centermedic

I just can't get over the dual camera thing. It's quite interesting, but I have read several reviews on it especially against my 5S (who's camera I LOVE LOVE). I love photos, its my thing. The change of focus would be pretty interesting to play with, but I wish they had up'd it to more like 8 mp or more. 

 

It is a very good looking phone though. The aluminum body is sleek as hell, and would be a seller point for me. I love the "high quality" feel of a metal enclosure. 

The issues I am seeing in the reviews are software related in my opinion. Personally I am not worried about it.

Happy Birthday Robert!

Ah my friend...the joke, she is but long gone

Anybody see a good case holster combo yet?

I think Robert needs a "vacation".

Placed my reservation at Best Buy today. Have to say I was impressed when the sales lady asked if I was looking for the M8.

Mine is sitting on my doorstep according to UPS.com. I can't wait to get home and try it out.

Where do you live? 

Going to wait until I can get it from best buy so I can get my $50 off. Yup, I'm cheap! 

Talk is cheap get the network done already.

Wait for it....wait for it....done! 

I'm still not in favor of the merger.  Guess I'm an idiot.  

 

But after hearing about the duopoly conspiring together, it sure makes me just a little bit more for it.  I'm almost neutral in may stance, now.

 

Robert

If the Big Two are allowed to dominate the 600 mhz spectrum then I fear that a merger would not be up to the task of countering the big two.

The new cherokee's are nice but the one thing I hate about it is the gas mileage is horrible.  Now of course there are different trim levels but the one I rented last summer was the high end model with every feature you can get and while I loved it, the gas mileage was horrible(both highway and city driving), but it does have a huge gas tank though.

I think you are getting the Grand Cherokee and the Cherokee confused. The new Cherokee gets 31 mpg on the highway and is a smaller vehicle than the Grand Cherokee. http://www.jeep.com/en/2014/cherokee/#model=limited&color=deep-cherry-red

Not knowing what your budget or size requirements are I would recommend the new Jeep Cherokee. It has a decent amount of room, great gas mileage and excellent AWD capability for less than 30 k.

Sprint, not Softbank had to borrow the money to deploy LTE, so the combined company would have to borrow the money to expand the network or purchase 600MHz spectrum, not Softbank. Softbank would just borrow the money to buy T-Mobile shares from DT.

As far as i know any debt on Sprints balance sheets before the buyout got transferred onto Softbanks ledgers. In any case debt is debt. It is either going to affect the parent company or the subsidiary.

But that would be Softbank's debt, not Sprint's. It won't be sprint acquiring T-Mobile, it will be Softbank, then merging the two. Sprint's debt and T-Mobile's debt will be assumed by the new company.

On paper yes. In reality not really. For instance, what happens when the new company needs to expand the network but they do not have the money to do so. Will Softbank be able to under write the expansion? I can not understate just how concerned I am about Softbanks debt load, favorable monetary exchange or not.

The merger with T-Mobile is about scale. It is not about spectrum. It is about the ability to spread the overhead of network upgrading and upkeep over as many people as possible. It is about buying power with the handset vendors or the network vendors. Now, had Sprint and T-Mobile been smart, they would have adopted network sharing a long time ago and maybe even banded together to purchase handsets en masse. But they did not. Now the only real benefit is the savings from network ops, overhead, employees and buying power. They might even be able to afford expanding coverage to exurban and rural areas. Or a substantial chunk of 600Mhz spectrum.

This is the argument for every merger/buy out ever known. Even though these savings through efficiency do not materialize a significant amount of the time it is still a valid and attractive argument. My concern lays in the additional debt that would be created through this marriage. How many years would it take to amortize the new debt and is it workable? Finally, I still have concerns about being able to maintain the subscriber base. A failure here would compound the debt issue.

meh screw that if i only wanted to do normal small little things with my phone then i would have stuck with a phone from the year 2000 or something but guess what i have a huge screen mini tablet and i want what im paying for ok, i want a bigger e-penis i can care less for the folks that dont if you dont that's you thats i see it but until that person pays my bill and such dont tell me what i dont need cuz its coming out my pockets thats how i see it lol.

 

Sent from my LG-LS995 using Tapatalk

Good. That means we wont hear you complain about how much your e-penis costs.

