koiulpoi

My (free) MifI 500 just got activated on my account. Time to go TDD-LTE hunting... tomorrow!

If you are not on a device subsidy there should not be a ETF AT ALL generally, imho. If I remember you are a Sprint or reseller retail employee? so that could bias your view. Even if on a subsidy if someone is getting crap service you should be able to get out ETF-free or the vendor whether Sprint or cable or telephone or whomever needs to make it right to hold up their side of "the deal". We all know much of the subsidy is pretend/make believe anyway, Sprint or any carrier is not paying full retail price on the phones they buy or even close (leaving out Apples iphone scam of the carriers). It's obvious that's why if you get your phone from a reseller you can get a better deal than the carrier gives you.

Crap service has pretty much nothing to do with it, especially when you have the trial period to try it out and make sure it works, and then get out contract-free. You signed a contract that says "Early Termination Fees", you agreed to it, and you must pay those fees if you cancel early. Imagine if Sprint used the EIP program that T-Mobile has. If you cancelled service, you owe the rest of the cost of the phone. This is exactly what the ETF represents. You agreed to pay it, so you should have to pay it, barring extenuating circumstances. The contract also says "service is not available everywhere". You agreed to that.  Yes, contracts suck and are a bad deal. I understand wanting out if things aren't going well, but that doesn't suddenly justify weaseling, scamming, and cheating your way out. "Sure, just flash 00002.prl and wait a month."

 

No, carriers are not paying the complete retail price for many device. The cost is actually fairly high, close to full MSRP - I can't reveal our cost without breaking NDAs, but it's not "make believe" at all. And to leave out iPhones is just silly; it's at least 30% of Sprint's sales, and yes, those we pay 100% MSRP for.

 

Part of the reason many resellers can sell for cheaper is, besides simple volume, is that they often run very tight margins. Especially online retailers with no brick and mortar establishments, just warehouses and shipping, you can sell it cheaper. That, and they get reimbursed the cost of the phone, and then paid the price for the plan, so it works a little different than you said.

 

 

 

Think of it, where on this planet does an intelligent consumer ever pay or should pay full suggested retail price on most things -

 

groceries, of course not ,not even close - eg 12pk coke pepsi, retail something insane like $5.xx never pay over $2 in an emergency 2.50 maybe

clothes, no

drinks at a bar, only suckers do that, eg $5 for domestic beer, generally pay $1 or less

restaurants, no

cars, nope

cable service, no way, full satellite expanded basic directv, including 2 dvrs, <$25/month bulk purchase including all taxes

internet, no eg 6mbps, <$30 including all taxes

even electric in many places, no.

...what in the world does this have to do with the topic at hand? I mean, yay free market? Yay retailers marking up products so they actually make a profit?

 

 

 

Here is an example of wanting to get out of a contract. A few kids with a line each on my account, well adults but more like kids. My  Wife's Daughters boyfriend was in jail and she accepts collect phone calls at $10 each. $100 charge in 2 days. He likes jail and visits often and daughter never pays bill as promised. Ya I would love for the contract to END. Luckily she broke the phone but I still have to pay the $30 a month or drop a large sum on a buyout fee (if they still do that).

Jail Call pricing is set by the jails, not the carrier.

Maybe TMO? Maybe?

No low band spectrum is the ONLY reason why TMO sucks.

 

And sprint will get at least 5x5 if for no other reason than to move to volte.

 

And all that EDGE coverage. If they get good backhaul and LTE on all their sites, they'll be a serious competitor. For now, at least here in WMI, they're kinda a joke.

Still don't have EVDO and 1xA traffic in there, so toss on a few more Mbps

Well, the original question was how many times over "3G EV-DO", which as I pointed out early, is difficult to figure out, as sites have differing numbers of EV-DO carriers. So, I just calculated LTE compared to a single EV-DO carrier. 1X and 1XA aren't going to change that number much, maybe not even within a sigfig - and again, different sites may have different number of 1X 1900 carriers.

Or possible future added levels.

 

What o.o

 

Donated. Forgot to say Denver but it's for Denver.

Not enough EXPLOSIONS

Totally disagree. In the general area it seems like a totally valid question to ask about since Sprint is the one making the change to the subscriber and the person was asking what the possible options would be. Completely legitimate versus fraud or vpn abuse etc you mention in another post. IMHO

Sorry, but it's really hard for me to see anyone trying to get out of a contract ETF-free (especially on a device subsidy) as "completely legitimate". If you want out, pay your termination fee and be gone. Don't go snooping around for loopholes trying to slip out - or worse, cheat and scam your way out.

