legion125

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 24 November 2011

This one was personal for me, I was really pulling for webOS.

HP's decision to kill its webOS device business

http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-reports/theyre-cooked-top-wireless-turkeys-2011/hps-decision-kill-its-webos-device-business

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 24 November 2011

Here's one!

RIM’s PlayBook (and its failure to get U.S. carrier support)

http://www.fiercewir...e-get-us-carrie

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 10 January 2012

With the Galaxy Nexus and LG Viper officially announced, it's just a matter of when they will be released. I'll be conservative and say we will have to wait until the 2nd quarter more so in the April timeframe, but no later than CTIA in May.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 7 January 2012

With the accidental release of the Galaxy Nexus advertisement. I wonder if Sprint would let a few LTE phones leak out. I don't think we would see the GN or any others in the first quarter, but it would make a splash if one or two were released during CTIA, which would be right before Sprint is suppose to turn on the LTE network. This would also solve the problem of all the EVO/Epic owners who are coming off contract.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 6 December 2011

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 5 January 2012

Android will continue to be fragmented for the next several years. The main purpose for ICS was to get everything on the same page i.e. phones & tablets. What makes it intriguing is that every new phone will have to have the hardware to optimize the OS, so all the new phones s/b pretty sweet spec wise. Since the NS4G (a GS1 phone) can run vanilla ICS with no problem, I think you won't see any android phone with specs less than that except for those in the rooting community who could probable put ICS on the Hero.

Dual and quad core processors will be the new standard. Samsung is still irritating me with its half promises about upgrading phones and when (See GS1). But obviously the GS1 can't handle ICS because of Touchwiz and Sprint bloatware. So gingerbread may still have some value for the next couple of years.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 11 January 2012

I'm sure we'll start to hear something about the EVO line by spring. Usually rumors about Sprints flagship phones start to surface during that time with CTIA being the confirmation and with other phones releases being divulged then as well. With LTE coming out, Sprint may do things differently this year. CES is a good example of this strategy, Sprint has usually had a very small footprint there and I can't recall there every being a product announcement before.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 18 November 2011

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 18 November 2011

 

Sprint has said they are releasing 15 LTE devices in 2012. Given they aren't going to start until mid year, that's a lot. Should feel like rapid fire.

 

Hopefully the GN is one of them. My upgrade has been available since August and I've been waiting for ICS. I'm at least hoping Sprint will get some ICS phones before summer. I don't think my area will even get LTE until sometime in 2013.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 21 January 2012

Thanks for joining! You can be a great resource to the site for tech questions for those of us who are ill informed. I've learned a lot from just reading what every one else posts about the technical side. Welcome aboard.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 8 January 2012

Welcome aboard! Looking forward to you opinions.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 7 January 2012

Welcome. Hope to see you as a frequent contributor.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 28 January 2012

Agreed. Sprint had to use WiMAX or lose out on spectrum, so it was a no brainer since it was a known technology and equipment was already available. LTE was basically still on the drawing board. It's too bad really in one respect. WiMAX had a lot of potential for an established technology and if the majority of carriers here and in Europe hadn't decided to go the LTE route since it was a carrier developed technology, Sprint would have continued to be a 4G leader and would be rolling out WiMAX 2 by now and its and Clears financials would probably been much improved.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 6 January 2012

Agreed! WiMAX would have been the dominate 4G standard if the carriers hadn't decided to make a push for the LTE. After doing a little light reading on Wikipedia, it looked initially that WiMax and its future variations were going to be superior to LTE, its just the carriers got behind LTE and pushed for critical mass so it became the new standard. It would have been cheaper all around because the equipment and infrastructure was already developed and maturing. When the bandwagon rolled on for LTE, the industry had to stop and start over.

If LTE continued to be a pipe dream, Sprint may have been the leader in 4G in the U.S. and would have most likely begun deploying WiMAX 2 by now.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 5 January 2012

Heres a short article about the future of WiMAX and how worldwide carriers are switching to TD-LTE.

http://www.phonearen...ownhill_id25437

TD-LTE adoption to grow substantially by 2016, WiMAX going downhill

According to a recent analysis conducted by the guys at ABI Research, over 500,000 TD-LTE towers will be operational worldwide by the end of 2016, and the majority of them are expected to be on the territory of China. At the same time, WiMAX usage will be going downhill due to the increasing number of carriers abandoning the technology.

