optimummind

That sucks about the $76 for one week. I tried out the Note 3 on the AT&T network for 11 days and I paid $31. But then, I wasn't charged a restocking fee and my CVS corporate discount waived the $36 activation fee.

You got my Galaxy Mega a couple of days ago.

 

I have some concerns while playing with it hopefully S4GRU has some insight on the matter. Keep in mind I live in Orange County, Southern California.

 

1) I've noticed everytime the 4GLTE signal lights up, my phone signal bar drops to 1 bar. While when the 3G signal lights up, the bar goes to a normal phone signal range.

 

2) Lately people are unable to make direct calls to me. I usually receive a voice mail inidicating the missed call.

 

I was hoping someone inside S4GRU can share some thoughts. I haven't spoken to a Sprint representative as of yet as I entrust that S4GRU usually provides a direct answer.

Which part of OC do you experience this issue? You may be experiencing those symptoms b/c of the Network Vision testing & upgrades. It didn't to me for a while too during their upgrade/update cycles.

Woohoo~! Happy days the past few days! Pretty much all the towers in Orange now have 4G LTE~! There was one tower south of my house that was still red but it turned yellow 3 days ago.

Cant wait for the wifey & mom to upgrade to the Note 3 so they can enjoy LTE and get away from WiMax, which was degrading the past couple of months.

Another good text app is 8sms. It's the AOSP one.

Where did you go? If it was at a corporate store they processed like an upgrade and possibly renewed your contract without giving you a discount. I used to work at a corporate store and when we sold a phone at full pop we would sell it similar to an accessory and then go back in to activate it on the line, never touched the part of the system to generate a fee. They might have processed it as an early upgrade which often appears to be about full pop, did you have to give them your epic? Essentially the system takes it as your are buying out of your contract and then paying the upgrade price which would generate the 36 buck fee. The receipt will show the break down.

My GS4 was a preorder item, paid in full. After receiving the phone, I had to call Sprint to activate the phone as chat didn't work. I didn't have to step inside a store.

When I got the next month's bill, I noticed that the full price of the GS4 was included in the bill, as well as the $36 fee. My contract was not renewed.

The only time you will get hit is if you do a contract renewal, weather it be 2 year contract, one up upgrade, or early upgrade if they still exist. If you buy the nexus from Google like me you will be fine. When you went from your e4gt to the gs4 I am assuming you got it at a subsidized price which signed a contract.

No, I bought the GS4 full price. Yet I still got charged $36.

Anyone in this area get a Nexus 5? How is it? Any issues getting to activate or connect to LTE? In the Nexus 5 thread they mentioned areas with purple sites (4g accepted only) they are having issues and need 3g also acceped.

I'm curious as well. If I know for certain that I won't get hit with an activation fee when I switch from my GS4 to the N5 (like Sprint did when I went from the E4GT to the GS4), I would activate the N5 on Sprint and let you know.

Okay, I was successfully able to remove my Tmobile sim from my Nexus 5, put in a Sprint sim (which I got at the local store) and transfer the existing Sprint service from my iPhone 5. I'm supposedly in a Spark area, but I didn't notice a stronger signal or better speeds. What I did find is that if I lost LTE and the phone went to 3G, even once I returned to an area that I know had strong LTE, the phone stayed on 3G unless I toggled airplane mode. I played around with it for a few hours, mapped the areas around my house on Sensorly, but ultimately the Sprint experience on this phone was extremely inferior to what I was getting with the Tmobile SIM, so I just switched back. Maybe in time I'll try it again, but for now I'm going to keep my iPhone on Sprint and the Nexus 5 on Tmobile. What is good to know is that switching between Sprint and Tmobile is *almost* as easy as it is between GSM carriers - and activating on Sprint doesn't affect the fact that the Google Play version is unlocked. (The rep at the store told me that once I activated it would lock the phone to Sprint - not so!!)

Great info and good to know~! I'm currently enjoying my N5 on a prepaid T-Mobile Kim card and the speeds & experience have been great.

Quick question: when you activated the N5 on Sprint after putting in a Sprint card, what were the subsequent steps? Were you able to activate the N5 on Sprint via website or did you have to call in to Sprint?

