lordsutch

Then what the heck is Sprint ever going to do if they want to expand coverage in rural areas? If they pull off Network Vision, would they be in better position to acquire rural carriers? It's a shame that you have Verizon aggressively moving forward with the LTEiRA Trojan Horse and Sprint is pulling back.

 

I just don't see why Sprint isn't just hoarding as much spectrum as they can including any 700 A they can get their hands on.

Sprint has nationwide licenses for spectrum on both 800 SMR and various 1900 PCS bands, including the PCS G block they got as compensation for Nextel giving up some of its SMR spectrum. They also have a huge chunk of nationwide spectrum at 2.5GHz through Clearwire. Even if they bought some 700 spectrum, they'd never be able to assemble a nationwide block like any of their others.

I agree it'd be nice to see Sprint expand its rural coverage, but ultimately the question boils down to profits. They're much better off financially covering 90-95% of the population natively, and leaving the rest to the regional players and Verizon who have already built out and mature CDMA 850 networks. Plus I think Sprint's closer alignment with the remaining independent carriers will probably see Sprint lighting up LTE at 1900 and 800 ESMR (and maybe even the full suite including 1xAdvanced and EVDO) on their footprints too, in part to prepare for the day that Verizon shuts down CDMA and Sprint needs native or roaming LTE on its bands in those areas. But the earliest I see Sprint expanding the footprint is 2014 after the existing towers are converted for NV.

Wouldn't you think one of the "Big Boy" sites with access to their preview units would do some checking to see if it appears that the "647" patent was infringed?

Pretty sure I read somewhere that someone had tested an AT&T One X and it doesn't infringe the patent (it would infringe if and only if you get a context menu when you tap on a phone number or email address, but dumping you straight into an app like the dialer or Gmail isn't covered by the 647 patent). Since the Evo runs the same software, it shouldn't either.

So literally all CBP (or ICE - I'm not sure who has jurisdiction over these things) has to do is take one of each out of the box, boot it up, see if it infringes, find out it doesn't, and release the shipments. But it's the government we're talking about... so that'll take at least 24-48 hours and a team of HTC lawyers to make happen, and there'll be a team of Apple lawyers there trying to make sure this gets slowed to the hilt.

Interestingly enough, if you go to this Best Buy web page you can see what appears to be inventory status for the Evo 4G LTE: http://deals.bestbuy.com/mobile/product/5087293/htc++evo+4g+lte+mobile+phone++black+sprint I changed stores a few times and it does vary (for example, Christiansburg and Roanoke said "In Stock", but Lynchburg said "Out of Stock"). On the other hand, my online pre-order just says "Backordered."

Unfortunately I don't think Sprint is going to change its mind; since Nextel's towers are spaced for 800 MHz Sprint would have to add fill-in towers to have contiguous coverage in the light blue areas of the map on 1900 MHz. It's probably not cost-effective for the number of local customers they'd be able to retain, compared to just paying roaming fees for the Sprint customers who occasionally need service there.

The only thing that might stop it is if the FCC has some minimum buildout requirement for 800 ESMR in these areas, but as far as I can tell there isn't one.

Well, the reason you can't tell a difference is that there are no areas of "Sprint coverage - signal strength varies" on that map. Normally you'd only see that in affiliate and wholesale markets where Sprint doesn't have access to the tower locations, which there are fewer of these days.

I still don't get why they simply don't allow people to have access to the SIM card.

Sprint probably hasn't set up the support infrastructure for it yet; their assumption from the start has been that the only ID for a phone is the MEID. And really there's no pressing need the way Sprint is set up at the moment: the only LTE phones that work on their network's frequencies are Sprint-branded (and that's unlikely to change until at least iPhone 5), there are no CDMA phones in North America that use SIMs for CDMA (even the "world phones" that Sprint and Verizon sell use the SIMs only for GSM/UMTS access; CDMA activation is at the device level, not tied to the SIM); and SIM standards are changing anyway.

Once Nokia and Apple (or, more likely, EU regulators) sort out which "nano-SIM" wins Sprint can just adopt that across the board for new phones and save themselves a world of headaches that everyone else is going to have if it turns out that nano-SIM isn't mechanically compatible with mini or micro and people start wedging them into their phones anyway.

There should be some building penetration benefit at 1900 on CDMA/EVDO from NV, since they're getting a 20% improvement in signal strength from moving the radio hardware to the top of the towers. What's not particularly clear is whether LTE will outperform EVDO in building penetration. LTE will be in the higher-frequency PCS G block (compared to A-F for 1900 EVDO) at first, which is slightly shorter in wavelength so the signals themselves would have lower penetration, but I don't know off-hand which is better at the same frequency.

That's actually a pretty complicated question.

 

People have done a lot of reviews on different MicroSD cards. A lot of class 10 cards were designed for pure read/write speeds but smaller random read/write performance suffered.

One other thing to bear in mind is that larger-capacity cards tend to be slower than smaller-capacity cards of the same class (the class numbers are minimum standards). But unless you're using the card for something more complex than media storage - for example, if you were putting it in an OG Evo 4G and using it for apps (or using it for cache or swap on a custom ROM) - any name-brand card should be sufficient.

