not including 800 Mhz LTE and Clearwire LTE 2.5 GHz bands are primarily because the FCC hasn't approved it yet. 800 MHz LTE is still awaiting FCC approval and Sprint trying to push iDEN off the spectrum first and for Clearwire they are still working out the details with the TD-LTE GTI group for chipsets, equipment, band classes, etc.

 

The reasons listed above are for the Sprint nerds and techies that care about all this stuff. Truthfully, the majority of people that will get the 2012 LTE phones because they are tired of their EVO and Epic which is a crawl and Wimax eats up battery. They are ready for new phones with better specs such as screen size (4.7 inch) , processor (S4), storage space (16 or 32 GB) and the whole 800 MHz LTE and clearwire 2.5 GHz LTE is oblivious to the majority of the public.

 

 

Also, I currently own an EVO3D which has 3g support for the 800 Mhz band. How will network vision affect me? Will I be able to use 3g on the 800 mhz band or will it be LTE only?

 

Your EVO 3D will be able to benefit from better voice coverage indoors with Network Vision because of 800 MHz CDMA. Sprint plans to use the 800 MHz spectrum to deploy a 5x5 LTE carrier (where possible if not a 1.4x1.4 or 3x3 LTE carrier will be added) and a 1x Advanced carrier on 800 MHz. 3G at 800 MHz will not be added. This means that you won't be able to take advantage of better 3G speeds indoors with 800 MHz but to be honest who cares since LTE is the future anyways. Unfortunately Sprint barely has enough spectrum to deploy a 5x5 LTE carrier and a 1x Advanced carrier.

Awesome. I am crystal clear on it now. Thanks for taking the time to explain it all.