pyroscott

I'm going to have to step up my game... LOL

No doubt. My personal phone is an EVO 3D and it's a great phone. The Amazon deal was excellent as every Sprint Android phone was a penny and they were even waiving the activation fees until 3/19.

Wow, I bet they were selling like hotcakes.

Darn, I see that now. The Amazon deal ended on 3/26. I started a thread about it a couple weeks ago.

I hear you on the E4GT being a step up from the 3D, but the 3D features are a cool addition, especially if you have a 3DTV and you enjoy watching your videos and pictures on the TV. When I had the 3D, it was a powerful phone but I always felt like I was wasting the 3D capabilities by not using it much.

I like how there are comments that S4GRU should merge with SprintFeed. I really liked that site. I guess I will have to start reading technobuffalo more often.

Amazon has had it for a penny since the beginning of March as well as the Epic 4G Touch, which is a much better deal imo.

E4GT is $49.99 for new customers $149.99 for upgrades and $119.99 for adding a line and EVO 3D is $39.99 for new customers $79.99 for upgrades and a penny to add a line on Amazon Wireless

That is a screaming deal on a good phone. Especially good deal for someone in an area that has good WiMax coverage and is toward the end of the LTE rollout.

This is exactly the rationale that leads me to recommend caution to those willing and happy to sign a 20 month contract for bargain basement prices on a wimax phone. Sure coverage will be supported until 2015, but how far into 2015? And at decommission will the wimax network consist of EVERY tower that's in service now? I'd be very surprised if it does.

It also depends on the use of WiMax resellers like netzero.

just curious, why is it the Minnesota market and not the Minneapolis market? Seems all of the other market announcements are cities, not states.

Maybe Sprint thinks the same as all the sports teams... I always wondered why they were all called Minnesota _____. Maybe they figure that everything that isn't the Minneapolis Metro is wilderness.

It almost looks like there is a LTE tower in the boundary waters canoe area... too bad there are no plug ins anywhere near there. LOL

Are all the little gray circles on the map receiving 4g LtE? Or are some of them going be upgraded 3g that allows for a 5mbps download but no 4g? I'm on the western outskirts of Minnesota upgrades and they're definately needed. Speed tests last night gave 48kbps down with 900ms ping. It feels like I'm living in the past with dial-up.

These gray circles are towers and they will be getting 4G LTE, 3G backhaul upgrade (3G should be around 1mbps) and 1xAdvanced for enhanced range and capacity for voice calls. Once the tower is upgraded, there should be no issue with speed on LTE or 3G. There should also be a little better range than what it had before. The gray circles are just a set radius from the tower, not necessarily signifying holes in the coverage.

I fully agree Josh. The problem with having a bunch of different plans is that as the T-Mobile employee here http://www.phonearen...carrier_id28368 says, customers get angry and don’t understand the whole subsidy plan/non-subsidy plan. There is a lot to understand about the plans, the network, the handsets and how they all work together. Look at the $10 monthly premium data fee and how people are still angry that they have to pay it. Sprint’s network has been overloaded by smartphones, those who use a smartphone should be picking up the tab for network upgrades. To get back to the point, if a carrier like Sprint was going to take something like this on, I think they would have to eliminate all the subsidies to reduce confusion and have a simplified plan offering.

As far as the price of the phone, they could easily still advertise a comparable price to the other carriers, and then in small print have a monthly charge along with it. I like the $50 financing fee idea. Then customers that want to pay full price can see instant gratification with a $50 savings. Maybe down the road if all the towers for the major carriers are upgraded to LTE and phones use VoLTE, we will finally see phone freedom where there are no carrier exclusive phones, and you can take your AT&T phone and switch to Sprint. That is years away though.

Rooting isn't for everyone, in your situation you may want a couple of apps gone and that may be fine with you but for someone like me and many others, we want the ultimate freedom and control in doing whatever we want to our phones. There are custom roms, custom kernels, free tethering, titanium backup, not to mention the numerous apps that require root access. I know one thing is for certain, I don't care how awesome the specs are on any particular phone/tablet, if it can't be rooted then I am not interested.

Being able to have full control of the phone is a big reason that many people choose Android over iOS or WP. Look at the success of the Nexus line, it's not that the phones are the best phone out there, or have the most features, but they have a bootloader that is easily unlocked, Vanilla Android Open Source Project (AOSP) operating system, and a huge developer following. I can see both points. There are many people who like Android for its openness, like the OEM skins, and just want to reduce bloat if they root (ICS allows you to freeze any program you want, the unwanted program disappears as though it was uninstalled but if anything else needs its files to run, it does not lose functionality) Conversely, you have the crowd that likes to root, load custom ROMS, load themes, change the boot animation and the list goes on and on with what you can do with your phone. There is a good balance within Android to please both crowds and ICS is just the next improvement in an operating system that continues to improve with every upgrade and IMO keeps the customer desires in mind when they are making changes instead of just the almighty dollar.

