koiulpoi

Even though I can't wait for LTE, I really don't see the need to get 100 Mbps from my cell phone.  I am waiting for LTE to rely on it for my home internet connection, since we have no DSL or cable available, BUT, anyone who feels the that THAT much speed is necessary probably has access to wireline service.  And, if you are out and about, I can't possibly see how 20, 30, 40, 100+ Mbps is even remotely necessary.  5-6, yes I can see that.  But, I'm still skeptical on the other.

 

I feel like people get so obsessed with needing the fastest speed possible and put that ahead of network quality.  Sure, other carriers might be able to be a bit faster than Sprint's LTE, but I'd be happy with a reliable signal that is useable just about everywhere.  Getting 3-4 Mbps in a rural area fairly far from a tower on LTE makes me happier than 50 Mbps in a specific intersection of a large city.  I'm probably the exception, but still.

Eh, even without access to other internet, 4G LTE isn't a perfect replacement for wired internet. You get 12 GB for $80 a month at most from a hotspot device, and overages are ~$50/gig. I'm expecting that pricing to change soon, but still.

The real reason to go with something like that is capacity. Wireless services like LTE are shared. When you have 100 simultaneous connections, on 100 Mbps LTE, that's 1 Mbps each. On 37 Mbps LTE, that's 0.37 Mbps, a large difference in usability. Now, of course, that's a gross oversimplification, but the point stands: more capacity, generally more better.

As you know, digi, I too have the Note 2. I've gone back to your modified PRL after 2000 rolled out.

I'm in Michigan, a Samsung market. There was a time that several 3G clusters were brought up, many sites broadcasting 800 MHz, and the general consumer PRL release contained the 800 lines. During this time, we saw zero complaints of Note 2 owners coming in about voice and texting problems. I did not hear of this issue at all from any other technicians, neither from personal emails, nor on our dedicated email list.

I personally have been using 800 MHz ever since it was accepted on the site closest to my house, and it has been much more reliable than 1900 by far. I can actually send and receive texts in my basement, and call anywhere else in my house (where before that stuff was shaky even outside).

From what I know, it sounds to me a bit like it may be specific to certain vendors. After all, in places like Chicago, Note II owners have been able to use 800 MHz for some time now...

Phone processors are tiny embedded devices.

 

What does a virtual machine give you that C++ and smart pointers can't?

 

You still haven't detailed why C++ is so "eww".

 

 

 

 

You're totally missing the point of this thread.

Google did Project Butter as a result of Android's architectural limitation.

Yes, animations are now better but if they used native code, they wouldn't have had the problem in the first place.

And Android could run on cheaper hardware well.

 

Yes, I know phone processors are tiny embedded devices. Isn't that what I literally just said? Why are you repeating me? o.o

Hoo buddy. Can't even have a personal opinion around here. I'm not going to spend all night detailing my issues with C++. If you like it (like I already said), go have fun. It's not bothering me.

And hold on - what evidence do you have that triple buffering and 60 FPS animations being implemented is due to architectural limitations? How could native code have made animations smoother? Without proper interpolation and whatnot you're sitting at "terrible", native code, Objective C on iOS, or Java/Dalvik on Android.

And let's just get this out of the way: I agree with your point. Virtual machines are slower than native code. That's a physical fact of the universe nobody is arguing against. Android runs slower than some other operating systems on the same hardware. And no, it will never be "native", unless a complete code rewrite and language migration is done, which is highly unlikely to happen unless Oracle really goes nutso.

At any rate, none of us are Google engineers who can make these types of decisions, so I actually don't see the point of this thread going on any further.

What's wrong with C++?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=What%27s+wrong+with+C%2B%2B%3F+&l=1

If you want to code in C++ on a tiny embedded device, more power to you. I'd rather not have to code around my language of choice, and just code. Call me crazy, but I can't help but feel we're in 2013, not 1993...

And? What about the rest of my post?

C++? Really? Ewwww. While I'll agree that Android does occasionally suffer performance issues, I hardly think a move to C++ is the right way to go. That's just... no. Please. I'd rather something like this (CLR-based):

http://blog.xamarin.com/android-in-c-sharp/

Sure, you're still running a virtual machine, but the performance of dotnet-like languages is much closer to "native" code than Dalvik (although, it's a similar idea), without many other headaches that might be involved.

Anyways, part of Project Butter in Jelly Bean was Triple Buffering 60 FPS across the board. There's nothing special about user interface transitions that can't be used anywhere else (oversimplification but go with it).

