Sammael

I guess the rot has run deep surrounding paying more money for tethering. Everyone seems to accept it as perfectly reasonable. So be it. For what it's worth, I think all of you just have terribly low standards for what is reasonable to expect. You are not content to pay for data, but you want to be charged extra depending on how you use that data you already paid for. If a user is abusing unlimited, sprint and other companies should find ways to tamp down on them for using too much data, not going after user A for using 5GB of tethering while letting user B use thrice that amount through the phone or with wired tethering. This obnoxious micromanaging and metering of how I use the data I already paid for is such a trash business model for the customer. That so many accept it does not make it any less so.

Sprint is making a hell of a lot more profit per user on people like me, I am a single user with a single line, a family splits unlimited data on the phone service 3-4 ways, far more usage per dollar spent. This is just a naked cash grab.

There are different ways of handling things, you could limit the speed of lte to after a certain data usage amount, no more max speed but something as traffic allowed. That would be fair, but that is not they are doing.

Before sprint jacked the price up by 15 dollars and gifted us all with 3GB of hotspot data usage, I had previously contact customer service and gained access to some special code that allowed me to unlock access to non root tethering without paying some crazy price for data I am already paying for. After the price increase and the "free hotspot" with this anemic ass 3GB, I get a notification telling me I am 75% of the way to the "cap" (the ENTIRE reason I am with sprint is not having to deal with effing caps, I don't even use that much mobile data, maybe 5GB to 15GB per month, nothing crazy, but I take advantage of the hotspot for my notebook quite a bit) WTF man, I don't want to have to deal with this sh*t. I assume there is no way around having sprint track the data usage and meter it through the hotspot now (aside from a possible root)? Is there a way to not have that weigh me down? Because effectively, right now I am paying more money for less capability. I can either pay more once the cap is reached, another FIFTEEN GOD DAMN DOLLARS for a SINGLE GB, it's like they tell me to open my mouth so they can spit in my face and down my throat. I heard you might be able to keep using it at no cost at 2g speeds.... Sprints 3g speeds can be a disaster, and they want me to suffer at 2g speeds ?!??!?!!?? Now some of you will probably think I am being ridiculous, well whatever, I think this is garbage. I can't be alone here, I can't believe everyone else is fine with is, if they are then everyone is taking crazy pills.

Is it a barren wasteland for lte? Is there acceptable 3g? I ask because I have a relative that drives trucks and travels across the country and wants to get unlimited data for movie watching.

Give it time. I did the same thing a few weeks ago and thought everything was fine. Now the same issues are happening.

I don't know how to force lte only mode, every time someone mentions it, no instructions are given on how to toggle that. Also, I think we need to clarify some things. Is EVERYONE with spark phones having the same issues? That can't be right as there would be more noise made in the press. This is not an issue of intermittent coverage for people like me, it's an issue of the phone turning into a complete brick, no lte, no 3g EVEN WHEN cdma ONLY mode is turned on, no calls (called support and lasted about 10s before it disconnected). Is the nexus 5 having these issues? the htc one max? Just the m8? the m8 and the s5? If just the last two the common theme seems to be the QUALCOMM 801 SoC, is there a defect with those radios where they spontaneously shut down and stop working? Is it REALLY just a tower thing where spontaneously all service stops working? NOT JUST lte, 3g too, people keep saying switch it to 3g mode as if that restores service, that is NOT a solution, that is not what is happening, ALL SERVICE is stopped, no calls, no 3g, no lte, nothing. That could be a tower issue with just these phones, but no one seems to know for sure. Who here is in the Los Angeles CA area with an m8? is your service still fine? mine was GREAT until yesterday, so its either a REGION WIDE tower setting issue, or a phone issue.

And.... another one bites the dust. That m8 I swapped out a couple weeks ago? Was working flawlessly, then earlier today the wireless connectivity shut out. 3g and lte, same issue as before where the phone would just not connect at all. I think there must be some sort of bad batch where the phones have faulty radios, and seeing the number of people on these forums, it's not THAT rare an occurrence. This is NOT an issue of the new spark phones, when the phone was working it switched between calling and lte super fast, this is an issue where the phone radio just stops working and can't connect to save its life. Outside the 2 week return window now, so I may have to have the phone sent in, hopefully I can still just swap it out. Probably too late to swap it for another phone since it seems only the sprint m8s are having these issues, any word on the sprint s5s? same qualcomm soc right? same radios?

Just an update, I went to the sprint store yesterday and swapped out my m8, I was mulling over the nexus 5 or getting off of spark phones altogether with the note 3, I ended up getting another m8 to give it another chance to see if it was the device or the network. It was the device, where my original m8 would often never connect, the new m8 works perfectly fine. If anyone else is having issues with an m8, go swap it out as you could have gotten a bad unit like I did.