Sprint seems to have made one PR mistake here: they knew CTIA was in New Orleans; surely they could have prodded Ericsson to get LTE up and running at least in the most-frequented parts of Orleans and Jefferson parishes (basically, from the airport to the Industrial Canal on the north/east bank of the river back to the lake). If they had, Engadget wouldn't be whining about the lack of LTE because (let's face it) they, like most "pop" tech sites and reviewers, don't keep up with anything that doesn't show up in a press release or in a shiny box.

My guess would be that Sprint is lightly subsidizing the $549.99 off-contract price (although they probably make a net profit after the $36 activation charge) but that the $699.99 off-contract price at Best Buy includes a hefty margin, in part to make their on-contract price look better. As for the 3rd party carriers undercutting the two-year price from Sprint, my understanding is that they get a cut of your monthly bill through the contract period in addition to an up-front "prebate" from Sprint for new activations; if BB or Wirefly is going to get several hundred bucks from you indirectly over 24 months, they'll gladly throw $50-100 at you to buy from them as opposed to going to Sprint directly.

I just ordered online from Best Buy - I'd almost convinced myself to limp along with my OG Evo 4G, but I really couldn't pass up a net $110 price (after $100 in gift cards: $50 from the Phone Freedom offer they ran back in February, and $50 more from this offer) and enough RZ Premier Silver points for at least $5 more back. I selected $1.99 express shipping and it claims delivery on May 10 or 11. We'll see if that actually happens.

Interesting that they're going to be starting NV this month. Wonder if I'll get any NV love here before I move back to Corporateland (specifically, pretty much the bottom of the list) in August.

Anandtech has the review of the AT&T One X live; if the Evo 4G LTE is even half as awesome, it'll still be ridiculously awesome: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5779/htc-one-x-for-att-review

There are a couple of times I've felt it would be useful for giving someone directions or looking up info on restaurants when making arrangements for dinner with someone, or just for surfing while I'm on the phone with someone while they drone on and on and on. But it's not a killer feature IMO.

ehh the pogo pins are kinda a "cool" feature but in reality the more I think about them they are kinda pointless...whats the purpose of having 2 separate charging ports? you still have to run a cord to any dock you put it on and in reality you could easily still have it trigger desk mode like it does now when placed in a dock...

The main advantage is that it makes it easier to pop the phone in at an angle; with my Seidio mount for the Evo 4G, you have to slide it in horizontally (I use mine in landscape) to line up with the built-in micro-USB plug. It also locks you into using one phone orientation (e.g hardkeys on the dock side - one advantage of going all soft-key like the GNex is that they can move with the phone orientation). With the Evo 4G LTE's charging port being on the side it'll be easier to dock in landscape mode at least, although it'll be more annoying for people that want to use the phone vertically.

Eric, do not take this the wrong way, but I think that you need to let this dream die. That Sprint could buy out and/or relocate SouthernLINC, other ESMR licensees, and (most importantly) public safety users is a pipe dream that has no chance of happening within the next 10 years. Public safety rebanding has been such an ordeal and is still ongoing that we will not see another 800 MHz reconfiguration effort for a long time.

I'm rather more optimistic about SouthernLINC going away sooner or later; Southern are going to have to migrate away from iDEN too, since Motorola is going to stop making phones and base station equipment, but they don't have the spectrum to transition to another technology. Sprint is the only logical buyer; anybody else would have an oddball network in the southeast that wouldn't fit with the holdings in the rest of the country. I suppose SouthernLINC could just squat on the spectrum or try to launch their own local wireless broadband network or deploy a different PTT system like QChat, but I can't see them making that sort of investment in a non-core business when they have far bigger fish to fry in power generation and delivery. The only real question is whether Sprint is willing to pay what Southern wants to get for the spectrum holdings.

But I don't think Sprint would touch the rest of ESMR and public safety, and really they don't need to.

He's been preaching simless lte from the get go...said its built in and only accessible VIA teardown...though still I'm surprised the number isn't listed on the sticker that lists your imei and sn...

The ICCID (SIM) number is actually visible on some of the pictures from the event that show the microSD slot; it's the bottom number w/barcode of the three, below the MEIDs, on the sticker.

Nope, not exactly. Band class 25 is a superset band class that wholly encompasses band class 2. In short, band class 25 is PCS blocks A-G, while band class 2 is only PCS A-F blocks. So, a device that supports band class 25 by definition also supports band class 2 (but not the other way around).

Hmm. What I get for believing Wikipedia.

I have to say I kinda like it. And after taking the plunge on modding my Evo 4G to run ICS, my upgrade itch is probably sated until the EVO 4G LTE hits in June. Although after a few months of pure Google experience I'm not sure I'll want Sense back...

Band 2 is the PCS A-F blocks, while Band 25 is PCS G (the nationwide block where Sprint LTE is lighting up first). That gives Sprint the flexibility to put LTE on its lower PCS bands if needed as well. Might also allow some LTE roaming opportunities with MetroPCS.

