GoWireless

Hmmmm... about that... you may want to check out the other thread I started... It looks like Sprint intentionally (and inexplicably) disabled UMTS 850 in the device. This could cause degraded performance of the device all over Central and South America (and Australia, Thailand, Israel, the Phillipines and other places). Right now, no idea why they did this.

I'm afraid it is definitely not that. Sprint has offered international GSM roaming for many years now. Plus remember, Sprint only disabled UMTS 850, it still left UMTS 1900 and 2100 active in the device.

Not sure I buy this as a viable theory because: -I doubt Sprint's GSM roaming agreements make a distinction between GSM and WCDMA, they just get billed as data by their partners, to which Sprint adds a hefty markup. In other words, i don't think with with most international GSM carriers Sprint has separate agreements for GSM and for WCDMA. Most GSM carriers are pushing as much of their networks to WCDMA anyway due to spectral efficiency issues. -They did not disable WCDMA 1900 or 2100. Remember also that both AT&T and T-Mobile use WCDMA 1900. -AT&T is not a factor anyway as Sprint always blocks out US GSM/WCDMA reception regardless of band.

Even though the Sprint Samsung Galaxy S4 passed the FCC with UMTS/WCDMA 850MHz, it appears that the band has been disabled for use domestically and internationally and the device will only support UMTS 1900/2100 outside the US. Anyone know why would Sprint do that? p.s. I have a nagging suspicion that Sprint asked HTC to do the same on the One but for the life of me I can't figure out why Sprint would care. If anything, it may reduce their own potential roaming revenue.

Update: Sprint has announced that due to supply issues, they will not have S4 units available at stores on Saturday. No date given as to when the retail channels are expected to be stocked. They did announce that they expect to begin taking web and phone orders on Saturday but were vauge as to when those orders might ship.

Sprint did have some GSM-capable, SIM removable devices prior to the LTE era. For example the HTC TP2 and the original Moto Photon.

Well, in Sprint's defense, it has occasionally in the past sold dual mode GSM/CDMA devices but naturally, there wasn't a large selection for Sprint as a carrier to choose from due to technical challenges in the past regarding dual mode equipment. So even if they wanted to be forward looking in this respect, they were still somewhat limited in what they could offer. That said, it should be noted that with the exception of the iPhone, Sprint has always left the GSM side of the phone unlocked from the get-go for use outside North America on devices which supported removable SIMs. This is unlike AT&T for example who have historically been rather difficult to work with respect to unlocking devices. However, it looks like from now on things may be changing some and you may need to contact Sprint in order to obtain an unlock code even for devices other than iPhones.

If by "locked" you mean SIM-locked then yes, it is locked by default.

From as best as I can tell, yes, it will have a removable SIM. Two things however: 1. As per usual Sprint MO, it probably won't accept SIMs of other US carriers besides Sprint and 2. If the HTC One is any indication then it will come SIM locked (though how much hassle, if any, will Sprint give you for providing an unlock code is unknown at this time. Most likely they will withhold providing an unlock code to brand new subscribers for a certain amount of time).

According to Samsung's official specs: http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/cell-phones/SPH-L720ZWASPR-specs , the S4 is quad band GSM and quad band UMTS/WCDMA capable, though I wouldn't be surprised if the latter is a typo and it's really just triband UMTS capable (850/1900/2100). In any case the device should be useable just about anywhere internationally though I would expect Sprint to have programmed the phone not to recognize any US (and possibly Canadian) SIMs as they usually do.

@JoeJoeJoe: OK, I see what you mean when you say that the calls are being billed by Google using their rates, though as an aside I do wonder what is Sprint's incentive to pass off intl calling revenue to Google. Hmmmm...? BTW, yes, Google does have cheap international calling rates though localphone's rates still tend to be on average about half of what Google charges. That, coupled with their local numbers assignment which are diallable from multiple phones makes them very convenient to use regardless of carrier(s). I do have a google voice number also but for now I've decided not to integrate with Sprint. Maybe some day...

