greenbastard

Well, you could if you live near a tower like mine in which every spark phone is seeded to Band 26 automatically for some odd reason. During the midday, download speeds can top at 0.15 Mbps on band 26 while band 25 sits at 8+ Mbps. There's nothing I can do about this since its a network bug. I usually turn off B26 on my phone or force 3G (1+ Mbps) in order to make my data experience tolerable.

I had multiple problems with Asurion replacements, but they are usually good about replacing the phones they send you. If you are super nice to the assurion rep when you call and the rep on the other side of the line is feeling the "Christmas spirit", there is always the chance they can upgrade you to the newer model version of your phone. I went from an HTC Evo 3D, to a GS2, to a GS3 in a span of 1 month thanks to Assurion. Sprint Tech on the other hand...screw those guys. They are the sole reason I had to even use the Assurion deductible.

Iusacell has an OK CDMA network, but not friendly when compared to what Movistar and Telcel have. In my experience, Iusacell severely lacked a lot of rural and small town coverage. Most major highways were not connected with service last time I was down there and it quickly became obvious to me that they fell behind in expansions to their rivals. I know they had set a deadline for their CDMA shut down and were in the process of converting their customers to GSM phones. I think Sprint was smart in negotiating with Movistar. Losing a crucial roaming partner right next door to you would have been catastrophic. I can only imagine the exodus of people who work, visit or live near the border had this deal not gone through?

For a guy who has had aspirations of running for president and not understand the issues the wireless industry is facing, this is pretty damn sad. Trump should have just kept his mouth shut. Instead of criticism, he should have tweeted how he would have helped expand the wireless industry to reach more Americans if he was president.

And there it goes. Thanks for the find! But now the question is what happens when you fall outside of Telefonica/Softbank range? Will we even be allowed to roam on other networks in those countries? And if we are, how will we know when we are roaming on Telefonica and not (for example) Telcel?

It sure would. Just be careful in the border area manzer. I know Tamaulipas/Nuevo Leon got pretty hot last month with Cartel activity blocking most of the major Mexican highways near the border. I know Juarez and the area around New Mexico has quited down, but it's still pretty bad. After further reading, I haven't found anything that says that the roaming is exclusive to only Telefonica. As far as I can tell from the official Sprint statement, all indications are that ALL 2G roaming and SMS is unlimited. I'm assuming that Sprint will just make Movistar their prefered roaming partner and Telcel/Iusacell will fall in afterwards in areas Movistar isn't available. Only way to find out is for one of us to travel abroad, reach a Telefonica/Softbank dead zone and start texting and using data. T&P to the brave hampster willing to test this out.

I wonder how Sprint will implement this without making it extremely confusing for customers traveling to these countries? For example, Movistar would obviously become the prefer roaming partner in Mexico, but what will happen when we leave Movistar coverage and stray into Telcel or Iusacell (now a subsidiary of Ma Bell) coverage? Will texts and data still be unlimited or will we fall back to the older pricing? Also, how will we, as customers, know which network we will be on? I know my phone is an LTE/CDMA/GSM phone, but when I currently roam, I don't know if I'm on Verizon or Cricket.

I've been waiting for this ever since T-Mobile announced it a while back. I sometimes travel abroad and I absolutely HATE dealing with SIM Card changes just to send messages back home. Also Mexico's Telcel and Movistar make it a hassle to understand their international SMS rates with so many plans. 2G data is just an added bonus!!!! So much for considering a switch to T-Mobile! Screw you Legere and your fake wannabe hipster self!

Thanks, I'll try this later. I'm just tired of apps crashing out of the blue and the occasional lag. I don't seem to get a Contacts forced close though. In all honesty, outside of the B41 antenna placement, this phone was perfect on KK. Before the update, my only gripe was how I experience a -10 db loss on B41 because the lower right part of the phone rests on my palm and blocks the antenna. As a matter of fact. I'm surprised I haven't seen this gripe more on any of the forums. Bad Samsung design.

Thanks for taking the time letting sprint know about 5.0 issues. As days pass by, its getting harder and harder to tolerate the memory problems. I probably have had my browsing app (CM Browser) crash 3 times already today. It's frustrating.

I've had something similar happen to me 3 times already, but it only happens when I'm streaming music on Spotify via Bluetooth on my car. Usually when this happens, my screen won't turn on amd controls from my radio won't skip forward/backward tracks. The odd part is that the phone will still go through each track as if nothing was wrong. After reset, I don't see a message like you do though. (BTW, instead of having to take off back, just hold down the POWER+HOME+VOL DOWN buttons together for

Wow, I just checked and I have a small burn in as well! And the crappy part about this is that I just had the screen replaced in October after I cracked it (all done through Samsung). I may give them a call this week to have it replaced. Kill 2 birds with 1 stone since after Samsung serviced my phone, I've seen water build up on both camera lenses around high humidity. I was told that the phone would still be IP67 certified even after the repair.