I don't understand why AT&T always gets such a bad rep. I was an AT&T iPhone/BlackBerry customer in SW Florida for 2 years- never had a dropped call, fast, consistent data, and more than adequate customer service.

 

The only reason I left was because I was tired of paying $100 every month for capped data.

That quote I posted was from a good friend of mine, iPhone early adopter and app developer, who lived through the iPhone 1st gen, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 3GS on AT&T. He jumped to VZW for the 4, skipped the 4S, and is now on Sprint with the 5. He hated AT&T, but "had to have them" because of the iPhone. 

 

Edit: Which, looking at:

http://specmap.sequence-omega.net/

It looks like AT&T has no Cellular holdings in the greater Grand Rapids, Michigan, nor Lansing (VZW has both sides thanks to the Alltel buyout), so it's likely all PCS sites here. Makes me wonder if they don't have similar "bad spacing" problems...

Ah, but that total is like simultaneous orgasm on all carriers and airlinks.  And we know that never occurs in the real world.

 

 

AJ

Wireless nerd porn?

 

So, what could we expect for "reliable" backhaul to tri-band Sprint sites? We're still short of 500 Mbps, even with all that, and there's almost never a situation where, like you said, you can get maximum speed on everything at once. So 400 Mbps? I couldn't even begin to estimate. Apparently 100 Mbps is good enough for a 5x5 + EV-DO + 1X.

Don't forget to add in a bit for the voice carriers

 

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

Welp, I'm gonna need to know how much bandwidth a 1X carrier has now...

 

I covered the basic 20 MHz TDD math a few weeks ago in this post:

 

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/4083-sprint-td-lte-25002600mhz-discussion/?p=158089

 

AJ

Aha! Exactly what I needed. So ~222 Mbps + (90 Mbps) * 3 [we're still splitting in to three sectors, right?] = ~492 Mbps. So that's ~51.2 times more bandwidth than a single EV-DO carrier.

 

Edit: I suppose I should update my math for proper sigfigs. (37.5) * 3 * 2 + (90.0) * 3 = 495, or ~51.6 times.

Maximum bandwidth of a single EV-DO carrier is ~3.2 Mbps. Three sectors/carrier makes that ~9.6 Mbps.

 

Maximum bandwidth of a single 5x5 FDD-LTE carrier is ~37 Mbps. Three sectors/carrier makes that ~111 Mbps. Multiply that by two (as Sprint has a 5x5 on 1900 MHz PCS G Block and a 5x5 on 800 ESMR), to get ~222 Mbps.

 

I have no idea what the bandwidth of a 20 MHz 3:2 TDD-LTE carrier is. Someone else will have to answer that (so I can memorize the answer and how the math works).

 

It's difficult to assign a "multiplier" to this, as different cell sites have differing numbers of EV-DO carriers.

Which attracts more flies?  Fresh shit or honey?

 

AJ

"Eat shit! Billions of flies can't all be wrong!"

Only thing? Thats sort of important though?

 

You can get better phones for cheaper. With removable batteries, wireless charging and expandable memory. Higher res screens, and faster processors. For cheaper.

 

This phone offers absolutly nothing.

 

Is it even tri-band at Sprint? Im going to guess not.

Well that's exactly what I'm saying. This is a $300-ish phone, not a $550 phone. Perhaps we're seeing the "made in America" price, as opposed to cheap overseas labor?

Holy crap the phone is a fail.

 

What a waste of time

Tell me how you really feel

 

The only thing I'm disappointed in is the price. $199 + 2yr. So ~$550.

Are they having any troubles with 800 Voice? If there's no issue, why bother? For voice, there's really no difference between "enough bars" and "full bars".

Depends; did the contract you sign have a specific price for administrative charges, or did it say "such pricing is subject to change"? Read what you signed!

I know if time warner cable ever try's to jack my rate over 30 a month, I will say you can have my 30 a month or I will be giving it to Verizon to add the hotspot that's unlimited. ( Unlimited LTE rocks on the S4)

Grandfathered in, buying devices at full MSRP?

Here's your answer:  http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-lindgren-RF-Enclosure-Security-Conference-Room/190551187442

 

That's so crazy Cyberpunk/Shadowrun it hurts.

 

Obviously, some crazy NIMBYs need to buy something like this an live inside it. No electronics gonna get me here...

Right but AT&T also said they had the fewest dropped calls.

 

Nothing they say should be taken as a fact

"What's the difference between an AT&T iPhone and an iPod Touch? Nothing, neither can make calls."