The likely reason that the Android and iOS versions of Speedtest look different is that you have two different teams (you know, writing two different codebases), and iOS apps tend to have more development time and money sunk in to them, as well as tend to have more experienced devs. Dalvik/Java has absolutely nothing to go with graphics performance of a needle.

Really, the problem is the expectation of low-power embedded devices giving us similar performance to something like power-eating x86. If you think performance issues are an Android-only problem...

If this truly is due to 800 being rolled out, I wonder what the percentage of devices currently active are that cannot use it. I'll tell you right now, we sell a staggering amount of iPhone 4 and 4S's.

You can tell that's an official Sprint document, as the word "free" is in all-caps.

Frankly, this makes little sense; if the need for Airaves is going down, the cost issue should solve itself, as fewer people will need and request them.

I think the churn rate is going to go up a (tiny) bit. You'd think that sending one of these babies out for free would be cheaper than paying VZW roaming costs for 49% of some sub's voice/data...

We are rapidly heading toward a situation in which the only two options will be OS based smartphones for most of us and a few fringe feature phones for small children and decrepit old people.

 

AJ

I hate to break it to you, but we're already there. And you're a bit off - small children are getting the White iPhone 4 (it's free and it's what they're clamouring for (and there's a persistent rumour that the Black iPhone has inferior technology)). Feature phones are mostly for the elderly, the super cost-conscious (those on messaging+voice (no data) plans), and those who would still be on Nextel were it not already gone.

I can confirm that when you go to a Sprint store they blame *any* issue on the phone being on LTE/CDMA mode. Bunch of retards.

 

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Careful with tha generalizin' there, ya git. Some of us actually work'n dem stores you're disparagin'.

Seriously though, you must understand why such "placebo" things exist. You will get customers who think they know best, but are clueless, and really nothing's wrong. You will get customers for whom there is actually no fixing their issue, and your average rep doesn't want to be the one to deliver the bad news, so they change your phone to CDMA only and send them on their way, telling them it'll work better (because if they expect it will...). And you will get customers who, after running in to a problem, begin to make mountains of out molehills, and need some kind of placation to fix their non-issues.

These sorts of things are especially true in a retail environment, especially at Preferred Retailers (basically franchise stores, not corporate-owned). Employees there are strictly limited at their ability to perform certain actions. It's only in the last couple months that there was a tool launched that let us report network issues without calling in and asking Tier 1 Tech Support to do it for us (with all the headaches you can imagine). It was only in the last couple months that we got access to things like site-specific network tickets. Yes, that's right, until very recently, no Preferred Retailer employee could see what was wrong with any one site, and I'd put money on most employees not knowing that you can do it now, as it had been so long without.

So, in that situation, you want to make the customer happy, right? You have a choice - you can tell them there's nothing you can do and have them leave angry because their time was wasted and they feel helpless, or you can run a few basic updates and tell them to "try it out and get back to us".

Me personally, I always made sure to file network tickets (when I can) for customers with legitimate issues, but I've honestly never met another rep who does. Most are content with running PRL and Profile updates and being done with it, getting the customer out the door and to the next half-dozen waiting in line. I'll never tell you that it's right, but I definitely understand why it happens.

Except the fix all to everything is to put the phone in Cdma only mode. I get told this all the time anytime I call tech support. The same has been told to me at several Sprint stores as it makes the "data better" and saves battery. If I get told this all the time I can only imagine the percentage of phones out there like this.

Yeah, seriously confused. There was actually a training that came out recently that said things, in big bold letters, like "LEAVE LTE PHONES ON LTE/CDMA" and "REPROVISIONING CANNOT FIX COVERAGE ISSUES". Guess nobody else read that...

Now the real question is...  how many of these folks with LTE handsets have their phones in CDMA only mode due to the various stores and CSRs telling them to do so?  Due to their lack of knowledge it will probably stay like that for the life of the handset.

I honestly have no idea where this attitude came from. Several "launch" documents across various devices, including the EVO LTE and the Galaxy S3, as well as stuff like "LTE Network General" all state that devices should be left in "LTE/CDMA Auto", as that way the device can automatically use the best network available, and it doesn't drain battery life. Everyone who even vaguely works for Sprint (even, like, Best Buy and Radio Shack employees) should have this knowledge.

Oh hey, it's that guy who sued his neighbor for using an iPhone. I honestly can't believe he's still getting any press attention at all.

