Oleyo3D

Ah, thanks for the clarification, folks. As always, I am very grateful for the level of knowledge and competence shown on this site

I have been considering holding off upgrading from OG EVO to LTE until LTE is actually available, but I just learned that the LTEVO will have a radio which supports 800mhz for 3G (I know 800mhz lte is way down the road, so no need to worry about a radio for that). With that in mind, will 800mhz for 3G be usable currently/soon with NV, or will it also have to wait a long time until IDEN dies? If it can give me a legitimate 3G upgrade I am totally willing to buy now...

Hehe, the kid at the Sprint store today told a customer that LTE stood for "Lightening Thunder Electricity" because it was so fast. I was just there to get my hands on the EVOLTE before I decided if I wanted it (awesome device...just wary about when NV updates will go live in my greater boston area). I had a good chuckle though.

I agree about the thinness of the EVO LTE. I finally got to handle it in the store today and was really surprised by how thin and light it was, even knowing that it would be quite a bit thinner and lighter than my OG EVO going in. Of course, this made me say "Why didn't you put in a removable battery!?" They could easily have sacrificed some girth and still had a wonderfully thin phone. I almost bought the phone on the spot, it really is a sharp device. Love it or hate it, Sense does add personality and some functionality to the phone. Either way I won't let Sense or it's multitask aggression guide my decision, since I am sure I will be able to get a pure ICS ROM at any time if I don't like it. Only thing holding me back now is determining when I will get LTE in my greater boston area. I still occasionally get Wimax driving around with my old Evo and 3G is still abysmal. I really need to see if these NV updates will pan out in my area for 3G as well as LTE.

I am also very interested in the greater Boston area. I live in Billerica, bordering on Carlisle. Carlisle is a black hole of cell coverage, and even though my official sprint coverage map says that I have great coverage I had to get an Airrave since I was on and off roaming at home. (Positive note: my 3g speeds on the airrave are excellent, with my Comcast backhaul ) I was really hoping for a new tower nearby, but it's not a big deal since I get decent coverage by the time I get to the end of my street. At home I just got the airrave so I could get calls consistently...not so worried about data there with wifi. What worries me is that all the surrounding cell sites seem to have NV complete status, but 3g speeds are still abysmal (driving around; not on airrave) I don't care for blazing fast speed. I just want to be able to stream my music again on my drive to work. Or load a web page in under say, 30 seconds.

Here is a noob question: Are all NV sites automatically going to be LTE sites? I know the whole deal is that NV is supposed to consolidate Sprint's various networks, but I am just starting to learn about all this telecom stuff. It's pretty interesting to follow you knowledgeable folks. Also, how in the world do you access the forums with the interactive maps? I guess you are supposed to be some sort of sponsor, but I don't see any info on what that means or how to become one...