jamesinclair

It appears to add functionality to signal check, but it allows more apps to burn more processor so it lags worse.

 

Sent from my SPH-L720T using Tapatalk

So the upgrade is a downgrade?

Im on 4.3, should I stay where I am?

The Active is out on AT&T now and the reviews are good.

But still no SD or removable battery

I dont get the new plan.

Wasnt the big thing unbundling and splitting off the plan and the phone so its all fair and square and you know what you're paying and whatever?

But now putting them back together into an "All In" bundle is the latest and greatest inovation..!? And yet All In still requires surprise activation fees, and numerous other taxes and surcharges making it not al in at all? Never mind no insurance....

It seems like the entire industry is running in circles announcing new plans every 6 months... and yet the best course of action is always to stay on the older plans.

I'm just going to sit back with my ED1500 plan and raise my eyebrows at all this back and forth.... and look forward to getting an upgrade for a penny in a couple of months.

I love seeing Marcelo comment on Copa America on Twitter.

Most CEOs and such on Twitter are just an intern sending out press releases. He actually uses it as a personal account.

Not unless you have the legacy AT&T Unlimited International Data add-on on a corporate liable account.

 

Very rare but they are out there.  I know someone with it - still unlimited to this day.

There are some hilarious legacy plans out there for every network. Verizon has one that only works in the Dakotas, Robert should try and get a hold of it

I rarely go over 3GB (if ever) but I like the peace of mind of unlimited.

I would most likely switch to Tmobile, assuming they kept unlimited, and my experience in the 14 day trial period was good.

A little off topic, but we might want to consider renaming this thread something like "The New Claure Era Catch-All Thread". The current title is a little specific. Don't get me wrong, this thread is still relevant and serves an important purpose. But it has long outlived the original title.

There I fixed it

Woopsie, AT&T just got fined $100,000,000 for throttling

No. I do this with every phone I've had. Works great.

 

sent from an underwater dust storm from my Sprint S5

Then why the hel do those settings exist :/

It was taking my phone up to 5 seconds to open text messaging. Now it's instant!

Extremely helpful. Thanks for the thorough detail of your experience. May I ask where all these speed tests where taken? Hopefully not at the airport since those tend to be heavily congested and may have tampered your speed tests. Also, did you receive a text as soon as you started roaming in D.F.?

 

 

I may end up going down south to Mexico next month (I'm hoping I don't have to). I know for a fact that the area I may be (potentially, but hope not to) visiting has no Iusacell or Movistar. Hopefully Telcel does not incur any charges. A chat representative said it shouldn't, just as long I use GSM (yeah, it makes no sense, but I have a chat transcript just in case Telcel is charged regularly).

 

 

Again, thanks for sharing your experience.

The speed tests were not at the airport, they were in a residential area. Airport had the worst service of my entire trip.

I did not recieve any form of welcome text from Sprint or Movistar.

Yeah everyone I spoke to said that being charged would be impossible, but like you said, Im not confident that the phone wont latch onto a paid provider if theyre all thats available. Thats why I called three times, to make sure there was a record of me being told I would not be charged. I recommend you call the global number just to have that history on your account as well.

So my phone has been getting slower and slower.

I did what this video suggests...

If you dont want to watch, he suggests enabling developer options, and turning off window animation scale, transition animation scale, and animator duration scale.

Well I did it and my phone is MUCH faster now.

Is there a downside to doing this?

Yep, I'm pretty sure that it's just an issue with the Aquos as I've mentioned before.

Aquos WiFi calling = No bueno

 

Since the last update in December, WiFi calling address issues constantly plague me. Sharp has asked me to mail it to them for replacement or repair. I think I will send it in after my trip this weekend.

 

Using Nexus 6 on Tapatalk

Were you having the same problem, where the address screen would constantly crash? Or something else?

I didnt test it extensively, but at my dads house (USA lcoation), with the Aquos, I found better call quality using the Airave than with wifi calling, at the same distance from the transmission point.

The Airave sounded normal (not HD), but the Aquos would ocassionally break up.

I didnt have time to troubleshoot, so I simply turned off wifi calling and kept the Airave.