-post deleted. Sorry wrong thread.

Glad your problem was solved but I still wanted to mention that you still might want to consider using localphone.com and that way you can have different local or domestic US long distance numbers for the different international numbers you dial. Works awesome and it's much cheaper than Sprint's rates. There's no charge for the local numbers and they also have a standard calling card service too. With somelocal exchanges they can even forward texts from your local numbers to their associated international contacts at a cost much lower than Sprint's.

It's a bit hard to compare to t-mobile since they changed to their new pricing model. However, the other US contract carrier launching the S4, US Cellular, is also selling it for $200.

Pre-orders start tomorrow. Sprint's variant looks to be $50 more expensive the the other carriers'.

Yes, LTE in HR now also shows up on Sprint's official coverage map. That said, while it might be "officially launched" tomorrow, there are still significant gaps in LTE coverage across Hampton Roads. According to Sprint's map, in Virginia Beach for example there's a large coverage hole several miles in diameter centering around the TCC campus. Also, there's no coverage in Great Neck. Hopefully Sprint will fill those gaps quickly.

The above frequency coverage is LTE band class 27 which IIRC is the worldwide ESMR band, of which Sprint's band is a subset of so the inclusion of an "extended" frequency is meant more in order to apply to overseas iDEN to LTE conversions rather than to support some future speculative expansion of Sprint's frequencies (which won't happen anyway due to the public safety band in the US).

Thanks though no big surprise, that's similar to the current non-carrier-branded S3 model numbering and distribution scheme. Hopefully soon we'll learn what the plethora of model numbers will be for the branded variants (which is what most people buy, at least in North America).

Not necessarily... from what I understand, most of the equipment needed to make LTE800 happen is getting installed at the same time as the LTE1900 equipment, or at least most of the complicated stuff to install is being done at the same time (e.g. antenna panels, BTS enclosures, fiber, etc.). (Note though that from what I understand, this does not apply though to the LTE2600 stuff.) Therefore, in theory, turning on LTE800 should be a much less involved undertaking than the current work being done under NV. Now if I am incorrect about this assumption then forum wizards please feel free to correct me Plus, it's not NOW as far as an S4 purchase is concerned. The device probably won't be available in US variants before May or June, thus putting it even closer to LTE800 availability.

Yep, this month the SGH-T999L gets released. The added "L" at the end of the model number is indicative of LTE. As expected, this variant also has big brother LTE band 17 support in addition to AWS LTE. Apropos T-Mobile LTE... It's been spotted in NYC: http://www.tmonews.com/2013/03/t-mobile-2/

I believe you are thinking about their Note II variant which has dormant AWS LTE capabilities, but to the best of my knowledge, their original S3 variant does not.

Based on what Samsung said in their press release, a 2600Mhz LTE-TDD variant won't be released until later in the year. What might happen is that the initial variant would include neither 800 nor 2600 LTE, then a variant that supports both gets released later. In any case, at this point I am thinking that Sprint probably won't even start deploying 2600 until when they're well into 800 deployment. By then, it will probably be time for another upgrade anyway

Not all that surprising given that this month T-Mobile is supposed to start selling a new variant of the S3 with LTE.

Without knowing when Samsung submitted the application (which is not public knowledge), it is difficult to guess except to say that it will happen by the time Samsung releases the phone.

That's not exactly how it works. Band support is more of a function of the front end RF components, transceiver, and modem. Granted, Qualcomm did announce a new front end solution (google "Qualcomm RF360") that should help with multi band LTE support but they have only just announced it. As for Nvidia's new soft modem, I don't recall them saying anything about CDMA support, plus, as WiWavelength said also, that's just one component, there are other complex components required which sit in front of the modem in order to support different bands. Single-SKU multiple band support is coming one day but the technology encompassing all of the different components in a device to make that happen has not matured enough yet to included in the current batch of new device launches. However, the technology is progressing quickly and a year from now it might be a different story.