Awesome! Minnesota will definately benefit from a speed upgrade. My speed tests were brutal.

One of my coworkers has T-Mobile with LTE and he has awesome coverage nearly everywhere.

Not to be a wiseguy, but T-Mobile has not even started upgrading their network to LTE. Your coworker might have HSPA+ which they have marketed as 4G but it is an entirely different technology.

I don't know about this, IMHO I think the average evo user will feel more comfortable going to a newer device with a newer but similar UI in sense 4.0 versus using motoblur(or whatever the hell its called now) or touchwiz.

The switch to Sense 4.0 and ICS will be a huge change for Evo owners when they upgrade their phone. I don't think changing the manufacturer skin is going to be a big deal to some people. There are definitely some users that will feel more comfortable with having sense on their new phone, but there are a lot that don't care or don't know about what Sense gives them.

Indeed, HTC, not Sprint, controls the EVO trademark, and it is important to make this distinction, as it renders the Droid comparison less relevant. On the other hand, VZW controls (licenses from Lucasfilm) the Droid trademark. So, in the first case, the OEM holds the trademark; in the second case, the carrier holds the trademark. And, like it or not, that makes a big difference in the use of the EVO name vs the use of the Droid name.AJ

Sprint could always buy or license the Evo trademark from HTC, especially if HTC is no longer interested in manufacturing any more Evo devices.

They are really rocking Texas.

In this particular case I think it does matter. The evo was the biggest thing since slice bread for sprint and even though the iphone may be the hottest thing going now there are many extremely satisfied owners of the og evo that will have a renewal coming up. I think it would be very important to Sprint and especially HTC to name this phone "Evo Whatever" to retain those customers. The iphone isn't the answer to everyones which smartphone to get question, there are many out there that wants to continue to have that android experience. I am more than confident that whatever they decide to call it, it will have the evo name somewhere in it.

Exactly, there are some people, like myself, that have a ton of premium app purchases on Android. If I were to switch to Apple, I would either have to spend hundreds of dollars to buy those apps from iTunes or go without them.

As far as the Evo name, I think a HTC Evo would sell more to current Evo owners, but maybe HTC wants to use their "One" model across the board. Then I think Sprint could sell a lot of OG Evo owners the next Evo even if it is made by Motorola or Samsung, maybe even LG.

Saving over $50 a month is a great deal. Even if you will not get the 4G LTE benefits of Sprint's new network, you will still get to take advantage of the many other improvements Sprint's Network Vision includes. Sprint's prepaid (Virgin) is looking to have even more benefits then before.

Yes, 3G speeds will be much improved. Good 3G speeds would be plenty for me.

Last year, I switched from T-Mobile to Virgin. I bought a Moto Triumph outright. I'm saving over $50 per month, which has already paid for the upfront cost of the phone. Granted I had a 4G service, and now only 3G.

You can save a lot going prepaid by giving up some things like 4G, free roaming, etc. It's almost like the old regional plans that some of the carriers, offered. Not nationwide, but a lot cheaper. Virgin is nationwide though. I have often considered going prepaid myself.

Anyone know what the data usage app is in the screenshots? Looks pretty neat.

That is in the settings of Ice Cream Sandwich.

It's weird how we have a quote straight from the horses mouth and people with no behind the scenes access to Sprint still say "UNLIMITED DATE WILL GO BYE-BYE! LULZ".Dan says "My plans are to continue with it as long as we possibly can, hopefully forever." and people still say it won't happen. I don't get it.

Hesse can say whatever he wants. I'll believe that it isn't pure marketing when I see it. Sprint already cut off unlimited from their tablet plans, and they didn't even grandfather anyone in. It was, "here is your new plan, if you don't like it, you can leave ETF free." That is what scares me about smartphone unlimited data. Sprint has made some brazen moves, but I don't think they would have the cajones to make a move like that on smartphone data, who knows...

As far as streaming video burning through too much data for the cap, you can set the quality lower. I don't see why anyone would need 720p HD video on a 4.5 inch screen... I remember streaming "Sprint TV" or whatever it was called over a 1xRTT connection.

If thats it, then some of the GS3 fanboys I'd expect will be a little disappointed...Screen doesn't stretch near as far as all of the renderings show...So either smaller screen than thought or the phone itself is massively big...

Yeah SGT, that is not nearly as impressive looking as the rumors would lead you to picture. I'm not convinced that this is a GSIII

What does the numbers on the map means? Are they expanding coverage to areas they are not currently cover like the center of the island?

I think those are highway numbers.

I am thinking about grabbing a Blackberry Playbook for $200. OS 2.0 with Android support makes it a pretty solid device. I cannot see paying $500-600 for a tablet.

It's very tempting. As Ben said, I am really interested to see the specs on the Nexus tablet. If it isn't at least on par with the PlayBook, I might go for the PlayBook and wait for the 10 inch Nexus that is also rumored...