TheForce627

Yeah, but roaming coverage doesn't always behave the same as regular coverage in my experience. Sometimes for me it was only good for seeing bars on the display because I still couldn't text or call. Nothing beats native.

oh yeah I know all about that. In this test he was just basing it on bars so the sprint device should've had bars. His whole point was being able to make calls in an emergency.

I wonder if this guy had roaming turned on because I don't believe he would've been without coverage if vzw had coverage there

I'm using ART on my N5 and it takes a day of heavy use, SIM-swapping and iffy signals in some areas to kill the battery. Normally now I can hit 36+ hours on a charge, but away from home I tend to use my phone more. Other than ART I haven't done any battery life optimizations.

 

Side note, and this is a cros-post, I can detect band 41 LTE (marked as CLEAR) on my phone when I go to the network selection screen with a T-Mobile SIM (I'm using the $30 100 minute plan), as well as something from MCC-MNC 311-870 with no carrier name. Anyone know what the latter is? I can't connect to either with my TMo SIM, and switching to Sprint doesn't help, but at least I can tell where I'd be able to get Spark speeds if my phone had the firmware update or whatever required to connect to the darned towers.

you don't have to take the sim out to scan for networks. I switched my phone to LTE/gsm mode and was able to scan.

Oh stop it. We aren't comparing total footprint between Sprint and T-Mobile. They are very similar.

 

What we are comparing is the fact that Tmo leaves its outside urban sites as 2G. They have stayed as EDGE or GPRS for a decade. They didn't get upgraded to 3G nor 4G nor LTE.

 

Meanwhile Sprint upgraded all theirs to 3G (except for small amount of purchased sites), and Sprint is upgrading their entire network to LTE. Sprint already has thousands of rural sites already pumping out LTE.

 

So I think it's funny that you can be a Tmo apologist now. Why don't you go get Tmo service and go EDGE yourself? I have, so I'm speaking from experience.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

I guess I'm trolling because I'm stating the obvious. I like sprint but their rural is lacking and u know this because of the coverage at your home.

I had the similar experience when I was with TMO two years ago. But now I am sitting at my desk with LTE. Also it really depends where you go, but so far I've yet to see EDGE anywhere I go... Just saying o.o

 

 

-Luis

yeah with any carrier it depends on your area. Here in the Dc area T-Mobile's network is much denser than sprint, until u step outside the beltway.

That sounds better haha. Sprint has great coverage on major highways in rural areas, but once you get too far from the highway, it'll most likely be off-network roaming, but I feel like that is better than EDGE/GPRS/Emergency Only.

 

-Anthony

it may have sounded like I was being too critical of Sprint but I'm just tired of hearing about rural coverage on here when neither are great.

 

I would like to add I've been a sprint customer since 06 and I'm a shareholder, I'm not going anywhere.

Wait... what? I just... what? I can't name a place, rural or not, that I haven't had a better Sprint 3G/LTE signal, or an Extended 3G signal, than my friends with T-Mobile. You go anywhere outside of the city limits and you're on EDGE or GPRS on a T-Mobile phone. I could almost drive from one side of the state to the other, through a ton of rural areas, and barely lose an LTE signal on Sprint, let alone a 3G signal. IF I lose signal, I at least get to roam with usable voice and data, rather than on T-Mobile where most of the time you are on Emergency Only.

 

I just... I can't even fathom how one would think that they could get mad at Sprint over T-Mobile about rural coverage.

 

-Anthony

I'm just saying neither are good at rural coverage, just T-Mobile's is atrocious. Sprint isn't a godsend when it comes to rural coverage

I think it's funny how you guys are always on T-Mobile talking about rural coverage and how much better sprint is when sprint barely has a rural footprint itself. Sprint needs to expand its footprint to be a real player in this country.

No one in Alu market have picked up B41 with a N5, as far as I know, and to be honest, 3G signal strength has not been an issue for a very long time. Having persistent LTE is the current defacto requirement. Especially considering 1900's limited coverage range.

I have

This attitude of "this is all we need" is what got sprint into this situation in the first place. Instead of fiber backhaul like everybody else, t1 was all we need and now look at them, racing to upgrade backhaul all over the network. I say go for being the fastest and future proof the network and that's what sprint is doing.

It has been extremely annoying. Are you guys on the 4.4 radio or the 4.4.1/4.4.2 radio? I want to identify some cause for this if we can. I am on the 4.4 radio.Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

4.4

I notice that weird behavior with my n5 as well. As for the band 41, it will connect sometimes then disappears. Texts do come through when connected

I had trouble sending and receiving mms when using handcent. Tried textra and it works. Not the biggest fan of textra but I need something that works

Sometimes phones show the other bands while they pop over there to check for a second.Not sure if that could be what your seeing or not. Just thought I would throw that out.

 

Wish I had a N5 too, snipers got Santa before one showed up here.

no it's sitting on band 41 now that I'm connected to Wi-Fi. Any time I try use data through lte it disappears. Texts come through fine though

With a Galaxy S4?

no nexus 5. I guess I forgot to change that in my profile info lol

Im finding myself connected to a few different band 41 sites. They must be blocked or something because it will connect and quickly disconnect, even in LTE only mode. Hopefully they stop blocking them soon

That's the thing though, my band 25 signal is not as strong as the band 41 signal would be. When I had a wimax phone I would get almost full signal from that tower. The Clearwire/Spark tower is about a mile and a half closer than the nearest Sprint NV tower.

maybe it's an ecsfb issue, put your phone in lte only mode and try.

Was curious as to how well the lte radio is compared to 3g and I'm very impressed. I'm out in the boonies today and This is my lte signal and 3g signal in the same place

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7ptxqdgpt8pp5kf/Screenshot_2013-12-21-18-34-50.png

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q9ufyi9cckkenx9/Screenshot_2013-12-21-18-31-22.png

 

Nice to be able to hold LTE when my 3g signal is so low. Also my sisters iPhone is parked on 3g while I'm enjoying LTE

I wish sprint would focus on expanding their current footprint. That's probably the only way to get that bad taste out of people's mouths. And increasing cell site density wouldn't hurt either. T mobile doesn't give sprint a bigger footprint.

That's odd. I've had Band 41 enabled since Thanksgiving, and still see excellent standby time. As in unplugged since 8 this morning, sitting at 90% right now.

what priority was band 41?

 

 

Edit: sorry for the multiple posts

I have a theory on why we haven't seen an update for tri-band yet. When I enabled band 41 on my n5 (1st day I got it) I noticed that standby battery life was terrible when not on Wi-Fi. Maybe around 5+% drop per hour. Today I disabled band 41 and was surprised to see how much better my standby battery life was.

Isn't there a CDMA 450mhz network running somewhere in the world? Haven't heard of these problems with that network.

Sending and receiving SMS are two different issues. Which did you do?

 

AJ

received. Used another phone to send the message while the n5 ran a speed test. Would it really matter of it switched back to 1x when sending since most likely you'd be in the messaging app and not browsing the web

From my reading of various Qualcomm and 3GPP standards documents, I believe that I am correct. But somebody can try an experiment. Start downloading a large file. Then, using a different handset or an outside service, send yourself an SMS. What happens? It should not cause reselection from LTE to CDMA1X because an SMS is just a few hundred bytes -- not worth switching airlinks.

 

AJ

I tried this already. Sent a text during a speed test and no pause in the data session.

 

Edit: I would also like to note that I haven't received a single late message over LTE which would often happen on 1x

3g seems better than my s4

 

Edit: only by maybe 2-5dbm