Just an update, I ended up swapping out my old m8 for a new m8, and this one performs much better. Looks like I got a bad unit. Happy about that, I chose this phone because I thought it was nicer, and going to the n5 would be a step backwards in terms of design imo (but I would have done that if needed)

I am in the Los Angeles market. The entire reason for me upgrading my m7 to the m8 was the hope for better connectivity and speed. What I got was significantly worse connectivity to the point where I could not even launch into navigation to a destination in maps because I'd be driving for 5 miles and it would never lock back onto data. I heard about the other connectivity issues with spark phone after I got this one so now I am more wary. For me the most important thing is connectivity. In one spot on this spark phones I pulled down over 50mbps, but if there are more places where I can't connect at all then it becomes useless. If I can get better connectivity with a spark phone, great. But it sounds like there are issues that might stop that from happening.

I have the htc one m8 now, but have had horrible connectivity issues so I am returning it later today. It may be a bum unit, but the issues I experienced so scarred me I am hyper sensitive to connectivity now. So out of all of the current sprint phones on lte, which has the best connectivity? both among sprints spark capable phones AND non spark lte phones (i.e. how is the note 3?) if the csfb? issues are going to stick around, I may skip spark phones unless you all think there are better connectivity options with one of them.

I tried that, and it did. I was outside and got connected back to lte and got a solid 30mbps down, signalcheck pro showed around 100 for the lte signal strength, not bad speed for that strength level... and then... it slid back into 3g and stopped connecting to anything. I am going to give this phone about a week, if these issues are not fixed in that time, I am going to HAVE to return this phone. If data is not accessible, the phone is an unusable paperweight. If all I wanted to do was talk, I'd have a cheap low rent feature phone. The PRIMARY core focus of any of these phones, is connectivity first and foremost. If that is not implemented well, the entire thing is useless. I tried using gps and could not lock in the destination location because this phone seems to have a harder time locking in a 3g signal in poorer connectivity areas, 3g connectivity seems far worse than the original one. If I had known there were going to be this many issues with BASIC things, I'd have held onto my old One. People say the nexus has a better radio, but if it has similar triband issues with switching, would that be any better when I get into and come from low signal areas? Because that seems to be a big issue. Another is that even when the lte signal is showing something relatively low like high 80s and low 90s, the lte seems to stall out. That happened on the original one as well, but the lte strength would be showing something like 104 when that happened, which made more sense. Now the signal seems to be coming in super strong, and yet it still can't connect. In areas where my old 1900 ONLY lte phone got fast service, sometimes this new one gets slower service on lte, though in other areas speeds are faster because that higher frequency band kicks in. That part I can live with, it's the connectivity, the not being able to connect AT ALL that is the deal breaker. If I do need to swap this out, I'll probably try out the note III. I was disappointed it did not come with the newer triband radios, but if THIS is the kind of performance and connectivity we can expect, then never mind. I hope I don't have to resort to that, the phone itself is perfectly fine, I like it, but I can't stay with it if I can't use it. I need to travel all around town, and I need to be able to access the net all over, not just in single spots. I don't need 50 mbps down in all areas, even a trickle of speed like 10-20 kbps is tolerable in underserved areas, but when it can't even provide that, when there are vast oceans of dead zones and black holes of connectivity that my older phone DID NOT HAVE, it's unforgivable. Sprint needs to understand something very basic. FAR more important than top lte speeds, is decent connectivity, it's the not being able to connect and use the service AT ALL that kills everything. That means the bad spots need towers filled in. Upgrade towers, fine, if that tower can't reach some part of town though, then spend some money on some property owner and run some fiber to them and get some coverage, these holes need to be filled.

Have you guys run into connectivity issues with the m8? I am coming from the m7 and this one seems to have more issues, i.e. not reconnecting to ANY 3g/4g when in range. I have to sometimes restart the phone to get it to jump back onto lte. And on 3g, it basically never connects. I see full signal bars, so I guess the voice I don't care about is intact, but I just tried to use google maps and I could not even enter a destination because the phone would not get back on 3g or 4g, it just stood there while I was driving disconnected and I waited for it to pick up something. What is going on this this phones radio behavior.

I updated yesterday, has the same issues today. I want from sprint a "data mode" that priorities data over calling, where the radio can be toggled to tune itself for data first. I'd also like an option to force it to jump to lte if available. That probably won't happen as they don't want users with that much control.