Also, were you made to pay an activation charge? I thought one didn't have to pay an activation charge but I was charged the fee earlier this year when I switched from the E4GT to the GS4.

It is commonly assumed (with some evidence) that Google is selling these at break even or a little loss. Why would Best Buy, or any other retailer, sell you a phone and lose money on the transaction. Best Buy makes their money by getting contracts signed for the carrier. They have zero reason to lose money just to make you happy.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

It's true. The Google price is what it is b/c Google is subsidizing the cost of their Play Store N5's. Expecting others to sell at Google prices and take a loss or make minimal profit, if at all, is unreasonable.

So far between T-Mobile and Sprint in LTE areas for both, Sprint has been winning the Speedtests. However, once I go inside my house, a store, or a building, Sprint drops down to 3G whereas T-Mobile keeps LTE.

I was inside a Home Depot tonight and I wanted to reference a price of an item on Amazon. I pulled out my S4 first and I couldn't even connect to the network. I then pulled out the N5 and I got connection right away and it was fast. I got a little frustrated with Sprint tonight.

Man, reading about all these LTE issues makes me glad I popped in the $30 T-Mobile SIM card first (once I get the S5, I'll sell the S4 and bring the N5 in to Sprint).

Maybe b/c it's GSM but my N5 LTE & voice experience on T-Mobile has been very smooth. I hope Sprint will fix their LTE issues soon.

http://www.talkandroid.com/guides/beginner/how-to-disable-unwanted-system-apps-and-bloatware-from-your-android-phone-android-4-0-and-up/

Thx but I already knew about that option. Basically what I wanna do is hide some apps inside the app drawer b/c I already have shortcuts to those apps on the homescreen, Pie Control, and Swipepad. I don't wanna filter thru apps inside the drawer when I already made shortcuts already.

For instance, on my S4 and Hololauncher, my app drawer shows only about 25 out of my 120 apps, the rest being set as shortcuts thru Pie, Swipepad, and/or folders on the homescreens and docks.

You can use Nova or Apex or many other 3rd party launchers. Some of them even give you the option to hide apps for free

Yea, I know about 3rd party launchers, Hololauncher being my preferred launcher and which is on my S4. I already have it installed on the N5 but I haven't started using it b/c I wanted to give myself the chance to try out the Nexus experience and see if I can get used to it.

I downloaded the Android SDK and installed the driver from within. Rebooted the laptop once & connected the Nexus 5 and it was installed shortly after. I then used Chainfire's CF-Autoroot to unlock the bootloader and install SuperSU.

Compared to the S4 (I'm holding on to MF9 until MJA issues get straightened out), the N5 is much snappier and smoother. Compared to the Note 3, they seem about the same. I was surprised to see some slight lag when entering the Widget screen and during the initial swiping. I guess TouchWiz isn't laggy just b/c it's TouchWiz.

This is my first Nexus phone and I don't understand why some people adore the stock Android experience so much. I don't like the Google launcher that much. In fact, I think TouchWiz is more useful & functional. And I don't like how I cant hide apps in the app drawer (if someone knows, please let me know). I thought the ability to hide away some apps would be so basic.

As for my 4g LTE experience with T-Mobile today, my S4 got double the download speed and 5 times the upload speed at the same spot by my work. At that spot, even AT&T's 4G was slower. It felt good seeing Sprint's improvement and growth.

Ah, cant wait to go home! My white 32gb has been delivered!

My 32gb white Nexus is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow, one day ahead of schedule. I'm ready to get it unlocked and rooted after work.

Here is my question though. Initially, I'm gonna use my Walmart-purchased $30 5gb of data SIM card to get started on T-Mobile. Eventually, I would like to activate the phone on Sprint. If I do activate it on Sprint, will I be able to go back to using the $30 T-Mobile SIM card anytime I want? Or, once it's activated on Sprint, will T-Mobile & AT&T SIM cards stop working?

My 32gb Black model showed up on my doorstep when I got home. Activating on T-Mobile was easy: just popped out the SIM from the Nexus 4, put it in the Nexus 5, and started the phone. It asked for WiFi info, then it decided to download a 125 MB update. Pretty standard setup process.

