CriticalityEvent

If I didn’t know anything about the RRPP, it would almost seem like requiring phones that connect to bands 2, 4, and 12 (in addition to the current bands) make it sound like Sprint is really banking on a merger with T-Mobile.

"...turn the treble all the way down and put the bass all the way up..." Sent from my 831C using Tapatalk

I'm not sure if anyone here would recommend a service that you would only be roaming on... You wouldn't get any kind of appreciable speeds without Wi-Fi around and Sprint would drop you if you keep exceeding the roaming limit (200MB/month, I think). Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

This came about from someone’s post over on XDA and my response to it (link) in which I promised to check its accuracy with the gurus here. Basically, the poster interpreted the lack of SVDO/SVLTE on the Sprint HTC One M8 as an “oversight,” and I respectfully disagreed, but it raised a few questions that I haven’t been able to answer. 1.) Will Sprint be transmitting LTE on more bands nationwide than the other carriers? 2.) If the answer to question 1 is “yes,” then does tri-band LTE come at the cost of SVLTE because Sprint tri-band phones will be switching between bands more frequently so the network can distribute the load? Here’s my rationale: 1.) Knowing that NV rollout is nationwide, and knowing that the end-goal is to have 2600 and 1900 MHz on all towers as well as 800 MHz LTE on 80% of the towers, it’s safe to say that Sprint will have tri-band LTE across the country. From what I understand, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon might only have 1 or 2 bands per market (maybe more in certain places for AT&T/T-Mobile): Sources: List of LTE networks - Wikipedia AT&T Mobility - Wikipedia Sprint - Wikipedia Verizon - Wikipedia T-Mobile USA - Wikipedia 2.) Since the other carriers have fewer bands in a given region, the phones will be switching between them less, leaving extra room (for lack of a better word) for SVLTE on certain devices. Since we’re talking about the HTC One M8, let’s use it as an example. Here are the frequencies for each of the carrier-specific models: Source: M8 spec page AJ referenced this issue with the radio paths which may be related to this (not for the M8, but possibly still applicable): …which prompted the following question in that same thread which remains unanswered:

That is AWESOME. Just to confirm, is that with the stock messaging app? Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

Got it, thanks for the clarification! I was actually thinking that this made more sense since the network knows how to shift the load between bands. My hope was that we could force a switch in case the phone wasn't smart enough to know when to drop to 800MHz if we were deep in a building, for example. Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

But it seems that people with the LG G2 and Nexus 5 can change the band priority and "force" one band over the others. Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

I'm curious as well. This will likely be my first tri-band device and I would love that kind of granular control over its connectivity. Is it something easily selectable from the engineering screen, or do you have to edit the priorities in the PRL like you do on the G2 (from what I understand)? Hopefully, I'll have one in a couple weeks when I'm satisfied that there are no build quality issues. I'm right by a cluster of 800MHz LTE towers by Chicago so I can't wait to try those out! Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Saw this on Gizmodo, but here's the link they cited with more information: http://www.myvouchercodes.co.uk/#cellular-network I want to show this to people who wish for the ability to see radio wavelengths and ask them, "are you sure?" They'd probably be blinded at ground level. Sent from my HTCONE using Tapatalk 2

Would the band number in the 1X Engineering screen always show as “CDMA PCS” as long as the band class was “1” (PCS 1900 MHz) in the EVDO Engineering screen? Would it change to something like “CDMA SMR” if the EVDO Engineering screen showed you were connected to band class 10? Since the HTC One’s EVDO Engineering screen is not accurate, could we use this as a work-around? Do the channel numbers for CDMA2000 and/or UL/DL channels for LTE change as you switch cells (sectors?)? If so, does that mean each cell can only accommodate 1200 CDMA2000 connections and 649 LTE connections, or can two handsets share a channel through some kind of multiplexing?

Once my One arrived last week, I purchased the Incipio DualPro Shine from a local AT&T store as a stopgap until I could get a case that didn’t cost nearly $40 to turn my gorgeous One into a chintzy-looking tank (yay 14-day return policies). http://www.incipio.c...shine-case.html In the week that I’ve had my One, I noticed pretty mediocre performance in terms of maintaining an LTE signal, even when compared to my EVO LTE. Just sitting at my desk, my One would occasionally drop to 3G whereas my EVO would maintain a solid connection in the same location. Given that the consensus around here and XDA is that the One seems to perform significantly better than the EVO in that regard, it got me thinking that it might be the case. I had some time at work yesterday, so I tried ditching the case. With the case on, my RSRP values were hovering around -115 dBm. With the case off, the values rose to around -107 dBm. I used stationary objects on my desk as reference points to ensure that I put the phone in the exact same spot and let the phone sit for about a minute both with and without the case several times. Each time, the result was the same. The values fluctuated during active data sessions, but they were hard to quantify, so let’s just say that they briefly went up. In fringe areas (friend’s house), I was able to maintain an LTE connection without the case, but completely lost it with the case on (glad I had their Wi-Fi password). The DualPro is a two-part case; there is a rubber “caddy” that the phone is placed inside of and the outer plastic portion in which the phone/caddy combination is nested. I did not notice much, if any, drop in the RSRP values with just the caddy. What I did see, however, was the -8 dBm drop in signal when I rested the phone directly inside the plastic, sans caddy. Since I’ve used plastic cases with similar thicknesses without issues, does anyone think that it could be the metalized painting? I know case manufacturers design these mainly with impact absorption in mind and don’t have access to RF testing labs, but wouldn’t they know to stay away from certain materials? I guess “DualPro” has a better ring than the Incipio Faraday.