What is TD-LTE you ask? Well, it is basically a variant of LTE technology, and the TD part stands for Time-Division Duplex. The LTE flavor that carriers in the U.S. and Europe use today is known as FD-LTE, which is short for Frequency-Division Duplex. Currently, TD-LTE service is commercially available in Brazil, Japan, Poland, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. However, there are plans for the deployment of TD-LTE networks in Australia and Scandinavia, as well as in the U.S. and India.

But what does the future hold for WiMAX? Well, here is what Aditya Kaul, practice director of mobile networks at ABI Research, has to say:

“It was only two years ago that nearly every WiMAX operator, including operators with unpaired TDD frequency spectrum, were planning to deploy WiMAX 2,... Today, almost all of them have switched plans and are deploying TD-LTE instead.”

So, we now have more evidence that WiMAX is on its way to obsolescence, while LTE and its various flavors are what will dominate the wireless spectrum. And just wait until LTE-Advanced comes along – now that is what will knock your socks off with those 1Gbps download speeds.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 12 January 2012

@autoprime If I remember correctly, Nokia couldn't/wouldn't build a CDMA phone and had contracted that out to another OEM before it pulled out of the market. Nokia can make a good phone, but I think it will be on AT&T and T-Mobile for the next year or so before the CDMA side can get one from them.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 12 January 2012

Sprint is done selling WiMAX phones based on this article. There won't be any new launches and Sprint will sell what it has in inventory so I expect to see fire sales by this fall. I've also heard that WiMAX sales are falling and Sprint has a a huge inventory because everyone is holding out for LTE. Of course iPhone sales are the exception.

http://www.phonedog....windows-phones/

Sprint talks up its incoming LTE devices, explains lack of Windows Phones

Sprint announced back in October that it was planning to launch an LTE network, and since then new details on the impending switch have trickled out, most recently with the naming of its first four LTE markets and the news that its first two LTE smartphones will be the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and LG Viper. Today Sprint's VP of product realization David Owens talked to PC Mag a bit more about the carrier's LTE plans as well as what the switch means for any future WiMAX smartphones. (Hint: There probably won't be any.) Owens said that although the Galaxy Nexus and Viper will be hitting other carriers before they arrive on the Now Network, Sprint will differentiate its models with things like Google Wallet support. It's also possible that we'll see other LTE handsets by the middle of the year, which Owens explained means that Sprint is basically finished with releasing any new WiMAX-capable smartphones.

Owens also talked a bit about Windows Phone and why Sprint has only released one device (the HTC Arrive) running Microsoft's mobile OS thus far. "We have a Windows device in our lineup, but honestly, it hasn't done well enough for us to jump back into the fire," he told PC Mag, adding that the number one reason that the Arrive was returned to stores was the user experience. Sprint director of product development Lois Fagan chimed in by saying that the carrier wants to take part in selling the devices, but that Microsoft needs to help build excitement around the platform. Owens said that Sprint is considering giving Windows Phone another shot around the "August-September period."

Obviously Owens' statements about Windows Phone are kind of a bummer for fans of the platform, especially ones that can't or won't leave Sprint for another network. Sprint isn't the only carrier that doesn't seem particularly excited about Windows Phone, though, as its CDMA compatriot Verizon has also only released one of the platform's products to date. Right now the go-to carrier for Windows Phone folk looks to be AT&T, especially with the recent introductions of the HTC Titan II and Nokia Lumia 900. The good news is that we've heard that Microsoft may be planning to release the next major version of Windows Phone, codenamed Apollo, around the same timeframe that Owens said Sprint may try the platform again, so both Sprint and its customers could have some new Windows Phone goodies to check out by the time that that August/September window rolls around.

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 8 January 2011

Clearwire certainly had a lot of potential with coverage if it hadn't run out of $. Oh well, hopefully they can make it up with LTE.