In Mexico I only made one short call to confirm it would work, so I didnt have time to experience if the call quality would also suffer.

I also headed to Scotland (large swaths of the countryside is still on GPRS ) last week and had great service on O2. Purchased the 'higher speed' data pack which worked marvelously on both my S6e and my traveling partners S4T. I made sure that our phone was only in GSM/UMTS mode though, it looks like you were using Automatic, which I assume kept scanning for CDMA every once in a while.

 

Overall, great experience and I hope they add the Caribbean soon!

Yes I was on automatic. I didnt think to change that

Pretty awesome.  It's likely throttling is in place, rather than limited you to EDGE (2G network).  They took HSPA+ and throttled you to 2G speeds.  I'm sure there's advantages of throttled HSPA as opposed to being limited to full-sped EDGE (which isn't much faster, anyways.)  Thanks for this post.  

 

I will say, pre-lollipop phones handle low signal zones a lot worse than their lollipop counterpart.  Lollipop tells applications that if there's no data session available to not use data services.  In KitKat, applications aren't quite as smart - they'll attempt to use data services, even if there is no data services and this can cause the device to hang often and drains battery quite heavily.  I'm curious how much different your experience would've been on a newer phone.

The iPhone 6 also experienced faster battery drain than it would in the US, but not as devastating as my battery loss.

I am on Android 4.3.

I bet the battery drain is partially because of the slow speed. The radio has to be active longer, draining the battery. I used to experience this a few years ago pre-NV when my phone idled on overloaded sites.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6

This is a good point. Of course it also meant my screen was on longer every time I tried to do anything as well.

Anybody have any thoughts on my theory that my phone was actively searching for a native Sprint signal?

There has been discussion about this new plan in the catch-all Marcelo thread, but I think it deserves its own space. This will make it easier for people to find.
 
I went to Mexico last weekend and was able to experience the plan on both a Galaxy S4 and an Iphone6.
 
Pre-trip:
 
I don't trust telecom companies. Not trying to call out Sprint in particular, but Comcast, Verizon, AT&T…whatever. Too many times, what I have been told was not what showed up on the bill. So I took a few extra steps to protect myself.
 
First I activated the option online. I then called to confirm the plan was added, and asked why it wouldn’t let me add it for the Aquos. I was told my phone was “too old” Uh huh. I also confirmed that when travelling, there wouldn’t be any chance of being charged.
 
A week before the trip, I called again to confirm it was all set.
 
3 days before the trip, I called global services to ask about dialing and such. I asked if I could text ANY number for free. I asked if it was possible to roam accidentally into a paid area. The person I talked to seemed very unsure about anything, but the point was just to get the call on record, so if I was charged, I could easily dispute it.
 
One additional problem with the call was that the rep offered no information on my phone settings. IE, he did not instruct me to enable roaming and remove the roaming guards.
 
Trip:
 
I landed in Mexico City, turned on the phone and....no service. Damn. We were spending a long time taxiing so I went back to airplane mode.
 

20 minutes later, while waiting for my bag, I tried again. Service! Looks like the problem was poor reception, not that it didn’t work.
 
I was a little concerned though. Movistar? Uh oh, wasn’t the partner Telefonica or Telecel...someone with Tel, for sure. H+? Uh oh, I thought I was limited to 2G...
 

Let’s see if I can switch provider...
 

 
 
Nope!
 
Roaming network? Nope! And look, I’m on 3G now!
 

 
What the, now I’m on E! What’s E!?!
 

 
Apparently I’m on Sprint! All this is still in the airport, by the way.... I have no idea what this was.

 
But something isn’t going well at all... my phone is heating up very quickly, and my battery is falling FAST
 

I even did a battery pull in case a zombie app was killing me, but that didn’t help me at all.... I have had zero battery issues, so this was alarming.
 
Now I’m at the house, charging. Oh look, a new network type! I’m doing the full tour of letters!