Oh, I totally forgot to mention that my post was more to just confirm/reinforce what was said a couple days ago in this (your) post: Sorry, I posted hastily.

Someone over on XDA was given a One ahead of the launch and was nice enough to start a thread asking people if they had any questions: http://forum.xda-dev...d.php?t=2228412 I went ahead and posted this: To which he responded: See his post for screenshots: http://forum.xda-dev...77&postcount=21 Unfortunately, he is not in an area where Sprint has rolled out LTE yet, so we can’t really compare anything at this time.

Agreed. Sorry, I was still editing my post when you added that.

http://gizmodo.com/5...-everybodys-ass Thoughts? From what I've read on this forum, people seem to think that T-Mobile's network is the only one of the four major carriers that will really rival Sprint's post-NV network in terms of technology. However, I have some issues with this article; what it seems to be focusing on is maximum throughput as a standard by which to judge all other carriers. From my point of view, T-Mobile seems to be more metro-focused. Most of my friends who have it live in a major city and get usable signal in many more places than I do when I’m with them. On the other side of the coin, when they’re in a more suburban/rural area, they drop down to EDGE while I might still have LTE. I guess I would like to see some hard evidence that T-Mobile’s HSPA+ “fallback” will be used as frequently as Sprint’s EV-DO network when the LTE signal starts getting weak. As far as I understand, T-Mobile will only be rolling out LTE on the 1700/2100MHz band, which would be comparable to Sprint’s 1900MHz band. However, once Sprint rolls out LTE on 800MHz, even if it will not be on every tower, would that be comparable to T-Mobile’s HSPA+ in terms of coverage?

http://www.engadget....pring-cleaning/ D-: I use this thing to sync saved articles across all of my devices in conjunction with Feedly (which, coincidentally, is trying to prepare for this: http://www.engadget....after-google-r/). Still, I don't want to be locked to Feedly; I use Flipboard with some regularity which is also based off of my Reader feeds/starred items. While it will likely do nothing, I signed this petition: http://www.change.or...-reader-running

Feck yeah they did! Though, I'm confused about this part: What's the difference between "removable" and "accessible"? The way that's phrased, it seems to imply that there's no way of getting to the battery, even with the right tools, which I'm sure can't be right. Even with a molded unibody, there must be some way of non-destructively gaining access to the internals. My only real gripe about it is the phone: Are you KIDDING me? I know, this might not seem like a huge deal to some, but for a lot of up-close shots, this feature is indispensable. Sometimes the subject that you want to focus on is just too small to allow the phone ANY interpretation on what it thinks you’re tapping on, so it decides to focus on something in the background with astounding consistency (at least in the case of the EVO LTE). For example, I never could have got these shots if it weren’t for the focus-lock on the camera button:

So, is the Z10 the new "Jack of all bands"? http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/30/blackberry-z10-iphone-5-nexus-4-lumia-920/

Wow… poor guy. This is probably made worse for him by the fact that he doesn’t sound particularly technically-inclined, so his ability to try to explain what’s going on to people who are already angry is limited. The fact that they’re mad and so sure that they’ve got hard evidence can really make for a dangerous situation. What I want to know is whether whatever tracking service these victims are using show how accurate the reported location of their stolen phone is. For example, on Google Maps, if you don’t have your GPS on, it shows your location with an error circle which is based off of the surrounding towers. I can imagine this error circle being completely ignored by some (or even just missing in the tracking software) which leads the victims to go right to the center point. If some amount of error is displayed by the tracking software, then his nearest neighbor must be hundreds of feet away. I wonder just how well the locations all of these victims’ phones match up. Some apps show your latitude and longitude coordinates to within several decimal places, and even with a small amount of error, two phones right next to each other might not show the exact same numbers. If it is a software glitch on Sprint’s side, I’m wondering if all of these numbers are the same, down to the last digit.

