iansltx

Thanks for the correction. Could've sworn I had seen somewhere that it was. But found another place saying that it definitively doesn't do HPUE. Sorry for spreading misinformation there.

Didn't take too long at the Sprint store to get the right SIM and get service swapped over :D. Quality of staff over there has gotten better over the years. Feels like HPUE really does help here. Upload speeds aren't quite as shoddy on B41 as with my Pixel.

Ah, I can live with that then. Was worried they were going back to device specific SIMs or something silly like that. Looks like I'll be at the Sprint store bright and early tomorrow so I can put my FreedomPop SIM back in my tablet

What's the correct part # for the SIM that will work?

Got mine in today...friend got two codes (two phone purchases originally) and figured I'd help him out by buying them off of him. He + his wife are using the phone on Verizon FWIW. The phone is definitely heavier/boxier than my Pixel, but it has smaller H/W dimensions, which still astonishes me given the screen size. Build quality is solid. NFC works well as long as you realize it's near the bottom of the device. ...and I'm waiting on chat with Sprint now to get the darned thing activated. There's an on-device activation procedure but it's complaining about the SIM from my pixel not being compatible. Wish me luck, I guess. Side note: it's a little disappointing for apps like Uber, which will normally take over the notification bar with their background, to not do so on the Essential. So you end up with the notch area being notifications on a black background. Not the worst thing ever, but could be better. Would also be kinda cool if Duo took over the notch while on a call, but maybe I'm asking for too much, given the low number of phones that apparently sold here.

I'm guessing I'm behind on which devices currently support 64QAM up. If that's common enough, my fictional Altice product could support 5 Mbps up provisioned speeds, using oversubscription ratios similar to what they've used on cable. Then of course you can go up from there, though you'd probably want to make that TD-LTE carrier invisible to mobile traffic so you don't have a disproportionate amount of airtime sucked up by 16QAM (or worse) users.

No reason it wouldn't be. Say what you will about Altice's ruthless cost-cutting measures, all of ex-Cablevision and the vast majority of ex-Suddenlink areas are well-built. The latter particularly so, considering how small the towns are that we're talking about in some cases.

Hopefully Sprint gave Altice a sweet enough deal (e.g. at-cost MVNO capabilities including unlimited data) that Altice in return gave Sprint an amazing deal on backhaul, such that anywhere Altice has fiber (which will be most places in their footprint that you'd want to put a cell site, micro or otherwise) the cost to backhaul a site via wireline is negligible. That would allow Sprint to run an extremely dense 2500 MHz network in the parts of NYC (and the surrounding area) that Altice is in, as well as alleviate any capacity issues in Suddenlink markets, which tend to be more rural, by throwing well-backhauled B41+B25 at the problem at the macro level. The reason I'm optimistic about Altice's fiber footprint is that, in addition to their FTTH build that's already happening in NYC, their existing cable plant doesn't actually use that much coax; you have smallish node sizes with few/no amplifiers, cutting over to fiber pretty quickly. Heck, in a ton of Suddenlink markets you can get gigabit down, 50M up over coax, so backhauling even CA B41 over cable wouldn't be the end of the world (as I recall OptimumWiFi already uses DOCSIS for backhaul). Now Sprint just needs to cut the same deal with Charter...though maybe Charter already set something up with Verizon? Cable companies have fiber deeper into their network than you'd think, and if Sprint can use that to backhaul a dense B41 network they'll be in a good spot. This does mean, though, that their network experience may end up very different depending on who the cable provider is in a given area. Final note: this also works out nicely at preventing Sprint from launching fixed wireless in Altice areas, unless it gets Altice's blessing. Or maybe Altice uses its MVNO agreement to sell branded B41 based fixed wireless in Suddenlink-adjacent areas that are too expensive to wire for cable. Of course, if they did that, CPEs would need to support uplink CA or the network would need to be configured less aggressively in favor of downlink, because a 30:1 downlink ratio on real world speeds is kind of brutal in a wireline-replacement situation.

It would be if there was a solid broadband connection to feed it. There isn't, so it's not :).

@lilotimz while I'm waiting for an RMA on my MB, mind checking if 78624 has proper spectrum for the MB? Was getting stuck at 20% or timing out there, despite solid B25 and B41 signals to play with (tried setup outside). Fingers crossed that this is just an MB HW issue and the replacement will bring that sweet, sweet B41 action indoors at my parents' place, which is limited to 25 or 26 depending on where you are in the house. Metal roofs + multi-hundred-foot towers will do that.