greenbastard

I know. While it is old, it is lighter and has no annoying Verizon Wireless ads (or ads at all).

This phone acts extremely weird with Band 41. Sometimes, it is too quick to drop it, but other times it sticks to it like its life depended on it. Sorry for the SpeedTest, but it's just to show that the phone was still making a successful (yet terrible) connection to the cell tower. On a positive note, SMS was fine both inbound and outbound at this RSRP level.

I absolutely hate the idea of reducing national carrier selection. A Sprint/T-Mobile merger is probably not the best thing for consumers in the long run, but unfortunately I have this feeling Sprint is headed for the 3 carrier path one way or another. While the 2.5 GHz band can definitely work for Sprint, it will involve a massive amount of tower and small cell additions to urban areas. It sounds easy on paper, but in the long run Sprint will add massive amounts of operating expenses just to adequately cover 2-3 city blocks with Band 41. Think of the costs of electricity, backhaul, and rent that Sprint will take on just to fill B41 gaps. It's bad enough they have massive amounts of debt...Last thing Sprint needs is to grow their operating expenses. Personally, I'm of the opinion (an unpopular one on this board) that Sprint should go after a 10x10 block of 600 MHz spectrum. While support won't be ready for this band anytime soon, Sprint can at least have a chance to future-proof indoor performance speeds and reliability. I know many on this board don't like the idea, but 2.5 Ghz is just not getting the job done in its current setup.

Maybe that talk on this forum a while back about moving HQ from Kansas to Miami had some legs. Unfortunately, I just don't see Sprint leaving the KC area unless it's through a merger.

At this point, I don't believe in Sprint after its last earnings call. The 2.5 GHz spectrum is useless for indoors unless you're in the immediate area of the tower or have a good line of sight to the panels. Houston, San Antonio, and Austin all have Band 41 /25/26 in most of their towers, but Band 41 has failed to do its job of easing congestion to 800/1900 LTE. While Band 41 can offer download speeds of 40+ Mbps outdoors, I quickly get dropped to sub-1 mbps speeds on B26/25 when I walk indoors. I think Sprint's latest moves are getting them ready to prove to the federal government that a merger is needed in order to grow. They have enormous debt: check They are growing debt: check They are slowing upgrades: check They are slowing expansion: check I just hope that if the FCC ever green lights a Sprint/T-Mobile merger, they force the new company to grow their native coverage to give rural communities a third carrier option.

Just noticed that Sprint changed the PCI (I usually use it to determine which of the 3 sectors I'm in) to both B25/B26 and Clearwire B41 in a tower in which both Sprint and Clear are co-located. Anyone have any idea as to why they would do this?

Don't forget that both would still lack rural coverage. So while they would become the size of At&t and Verizon via subscribers, they will not have the extensive coverage the Big 2 have.

US Cellular won't sell. But if they were, why would Sprint sell the cellular license? I may be wrong, but current B26 equipment should be able to cover the 850 Cellular Band as well.

You just can't catch a break!

T-Mobile does the same in areas they have 20x20 AWS LTE. I noticed my phone will only hop on Band 12 if AWS is unavailable. As soon as AWS becomes available, the network will aggressively throw me back to Band 4, even if B12 is faster than B4. I wish Sprint's network was this aggressive, especially with Band 41. I can still get stuff done with Band 41 at -122 but unfortunately the network is too quick to throw me back to B25/B26. B26 should be last priority in markets where Sprint has 2 B25 carriers on-air.

I ordered mine 3 weeks ago. I didn't get that adapter, just the Type C to Type C cable and wall charger. But interesting to note that others around the world have claimed that they received LG branded headphones with their Nexus orders.

Don't get me wrong, they could definitely make this work, BUT it won't be years...It will be decades. Making highband spectrum work on phones will be a challenge.

We don't even know what the actual 'tech' is. Don't expect this '5G' to be used by cellphones if they are indeed going to use high band spectrum. Maybe fixed locations, but definitely not cellphones.

You're putting too much stock into these "5G trials". As far as we are concerned, these tests are to determine if high band spectrum will actually work. There are no guarantees, even for small cell usage.

Meh. People return crap everyday. How do we know lilomitz won't decide to keep both phones at the end of the day? He may enjoy carrying two phones. You just never know. As far as the Google Fi deal, a rep I talked to basically confirmed that Google didn't care what people did with their phone...keep it on Fi, take it to another carrier, or return it. If anyone is interested in picking up a cheap Nexus 5x, I highly recommend the Fi deal. I tried the deal and after asking for the price of an extra phone, the rep said to just create a new Google account and order the Nexus and cancel Fi right after activating. I was pretty surprised how open he was about it. So anyone needing an unlocked phone to test drive another network, the Nexus 5x for 199 is the phone for you. Especially when you consider that Google will support this phone until at least 2018-2019 (Android O).

Yikes. I've searched and haven't found this to be a common issue. Looks like you got that one defective unit.

Was your phone rooted? Or were you running full stock without modifications?