 
The next morning I checked my account and there were no extra charges. In fact, my account was already showing that I was using free value plan data and texts! Success! No need to be worried about a crazy bill. I didn’t take a screen shot, and I just entered a new account cycle, but basically:
This shows up on my LAST cycle (for each line):

International Value Roaming 05/03-05/23   Unlimited  62,547
International Value Roaming 05/03-05/23   Unlimited  41,366
 
 
This shows up on my current cycle (for one line):
Intl. Roaming Text  442 / Unlimited
 
That is, my last cycle shows no international text (even though I was there for part of it), and my current cycle shows no international value roaming, data, even though I was there for part of it.

But alas, what matters is that it shows free and unlimited! It all worked!
 
As for speed... Overall, I found the plan very usable. Quite frankly, it was on par with Sprint 3G service I had in Fresno 2-3 years ago, so I wasn’t shocked by it at all.  
 
That is, Google Maps would load well enough, but no point in trying the satellite view. Google loaded immediately, but individual webpages obviously varied immensely. I was able to use Uber and Facebook, and even upload an image or two. Nothing could be done in a rush, but I was ready for that. So if you wanted to use Google Maps to find a restaurant and their hours, you need to set aside 5 minutes of time for your result. No instant gratification.
 
First speed test, ping is sky high because of the server it picked (upload test failed)
 

 
This is the signal for the tests
 

 
Second attempt
 

Third attempt
 

 
Finally gave me an upload result
 

 
 
As for the battery, it was an issue throughout the trip. It would drain VERY fast. During parts of the day, I would go on airplane mode to preserve battery.
 

Now, it's entirely possible my phone was experiencing a problem, but I have a feeling the issue was that my phone was constantly trying to grab onto Sprint CDMA coverage, killing my battery. Does this sound possible? Also, note the network signal, why would it show so broken like this? I was in dense, urban areas all the time, and always had plenty of bars (excluding the airport). Any thoughts on this?
 
 
I advise anyone travelling to take a second battery and be very careful with this, assuming it wasn't a problem with my specific phone.

Also, all my contacts added the +1 on their own. I didn’t have to do anything to ensure the texts would be sent.
 
Overall, having access to free texting and data was fantastic. It gave me access to Google Maps and Uber which made the trip much easier. I can live without texting, but it was nice to not have to make any adjustments. This is a huge added value to my plan.
 
One note: I never tried texting a Mexican number. I used WhatsApp so the person I texted wouldn’t incur any charges replying to a US number.

I hope this was helpful.

Previously I mentioned not being able to use the Aquos phone wifi calling in Mexico. The problem was it wouldnt accept the address.

I was there this weekend and gave it another go.

Test 1: Tried the locate me feature, failed.

Test 2: Went to Google Maps, selected my location, selected the "whats here option" and copied over the entire address. Ie, house number, road, neighborhood, larger neighbhood, city, state, countyy, postal code. Said the address did not work.

Test 3: Disabled locate me, tried typing in a US address. As I was halfway through, the program would crash and it would say "unfortunately, settings has failed". Repeated 4 times.

Test 4: Tried a much simpler (but still real) US address. (ie, 123 Main Street, vs 2047 Marymount Lane). As I was typing it, the full address appeared as a suggestion. I selected it, and it was accepted!

So I was able to get wifi calling working on the Aquos in Mexico, no thanks to the garbage software.

However, texting and calling works great.

So my advice to anyone travelling abroad is to just use a simple US address.

Called Sprint Global. They confirmed that all texting is free in Mexico (ie, to local number) and I should not be able to roam into paid data by accident. However, I got conflicting information on how the number should be dialed from my phone when in Mexico and texting a Mexican number.

I also did not get confirmation if I should enable GSM roaming only or also CDMA roaming.

Hopefully it all works out and I dont have to complain on the phone for any refunds...

Ill report back next week after my trip.

Users with International Value Roaming traveling outside of the International Value Roaming countries will not be able to use their device. Customers will need to contact Sprint World Wide before traveling to a non-International Value Roaming country to have their roaming plan changed to allow usage outside of countries not included with International Value Roaming.

 

http://www.sprint.com/landings/international-value-roaming/#!/

Im not talking about outside that country, but outside an area within the country where the partner service exists.