First, it's not all negative. There are areas where my lte signal has become more robust, likely due to having more bands to tap into. I've also broken 50mbps download speeds in some areas. The problem is that I need to criss cross the greater los angeles area for my job, and some areas have horrid connectivity. There is a location in Compton and Pasadena I frequent that is almost a total dead zone. my old htc one could just barely hold onto a 3g signal, or whatever that non evdo em.... thing is, but it was enough to do the basics of getting a page loaded for some task. With the new one, in the dead zones, it can't seem to connect to anything at all. Even when I drive further away a bit, it takes forever to get a signal back. In one area where I KNEW lte came in, after disabling mobile data and swapping from gsm to lte to reset things, I just restarted the phone and only THEN did it bother to get its ass back onto lte and not pretend there was no signal. Very frustrating. I've since read somewhere here that the sprint spark capable phones can't get lte and voice calls at the same time, and that if some specific tower upgrades are not in place to allow intelligent switching, the device may PARK you in 3g so you can see calls. I swear, I almost never use these phones to call, I use them for data and connectivity, that is the primary use for me. Is there a way to prioritize connectivity over calling? I don't care if I can't receive calls, I want to be able to connect and get access to the web. Saving all that, I am even more strongly considering buying one of those Wilson signal boosters for my car. Any suggestions about which would be best for the sprint spark capable phones? My last resort is downgrading to an older generation phone because of the way they handle connectivity, but I'd prefer not to have to do that.

How much better is connectivity on spark capable phones (specifically using the 800MHz band) in the general Los Angeles market? Interested more so in connectivity rather than speed.

How do sprint spark capable phones compare to the older single band lte phones in terms of connectivity? Has anyone compared the two? Not interested in speed as much as how much better the spark capable phones are at staying locked to an lte signal. The 1900 MHz lte for sprint is still very swiss cheese like in terms of coverage, and building penetration is not ideal.

I know they have similar types of devices for normal wifi, you can by those high gain antennas http://www.amazon.com/Alfa-AWUS036H-Upgraded-Long-Rang-Panel/dp/B003YHYIT0/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1371502011&sr=1-4&keywords=alfa+gain that allow you to radically increase the distance of wifi usage when the router is out of range for a good signal. Is there a similar device for cell phone data networks? It seems like the car would be the IDEAL plae for this type of high gain antenna, you are not as limited by the confines of tiny smartphone chassis, so you could design larger and longer range antennas couldn't you? I am in Los Angeles, and it's a big space, my lte/3g connectivity oscillates from strong to nonexistent depending on location, and seeing as that it would be much harder to get perfect blanketed coverage, why don't we see devices that boost data connectivity in cars to smooth out the swiss cheese like coverage in certain areas?

I just got the HTC One after ditching my old gs2 wimax phone, and I pick up LTE in many areas of the city, but there are still enormous numbers of dead spots in the larger Los Angeles area. I know many of sprints towers are slated for upgrades in the future, but that does not seem to be enough to solve the issue. They don't just need tower upgrades, they need more towers to fill in the dead/low signal areas. Is that being worked on as well? I think we all want the dream of near complete blanket coverage of lte in Los Angeles, we kind of have that with 3g now, so when will it happen for LTE?

Hey guys, just wanted to see how widespread this was or if it was just me. my speeds for strong wimax signal areas was around 6-8 mbps now I seem to top out from 1-3 mbps after the ICS update, did this happen to everyone? If so is it related to the update or something else going on on the network that just happened to coincide?

My speeds have gone down quite a bit. When I first got the gsII on wimax, here were some of my results the 11.2 mbps / 1.4 MB/s speeds were near a good signal strength area. Since then the top speeds dipped to the 7-8 mbps level.... which is still great for a wimax signal... but after the ICS update, my top speeds have been more like 1-3 mbps... even in strong signal strength wimax areas, no idea what happened. It's either an issue with the ICS update on the gsII or clearwire is doing something with the towers/load (perhaps preparing for the lte transition).

I currently have the sprint gsII variant on their wimax network in the Los Angeles area and I intend to stay with it until late 2013 (I was waiting for this phone to be released on sprint and bought it the day it was released). But I am wondering what will be available as an option when it's time for a new phone. From what I have been able to gather, sprints first lte roll out will only take advantage of the 1900MHz spectrum allocation, so all current sprint lte phones will ONLY have radios that can tap that vein and nothing more. But I've also read that sprint is currently refarming their dismantled IDEN on 800MHz and setting a portion for LTE in the future, along with relying on clearwire to transition portions of its 2500MHz spectrum to lte... So... when will phones be available that have radios that can tap into ALL of sprints upcoming LTE veins? Those would seem to be the phones with the best POSSIBLE connectivity on sprint. I would not mind if some of the frequencies were dark and not active at the time of purchase, so long as the phone had the radios that could take advantage of the added frequencies when they went online that would be perfect. Is there any information on any of this?