 

This is pretty awesome; here's what shows up under "Available networks" with my T-Mobile SIM from the Nexus 4 installed:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3zakqx1u690g5nn/2013-11-05%2000.20.33.png

 

One of these things is not like the others... I wonder what it'll do if I tell it to connect to Sprint?

 

No evidence of LTE right here (not particularly surprising, although there is apparently some T-Mobile LTE around Macon and I live in a HSPA+ area where LTE was/is supposedly an "easy upgrade"); I'll drive around a bit this evening and see if I can get it to connect to LTE somewhere Sensorly shows T-Mobile purple.

 

Got tracking info for my Sprint SIM today; not showing an ETA yet but UPS Ground from Lexington to Macon is allegedly two days. Hopefully by then the MEID issues will be fixed and I'll be able to activate online, put the SIM back in the Nexus 4, and put my Evo out of its misery.

Good to know that it's easy & simple with a T-Mobile SIM card. According to UPS, the phone will be delivered tomorrow. . I'll post some screenshots of the T-Mobile LTE in action once it's all set up.

Woot. LTE all over Orange County. Looks like I picked the perfect time to jump on board with Sprint. It's my first smartphone, too.

Congrats! I'm glad I decided to stay with Sprint too. When I joined Sprint for the first time, it was June of 2012 and our family all picked up the E4GT, WiMax phones. Lucky for us, WiMax was almost everywhere where we went.

Then I skipped on the gs3 b/c I found this site and didn't believe what the Sprint reps were telling me - LTE in Orange County by the end of 2012 and or early 2013.

When the GS4 came out, I bought it off-contract and used it with 3g and WiFi. Luckily, 3 & 1/2 months later, my area got LTE and now LTE is Sprint official and pretty darn good.

The timing worked out very well, all thanks to S4Gru.

Woot~! I had placed my order for the 32gb white Nexus 5 & I finally got my tracking # at 3:20 this morning! . Got my 5gb T-Mobile SIM card ready to pop in.

After Orange County launched officially, I suddenly lost my 4g LTE signal at home. Called Sprint & let their technical support know about our worsening call signal, dropped calls inside the house, & no more 4g LTE. According to the tech, they said the tower is undergoing more work/updates due to an increase in Sprint subscribers.

I'm in LA right now and I must say the 4g coverage has been pretty impressive. Better than when I used to come here with my WiMax E4GT. However, going inside buildings often takes me right down to 3G.

Can't you just use your GS4 SIM card in the N5?

Not sure. But even if I could, I don't wanna do it b/c I want my GS4 alive on Sprint. And I don't wanna add another line b/c it would jack up the price, more so than just using the $30 flat T-Mobile SIM card option.

Is that lte? I want to test T-Mobile in a few places and for 30 bucks I'd be willing to do it. Any one know how simple it would be to switch between sprint and T-Mobile and back again??

 

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

According to the SIM card documentation, yes, it's 4g LTE. And T-Mobile coverage website says my area offers 4G LTE.

I decided to go a different route with my Nexus 5. I swung by Walmart after work to pick up the T-Mobile $30 microSIM kit. For $30, it gives me unlimited text, 5gb of 4G data, and 100 mins of talk.

If I really fall in love with the phone, then I'll sell my GS4 and activate it on Sprint. Unlocked phones FTW~!

Ordered my 32GB white Nexus 5 at 1:38pm Pacific time with 2-day shipping & it's still pending.

I saw on Youtube you can kind of bump the screen over to a side and shrink it town to a one hand size. How does that work out in use? I hope they put that in the next 2 update too.

 

It's a setting one can activate in Settings. Once turned on, one uses a swipe gesture to activate. It took me some tries to get used to it but it works rather well.

This is why devices cost so much.

I doubt it. If Sprint didn't change the plans on me after introducing the One Up program, I would've just opened up a 6th line.

More importantly, I discovered through real-world usage that the Note 3 isn't compatible with me.

And there are hundreds and thousands of other products out there that cost more than a Note 3 where consumers have a 30 days return protection on.