I'm seeing the same thing. Another problem I'm having is with the fingerprint scanner. Sometimes when I wake the screen up and try to unlock it, the fingerprint sensor is unresponsive. I can swipe as many times as I can but it doesn't tell me to swipe straight, incorrect fingerprint, or that finger is wet; it just doesn't do anything. (Just in case someone is wondering, I turned off locking when pressing the "Power Button" and have a lock delay of 10 minutes in the settings) When this happens, there's 2 immediate solutions; 1. Enter the password manually or 2. Press the power button to turn the screen off and back on again. That usually gets the scanner working again. Anyone else see this?

This is the exact the same thing happening to the tower near my house. My phone usually parks at B25 (around -99 to -100 dbm average) when not in use, but as soon as you engage a data session it gets pushed down to Band 26 and stays there until you let the phone idle for 5 minutes. Since it does this to every triband phone I have seen (iphone 6, iphone 6+ and Galaxy S5), Band 26 has halted down to dial up speeds while band 25 sits wide open with speeds of 5-7 mbps. Its frustrating waiting for Sprint to get its stuff together, but in a city as large as Houston, I can't complain. Sprint has its work cut out without much lower band spectrum to play with. Other than this network glitch, B26 has closed 99.9% of the gaps in Houston. The only time I've seen my phone on 3G is when I put it in my pocket and I'm inside a huge store on the edge of cells. But even at this point 3G is working great again so its not noticeable unless you have LTE OCD.

Mine does it all the time I am on B41. Since my ring finger sits right where the antennas are, I always see B41 suffer at the very least a -8 dBm loss when I'm close to the tower. I usually see a -10 to -14 dbm loss when im on tye outskirts of B41 coverage. Its pretty weird since B26/B25 have the antenna right next to it and they don't suffer any signal degradation on either left or right hand. But B41 does when using the phone on my right hand. I know these phones have 2 B41 antennas. Could it be that the antenna on the top right is defective in some way? Or are my fat short stubby fingers too much for my phone?

With a couple of weeks with this update, its starting to get very irritating, especially when you're working on something, leave it and then come back to it and crash. On a side note, anyone else annoyed by the placement of B41 antenna on the lower right hand corner? I'm right handed so when I hold my phone with my right hand I usually see that I lose or hold a weak B41 when compared to holding the phone with my left hand. I'm not exaggerating when I say that holding my S5 with my left hand creates an improvement of -12 to -15 dBm improvement on Band 41 when compared to holding the phone with my right hand. Major design flaw! Anyone have this issue?

A few personal observations... After updating, it seems that my LTE speeds seem to be slower than before on B26. Before, I used to hover anywhere from 2 to 5 Mbps during the day on B26. After the update, I haven't seen my phone go over 1.6 Mbps. B41 didn't really improve for me. Also the phone seems to be more sensitive to losing LTE when placed on my lap than before. As a matter of fact, I seem to find my phone on 3G a lot more often now after it stored on my pockets. On the plus side, the phone does seem to do a bit better job of scanning for LTE a tad bit faster than before. I've also had the phone freeze on me a couple of times now. Each time it freezes, it is for long periods of time (~20 seconds) and it usually works fine afterwards. My camera seems to open no faster than before. Bluetooth has stopped skipping like it did before. On 4.4.2, I used to have a weird issue where my Bluetooth would occasionally freeze for a second when streaming locally stored music to my headunit. So far, that issue hasn't returned while playing music on my car.

Is there a guide to root 4.4.4 yet (don't care for Knox tripping)? At this point, I can't use a phone anymore without root access

Sorry, got a bit exited there and didn't read. I'd still like a few more people to chime in on reception. Each situation is different.

OK, I've been burned bad before with updates, so I'll go ahead and ask 2 simple questions which are important to me. 1. Cell data reception. Is reception on B26 LTE better? Worse? What about B41? 2. Can towelroot still be used without tripping Knox? I cannot go back to using apps without tablet metrics. Its just a pet peeve of mine having all this screen space and having apps look bulky. Thanks in advance for any answers thrown my way guys.

The GS5 will go to 1x800 automatically if you're on B26 LTE at the moment you initiate or receive a phone call.

That doesn't sound right. Did you mess with the radio or band settings? Because the Nexus 5 is a better rf performer than the GS5. Or maybe you had a defective Nexus 5.

Did you get any sort of LTE on your Nexus?

I get similar numbers at home for Band 25. In my case, I don't get Band 41 (Clear legacy LTE and both B25 and B41 are coming from the same tower). Now of course, each situation is different and a lot depends on the tower. For example, I'm sitting on a null area when looking at the old Clearwire maps. There is also a lot of space protection due to it being close to 2 Clear B41-only sites. Maybe it'll be different for you. Nobody can say for certain until you try it out. I'm hopeful my situation will change once 8T8R antennas are deployed here. Either way, it doesn't effect phone calls/texts and I have cable broadband for internet.

The way people in my family plan roam is when they have an extended trip somewhere that has no native service. A good way of getting people to think about their roaming usage is to send a text as soon as they start roaming. The first text should warn them that they have entered roaming coverage and that they have a limit. After that, send that same reminder every 24 hours with an update of usage until that that customer is back on native coverage. Im sure those messages may cost Sprint some money, but they're probably still way cheaper than data anyways. It could lead to more responsible data usage by customers overall.