Did sprint already say 800LTE will cover 150 million Pops by end of this year?

 

This is why I said earlier sprint should take this announcement and really over deliver their deployments for 800/2600.

 

Do I personally think tmobile will pull it off? maybe. Who knows we'll just have to wait and see.

This is the problem I have and why I like Roberts idea of farming over Softbank employees. IIRC 800 mhz is just a trip to the tower  and swapping some cards. There is no reason that Sprint cannot get 800 mhz to every NV upgraded tower. 150 million pops is really undershooting what is reasonably possible.

I may not fully understand the whole backhaul story, but if Verizon has advanced backhaul to their rural sites why can't other carriers also get the backhaul there.  Some of these rural areas have to be on the same tower as well.  I mean I understand Sprint is having a tough time getting backhaul to many of their towers (even here in the NYC market), but what can be done to speed this up?  It is definitely an interesting time in the wireless market.  Finally starting to see decent competition among the four major carriers.

It took Verizon 3-4 years to  complete the LTE overlay. Pretty safe bet that some of those rural back haul orders went in years ago.

Has anybody done a screen replacement on this phone?

Specs are all there except resolution of rear cameras.

I bet we can order right after or soon after March 25.  I think that's one reason there are so many leaks because demos and early builds are already out there to be ready to take orders.  Maybe that's why the S5 didn't leak out, because the release is long after the announcement.

I'm surprised there is no pre order yet.

I am an AT&T and Verizon customer.  All throughout the West, Verizon has far better coverage than AT&T.  I believe Sprint can organically at least come darn close to matching AT&T's coverage for probably just $4-$5 Billion.  Converting all the unique iDEN and WiMax Protection Sites to full NV with CDMA 1900/800 and LTE 1900/800 would be a good start.

 

If Sprint could claim coverage to the extent that AT&T does and get NV2.0 complete, it could compete with the duopoly on that alone.  People stay with the duopoly because of coverage.  Otherwise, all the providers are really just fighting over those price sensitive subs who will jump ship only because of a cost/benefit analysis.

 

I meet lots of Verizon customers who hate their prices.  And they would love unlimited back.  But they will continue to pay for Verizon until Sprint offers a consistently good data experience and a coverage footprint that meets their needs.  Even when visiting their parents on the farm or while camping in the foothills.

 

Robert

 

EDIT:  A quick number crunching and just converting 1,000 unique iDEN and 700 WiMax Protection sites to CDMA/LTE would be approximately $200M.  That's chump change in the grand scheme of Network Vision.  They need to just do that now.  That would start making some headway right away and would resolve most of their G block building requirements.

Exactly my point. Sprint really is not that far away from AT&T in terms of coverage. I stand by the statement that the two networks are comparable.

Well if Sprint's coverage includes roaming, then it would include a lot of VZW, which would limit the number of minutes and amount of data. VZW has the best coverage in the country.

 

To think that Sprint's coverage is anything close to that of AT&T is bizarre to say the least.

 

I have both AT&T and Sprint, I go places that unless I am in need of warming my pocket for an hour, I turn off the Sprint phone.

This include rural Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Washington, basically outside of a city.  

 

I feel that Sprint should spend the bzillions on adding towers and not doubling up with T-Mobile.

 

The guy Son is starting to sound like T-Mobile's CEO, not living in reality.

Results may vary. No one argues that Sprints coverage in the mid west is sparse at best. However, I lived in Columbus MS and drove many miles in MS, LA and eastern AR without any issues unless I was really in the sticks.

Including roaming?

I think excluding roaming is fair since it can be very variable. Although it would be interesting to know if the average consumer even knows when and what roaming is.

Maybe with roaming voice coverage, but not native and definitely not data coverage of anything better than 1x speeds. 

Lets not get into the lte hspa 3g 1x edge argument. Lets just take coverage as coverage.

No freaking possible way Sprint coverage is equivalent to AT&T's. Maybe in two years, maybe outside IBEZ. Not now. If they acquire USCC maybe in certain areas

Never said equivalent. I said comparable. Big difference. There will always be areas covered by one and not the other or one does a better job then the other. In my experience I have had better coverage with Sprint then I would with AT&T. Your results may vary.