I was about to make a thread similar to this last week, but it was more based around this: A friend of mine posted a status update on Facebook asking his friends about whether he should go with the iPhone 5 on Verizon or Sprint. He lives in the north side of Chicago where NV is well underway and even I with my EVO LTE am getting LTE signals in many of the places that I go. The comment list ran 30-something replies long, mostly filled with “OMG Sprint is still around?!” and “LOL SPRINT HAXORZ”-style responses. I chimed in with two fairly informative posts just to get completely ignored.

EDIT: I completely missed the point you made, sorry! Are you saying that additional carriers can be used to compensate for signal loss? For example, a single PCS LTE carrier will experience significant throughput loss in a low-reception area, but using a second PCS carrier in that same spot can help mitigate that loss so the throughput stays more consistent? Original post (if interested): Oh, I don’t think that I phrased my question well, sorry. I wasn’t curious about the capacity so much as I was curious about the degradation in throughput from signal loss. Let’s take the YouTube example again and assume that you’re the only person using a nearby tower and you want to stream a standard definition video that required 1.5Mbps of throughput. In a 3G-only EV-DO world, a tower could’ve supported a maximum throughput 2.6Mbps to your device which, for the sake of this example, has a maximum signal strength of -65dBm RSSI. If you have a clear line-of-site to the tower, you have a big surplus of available throughput. Now, you decide to go inside a nearby building and your signal drops to -102dBm, but you still can stream at 1.8Mbps despite a huge drop in signal strength (still a surplus, but not by much). Now let’s go to some point in the future where everything is running on LTE-A with 100Mbps maximum throughput to your device and you’re streaming an Ultra-HD video on YouTube which requires 58Mbps (same proportion as required throughput to available throughput as the EV-DO example). Outside this building, you have a signal strength of -85dBm RSRP which allows you to pull the full 100Mbps if you wanted. When you walk into the same building, your LTE signal drops to -122dBm. Given what you had said before regarding the sensitivity of LTE’s throughput based on its signal strength, I feel that the drop in throughput would be much greater than the 30% drop seen in the EV-DO example. If this is the case, then you are no longer able to use the signal for that application. This concerns me because, as conservative as I try to be with my data usage, I might still like to occasionally use an application to its fullest potential. Getting used to the consistency of EV-DO performance given large changes in signal could lull people into a false sense of security with LTE when future applications like these are being considered. So, to re-phrase my question, are there any network technologies that would see the same marginal drop in throughput despite large changes in signal strength like EV-DO but perform at true 4G speeds?

You seem new here. Read this thread and get back to us: http://s4gru.com/ind...-for-unlimited/ Just to warn you, it didn't end well for people with your mentality.

Are you saying that the performance of the signal drops exponentially with the signal strength, or is the drop fairly linear from, say, -65 to -100dBm with a dramatic change occurring at -100 to -106dBm? Either way, this seems fairly robust when compared to LTE. Even at its worst, LTE appears to perform better than EV-DO, but I feel there’s something to be said about performance as a function of signal strength. Given what we use LTE for right now, nobody should have a problem using it when it’s at its worst, but what about future applications? For example, even at 70 to 80% of its maximum throughput, EV-DO can still stream a YouTube video, even though this means that you’re quickly approaching the limits of usable signal. What if people start adopting LTE and LTE-A for some purpose that requires it to perform at 80% of its maximum throughput? The use of this application would be limited to areas of high signal strength. Will we see another network technology as “robust” as EV-DO?

It is a cliché, but do not let the door hit you in the ass on the way out... AJ I've had an interesting experience with SERO. My brother was with iPCS and was able to get me on the SERO plan back in 2007. This was great for me as a college student because I could keep on top of my e-mail and manage my schedule from my smartphone while paying a bill that I could afford (given that comparable plans were running at least $90-$120/month back then). In 2010, I got my first "real" job. The EVO had just come out, and I decided it was with losing SERO over. I was completely prepared to pay the full price for service when I was made aware of the 17% discount Baxter gave their employees. I called to have it applied after a few months of full-price service, but the agent said she would just re-apply my SERO discount because it would be easier. Earlier this year, I picked up the EVO LTE, again expecting to lose my SERO discount, but it stayed on the plan. Do I enjoy SERO? Absolutely, but even without it, I would totally stay with Sprint like I was prepared to do twice. My only justification for its existence would be for students who could use the phone for legitimate school work, like I did. Back in 2006/7, smartphones were more of a luxury item, so I was a bit lucky. Now, they are becoming a standard. Just like how Microsoft sells software at a discounted price to students, hopefully that will provide enough incentive to ensure their continued customer loyalty when they can afford to pay for it at full price. I know it worked for me... Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

For reference, I’m on stock, rooted ICS: Kernel version: 3.0.8-01680-gb6402b4 Basband version: 1.12.11.0809 PRI Version: 2.45_003 I’ll have to look up what you meant regarding that NVRAM comment; I’m not too familiar with flashing modems. Well thank you for posting them on XDA and not here, I guess we know who your best friend is… :-P And that’s why people should always cite their sources!