There's no technical reason not to support both Band 2 and Band 25, since they're adjacent spectrum-wise, silly E-UTRA nomenclature notwithstanding, so hopefully the Galaxy Nexus and Viper will also support both.

I can't imagine Sprint will drop CDMA until Verizon dropping it forces their hand (e.g. Sprint won't have anywhere for CDMA customers to roam, and there won't be the economies of scale for the manufacturers that Big Red's CDMA provides), which probably won't happen for years; a couple of slivers of 1X at 1900 and ESMR can handle all the voice traffic Sprint carries. Going all-VoLTE is going to require a national infrastructure for native and roaming coverage that just won't be ready before 2020.

Remember, AMPS (aka analog cellular) was still around until 2008, largely because it took that long for the Cellular A & B block holders (largely Verizon and AT&T, but also some of the regional players too like C Spire) to build out digital GSM and CDMA to have as big a footprint. That's despite the fact that AMPS-native phones were already on the way out in the late 1990s.

That said when CDMA dies it will be with a whimper... by 2020, voice traffic will be so little of what the network carries bandwidth-wise that even if theoretically CDMA can carry it more efficiently than VoLTE, in practice maintaining the infrastructure and setting aside a whole band for it won't be worth the cost.

I can't see Sprint rolling out any GSM unless they see some opportunity to make money from roaming. Presumably NV makes that more feasible than in the past, but in most of the US there's better native GSM coverage from the Cellular A/B holders than anything Sprint could deploy anyway.

Yeah, most of WV is Shentel.

Shentel says they're going to deploy LTE too, roughly on the same timetable as Sprint NV; it's curious that Sprint isn't including it on their maps (although it could be something as simple as Sprint not knowing Shentel's tower locations - you'll note the LTE map matches up pretty precisely with the market maps here on S4GRU already).

In principle it's a great idea. In practice I have to wonder if anyone will build phones to take advantage of all these different frequency bands (700, 800 SMR, 1700/2100 AWS, 1900 PCS, 2500...); pentaband UMTS phones still aren't widespread (iPhone, for example, still doesn't do AWS 1700), and so far everyone's being provincial in their LTE phones - Sprint in PCS G only, AT&T and Verizon in 700 only, other countries' LTE phones running in AWS only - so even if you wanted to roam on LTE there's no way to do it. If everyone's serious about rolling out VoLTE that has to be fixed in the next phone upgrade cycle.

Certainly I think the regionals, super-regionals (I'd put US Cellular and Cricket/Leap here), Sprint, and T-Mobile are going to have to work together to have any shot at having similar national LTE coverage to Verizon and AT&T and to ensure that the halo phones like the iPhone and Android flagships get built for their networks.

Do you live in a Shentel coverage area? How does that work? Do you still get Sprint devices on the same day? Do you actually just have a Sprint account? I've always been curious how that works.

Hopefully this won't drag things too off-topic

I've been with Sprint since mid-2002 or so, but I only moved to Blacksburg (which is Shentel territory) in August. Up till then I'd been in corporate markets for the most part, if not always (central MS may still have been an affiliate market when I lived in Jackson - I think the same clowns who ran Baton Rouge into the ground had the franchise there too). It's a bit different from Pioneer's deal was: basically everything customer-facing says Sprint, my bill comes from Sprint, the phone shows native coverage, etc. I honestly don't know how all the financials work exactly, although I think there's some sort of net payment to Shentel for corporate/other affiliate customers who roam here and Shentel pays for its customers who roam elsewhere. Presumably when I changed address to here I became a Shentel customer but there's nothing on my bill that indicates that.

The only Shentel-y thing I've had to deal with is that my apartment really needs an Airave/Airvana (it is literally half-underground; 1900 MHz does not penetrate dirt at all), but Sprint won't give me one because I'm in Shentel-land and I have no clue how to get one from Shentel proper because they don't have anything customer-facing for wireless except the Sprint Store they run in Roanoke (1 hr away).

Verizon's the ILEC here and probably has the biggest wireless following and best build-out; we also have AT&T, nTelos, US Cellular, and Shentel/Sprint (not a bad lineup actually for a rural area).

As far as timing, I think they get new phones on more or less the same schedule as corporate. I expect I'll upgrade at Best Buy though since they ran that $50 gift card promo a while back, and I'll get RZ points.

Anyway hope that clears things up. Basically I'm a Sprint customer except when I'm not.

Here is a link with some info. http://forums.androi...d.php?p=1677212

It all sounds very plausible, but then again informed speculation gets you 90% of the way to those specs anyway; except the kickstand and SD card, it's all pretty predictable based on what we know already about the GSM One X variants.

I'm still leaning toward the Galaxy Nexus just to have the pure Google experience and have my new phone 5 weeks sooner (and not to reward HTC again for my Evo's annoyances), but this phone definitely seems like a strong contender too, particularly if they can follow through with the accessories like the car dock (where Sammy hasn't in the US yet).