I guess where I disagree with you is that the benchmarks are giving out the impression of Software optimization that just isn't necessarily true.

My feeling of deception comes from Samsung playing on the tech ignorance of the masses that will see the benchmark comparisons on reviews and give Samsung credit for software and hardware optimization that is only an accurate portrayal of the phone while the benchmark is running.

Like I said earlier, I am not sure if this is Samsung being "bad", but is definitely a little sleight of hand. It creates a sense of what the phone can do out of the box, when in reality you would have to overclock the phone to actually get the performance that the benchmark made you think the phone was capable of.

All that said I completely see where you are coming from.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

Well, the article itself says that the performance boost happens during:

 

 

Meanwhile, a maximum GPU frequency of 533MHz is applicable for running apps that are usually used in full-screen mode, such as the S Browser, Gallery, Camera, Video Player, and certain benchmarking apps, which also demand substantial performance.

So, it's hardly just the benchmarking apps where it happens. The only issue here is that there's no user control, and it's not on all the time. It's really much ado about nothing. They chose to have higher performance when benchmarking and certain day-to-day tasks, but longer battery life for games, which is when it will drain the most. That's it, when you get down to it. The implications of malice are mostly only in the OP, nowhere else.

 

Retail reps are salesmen. They don't care what you are complaining about, they are not paid to fix your problem, that's what customer care is for.If you are not purchasing something, they want nothing to do with you. They have quotas to meet and every minute they are working with you is time they are not making money. The management likely feels exactly the same way, if you are not in there to buy something, you are a waste of their time that they could otherwise be using to make money. It's the world we live in, America is entirely like the Ferengi from Star Trek, they were modeled on us after all...

A couple comments... management often does feel the same way, but the real "good" ones will find a way to get a sale out of someone who has a problem. It works surprisingly well. "Did you know Sprint sells iPads? Well, come over here and take a look at this display..." and 20 minutes later the person who came in for service problems is leaving with a $400 item.

 

For the rest of your points, I've been trying to beat it in to the heads of those around me. There's really only one way to get those around you to understand, and that's though repetition and being a good example. You can even appeal to their own sense of greed - after all, if Sprint is going to have an amazing network soon for x y z reasons, isn't that a great sales tool? If you can make a customer happy, you can more quickly transition in to selling them other things, right?

I think 2 different topics are getting confused here.

1. The validity of benchmarks.

2. Samsung intentionally skewing the results.

 

I am of the camp that benchmarks do very little to show how a phone will perform in real life conditions. The only way to know if a phone is "fast" enough for YOU is to use the phone under YOUR normal usage patterns. You have 14 days to test drive the phone. Use them.

This is exactly it. Benchmarks are synthetic, by nature. They're "raw performance". This isn't some kind of crazy optimization, it's just overclocking the device (sorta) under certain conditions. That's all. This isn't driver "optimizations" or "lying", it's literally the hardware performing at the maximum capable for the hardware. It would be invalid or lying if it was somehow reporting higher than the hardware could physically go. The title of this thread should frankly be changed.

 

But like I was trying to say before I sidetracked myself, benchmarks often have nothing to do with real-life performance. I can't think of any case I've been playing an Android game and thought "man, if only my GPU was faster, this wouldn't run so bad". I'm sure it happens, but 99% of what I do on my phone (and what I've seen most people with high end phones do) can't use anything close to "benchmark" power. Mostly it's Facebook and Candy Crush (ugh), if my customer are any indication.

It's not cheating if your hardware can do it. The only "cheat" is to detect a benchmarking app and lock the CPU and GPU at maximum speed, aka disable power management. That's not cheating, that's giving accurate results that the hardware can do at best.

 

Honestly, it seems silly to not allow the higher frequency for all apps, but it likely has such a horrific battery drain (or can damage the device) that they lock it for most.

 

Also, this is almost certainly something that a custom kernel and some root fun will be able to change...

 

And yes, the question is, is this behavior exhibited in the Snapdragon version? I highly doubt it, you're running an entirely different GPU on the SoC.

Is it really necessary to create another TMO thread? Robert already merged two threads - "Tmobile vs sprint 4g" and "why Tmobile's 4g will kick ..."

You've been lurking long enough to have seen those threads? o.o

 

Well, welcome to S4GRU, then! Glad you've started posting

In some regards, I think it would be fun to work at a Sprint store.  But then I realize how much nonsense and ignorance I'd have to deal with from the ubiquitous general public.

You have no idea. And it's not just your customers, it's your coworkers. See my previous post and despair.