Sorry, but that midband and low band spectrum still has to grow for the time being. 5G is still years away and outside of very dense network areas, 2.5/2.6 GHz doesn't work very well. Building penetration will continue to be a big problem for B41 and working towards solutions to overcome the extremely fragile airlink will take time, which Sprint doesn't have. 8T8R panels have helped, but it still has trouble penetrating buildings. It will be interesting to see if Sprint will use just the 2.5/2.6 GHz band for 5G or if it will continue on the vision of one day combining their PCS spectrum for uplink and EBS/BRS band for downlink.

Is it normal for this phone's RSRP to fluctuate a lot? I can hold my N5X on my hand without movement and see my RSRP go from -95 to -103 and back and forth. Is this normal operation for the phone. It happens on all the bands just in case anyone is wondering. Also, I'm highly disappointed in this phone's RF performance overall. It is about the same as the Galaxy S5 on band 26 and it performs a lot worse on Band 41. I've read the FCC article on this phone, but then I read some of the reviews on this thread which gave me hope. Overall, this phone performs terribly on Band 41, which is the only band that matters moving forward. In the same area I get B41, my S5 used to have -104 to -107 outdoors while the N5X is all over the place (-110 to -117).

All new Sprint plans come with 100 MB of roaming, while some older plans include 300 MB. Sprint has added a few roaming partners in which data is treated as regular usage, but still displayed as roaming on maps and on your phone. Unfortunately, these roaming areas are mostly in western Kansas and a few other rural areas. If your concern is roaming limitations, you're better off going to At&t, Verizon, or an MVNO that uses those networks. If you travel a lot West of the plains, Sprint and T-Mobile aren't for you. I completely understand your dilemma though. I've been thinking of dumping Sprint and going with Verizon or At&t. The roaming speeds/limits do get annoying after a while and as soon as I leave most interstates, it's Verizon 1x for me. Even T-Mobile has better coverage in the areas I frequent in East-Central Texas, unfortunately they aren't reliable. The only thing keeping me on Sprint is the fact that I still have 2 year contracts and phone subsidies with them.

Probably so since I never had this issue with my Sprint Galaxy S5 on Marshmallow (Does not have CA). Never saw both 1x and LTE on SCP. My Nexus 5x (a CA phone) sees this issue a lot (mostly after losing and regaining LTE). For many, this may seem like a cool feature, but for me its something I hope they fix in an update so the phone relies on eCSFB exclusively. When this 'bug' (or feature...it's all relative) appears, all SMS are routed through 1x instead of LTE. With 1x, messages take about 4-5 seconds to send (which is not really an issue unless you're used to LTE's quickness...which I am). Incoming SMS on the other hand take sometimes up to 30 seconds to receive. It's really annoying and a step backwards IMO. With LTE, SMS are almost always instant. For quick measure, you can text 'Usage' to 1311 on LTE and then do the same on 1x to compare the time consumed for each to receive a reply. But most annoying thing about this 'issue' is that your phone has to drop LTE for a fraction of a second (almost like a slight ping) to retrieve/send SMS (just like how old single path phones used to drop EVDO to receive/send messages before the LTE days) If you have a live stream going or are doing a video chat, prepare for timeouts.

That's a nice map AJ. It's cool to see the history of what Sprint had when they began. Of course, Chicago is no longer interrupted 20 MHz, but it should give people an idea of how Sprint has grown their spectrum portfolio over time. Any idea how Sprint dug itself out of the hole they began with in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina? It looks like they only had enough spectrum for voice in rural areas (which is all they needed when they began).

That's not going to help in places such as Houston where all Sprint has is 30 Mhz of PCS spectrum that's not continuous (That's including the G block). Sure, they can shrink 1x and EVDO, but I don't know how that will impact voice. 3G EVDO is so rarely used in parts of Houston that it is possible to reach up to 2 Mbps in the middle of the day in places where LTE B26 times out. But voice is another issue. The window to outright purchase more PCS spectrum has come and gone (Leap Wireless) in Southeast Texas. The only thing Sprint can realistically do is bid on the 600 Mhz spectrum since B41 is not getting the job done. Sprint can add as many carriers as they want to B41, but none of that will matter since it doesn't reach indoors in its current set up (Clearwire tower spacing and equipment are the worst).

Something is up with your phone then because I've been able to use Netflix perfectly fine with 1.5 Mbps over LTE and less than 1 Mbps over EVDO 3G. Of course it's not HD, but it gets the job done. The only carrier that can get you constant HD video stream in my area at the moment is Verizon. At&t is good, but not great. Sprint gets along just fine and T-Mobile is great for uploading videos to YouTube....but viewing them is another story since their download is around 1 Mbps in a lot of places (I will give them the benefit that they do have higher peak speeds than Sprint and At&t, but they average worse overall). Also, you can have 2-3 Mbps (or even 0.1) and still have great ping times. Either clear your cache on those apps or try a different phone.

Well, that's no fun.