In Mexico, Spring offers the free GSM roaming, but also paid CDMA roaming.

Sorry if repost, but international value roaming expanded:

 

http://newsroom.sprint.com/news-releases/sprint-expands-free-data-roaming-to-colombia-denmark-honduras-ireland-italy-paraguay-and-sweden.htm

 

http://newsroom.sprint.com/news-releases/sprint-extended-international-value-roaming-animated-graphic.htm

 

H3 and Tigo added as roaming partners.

Fantastic news.

Has anyone on this forum tried using it yet?

Im going to call global support tonight, but I still dont know if free texting is ONLY to US numbers (instead of local numbers), and how one ensures that they dont accidentally roam into a non-free area.

If people are going to switch away from Sprint because of the ads, oh well.  Thousands of other sheeple (sheep+people) will come because of the ads.  And if they were Sprint customers in the past, they will undoubtedly see an improvement as Fresno is way better than it was, and will be better and better in the months and years ahead.

 

Sprint has got to move forward at some point.  And they are only touting real facts in Fresno.  Even if it's not as good as you think it needs to be to advertise.

I just think they should have held off on the Fresno ads until they have done more work. New customers coming in will likely be dissapointed in the data speed and coverage, bail, and then not return.  Yes, there have bee improvements, but it's still not quite where one would want it to be.

Without 800 LTE, and/or more towers, data service in Fresno is simply not reliable. The tower spacing is too far apart, and does not account for 15 years of unchecked sprawl. Once 800 LTE and 41 has been deployed, then it would be a great time to advertise.

And again, Im talking specifically about Fresno/Clovis, which has lagged behind the rest of the country in deployment and investment every step of the way. I currently don't live in Fresno and have no issues with my service at my current spot, but I do the rounds when Im visiting (speed tests, sensorly mapping, tower spotting)

Im glad to see that RootMetrics is testing venues. That is valuable information. They shoul do outdoor ones too. Last time I was at the LA Colliseum, not even a text message would go through. I guess thats what happens when you put 100,000 people together sharing 1 or 2 towers. This is true of all carriers, not just Sprint of course.

The market specific ads and websites just launched. There are about 30 cities that have "vanity" URLs. Kind of surprised that Indianapolis wasn't one of them.

 

Sent from my Tab 4

I think they made a mistake doing this for Fresno.

I saw an ad on Facebook about how Sprint has the most reliable calling in Fresno.

Every comment was negative.

Why? While the ad may be true in that calls are reliable, in Fresno, Sprint is dead last (20 points behind) everybody else in data speed.

http://www.rootmetrics.com/us/rsr/fresno-ca?utm_content=buffer57162&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=buffer#!

I dont think its smart advertising to tout your hown about one metric, when a second, possibly more important metric, is so bad. Just leaves a customer suffering from slow data with a bad taste in their mouth.

It reminds me of back when I had AT&T, they had "fewest dropped calls" ads running all the time. It would make me furious because I would drop a call every day. I switched to Sprint shortly after, in part because of the ads.

There are no geographic restrictions on this, like the Airave right?

I can order it and use it at a secondary address not on my account?

Even before I had the new router, I set up Wi-Fi calling for myself.  I had issues getting it to accept my address.  I was at a totally allowed address for the service.  I rebooted the phone, tried Caps on the first character of the street and city, etc.  Noting wanted to work but suddenly it did work. I have no idea why it did not want to work originally or why it suddenly did work.  It appears to be a touchy item.   I SUSPECT the GPS was giving them one address and I was giving them another address since I was physically within 15 feet of my property line.

Yes it took me multiple tries to get it to accept the address. The software for this is very poor because the use or lack of a comma can blow the whole thing up, and youre not told why.

What needs are unique to Spanish speakers?

Are we gonna see plans unique to redheads? Maybe they have unique needs too. Who knows!

 

Assuming youre being serious...

Plans that have affordable pricing for calls and texts to and within hispanic countries. IE: No more $2.29 a minute.

Improved Spanish language communication.

And yes, if Sprint had a large percentange of redhead customers, than maybe looking at roaming in Ireland and Scotland would make sense.