Edit: I do find this interesting, though:

“The site is not active and is still under construction, so it is not currently providing service,” he wrote in an email this week. He said AT&T’s electric meter is running “because our equipment must be internally tested before it can be ‘turned on’ for customer traffic.”

Sounds like it could actually be something similar to how Sprint occasionally has 4G LTE sites that are broadcasting LTE, but refuses to auth consumer devices, aka testing mode. Not to lend any credence to the claims of these, ah, people.

That's funny.....it reminds me of a situation I ran into with one of the smaller county offices I cover about 2 years ago.  The gal called in a ticket for an MFP printer repair because it had stopped working, and when she started opening doors/hatches etc, when she pulled out the toner cartridge, she discovered that a mouse had somehow wormed its way into the printer back behind the cartridge (I'm still far more baffled by how it got in there in the first place than how it got behind the toner cartridge), gotten itself stuck and died.

A good friend of mine had an inkjet printer (still does, actually). He hadn't used it for a while.

When trying to print something out one day, the printer did its usual little warm up routine, and then CRUNCH.

Well, looking inside, it appears that some mice had moved dog food there, making a stash. And not just some dog food - over two pounds of it.

After spending SOME TIME shaking the printer out (yes, standing over a garbage can, shaking it), he tried it again, and it crunched again. After shaking some more... it worked! It printed! And it looked... well, mostly okay. About what you'd expect from a $30 inkjet. 

Nope.  90 for each carrier that has three sectors.  Not 90 per sector.  90 per carrier.  A two sector site can have less than 90.

 

Robert

Wow, I feel dumb making that mistake. Need more coffee.

Oh, of course! It's ~37 Mbps per sector peak, times three.

Edit: So 200 for 800+1900... how much more then do we need for TD-LTE? If it's peak of 90 Mbps,we actually do need the extra 300 to get 3 sectors of that, right? Or no?

The baseline demand is indeed 90. But not 90 per site, 90 per LTE carrier. For NV sites with LTE service that are supposed to get LTE 800 & 1900 they are looking for 200. And this makes sense when you figure three sectors.

So - 90 per sector, so 270 Mbps down for a standard three-sector site?

The 200 number is also per sector then, just doubled because of two different frequencies, right? So for a 800+1900 site with three sectors of each, they need backhaul of 600 Mbps? 

And then if we add three ~90 Mbps TD-LTE carriers, that jumps up to 900 per site?

Goodness.

The bigger question is, will it hit Sprint at all? The Optimus G was the first high-end phone we got from LG, and it has yet to be seen if Sprint will be buying more of them.

If I remember correctly, the fact that iDEN existed in those areas has already satisfied the substantial service requirements for many years to come, despite the fact that Sprint is decommissioning it. In the long long run, sites may be required. (this seems like a question for AJ... paging AJ...)

SoftBank doesn't have the best satisfaction in Japan too. I hope that doesn't make it harmful to Sprint.

Oh? It's been a few years since I was in Japan, but many college-age people I knew had Softbank, and I never heard of coverage issues, etc. On their recommendation, I picked up a prepaid phone through them, and it worked well. 

Of course, my limited anecdotal experience is far from a national average.

 

As they say in The Lone Ranger "What you mean 'We' Kiemosabe?"  

 

 

 

Preferred Roaming List Release: Samsung Note II

On 6/13/13, Sprint released a new Preferred Roaming List (PRL) series 2xxx, for Samsung Note II (SPH-L900) devices only.

• The PRLs are designed to remove access to Sprint's 800 MHz network based on reported issues of the inability to make/receive voice calls and text messages while using this network.
• The new PRL's have been sent out to all the Samsung Note II devices.
• This is a temporary solution until a root cause and fix is found for this device.
• The PRL will continue to allow access to Sprint's 1900 CDMA and roaming partner networks.
• Customers experiencing problems should be directed to update the PRL via device settings.

  • If customer is still experiencing problems with this PRL series, open the appropriate network trouble ticket.

 

 

 

 

Well, I guess since this has been straight up copied and pasted from the Sprint Daily News...

That's got to be what it is. I've been on TW for a bit, but was switching back and forth for a while. I'll have to do some more testing to figure out exactly what's going on. Sadly, neither my home nor work are currently in 4G LTE areas, it's only when out and about that I'm constantly distracted by my phone and trying to make it work...

Weird.. Since I had no issues using it in Dallas. I bet we will see a baseband update soon though.

 

Not sure why you would see LTE Auth issues as all the prl has in it is basically an on/off switch for that Geo to scan for LTE or not.

I'm speculating, but I've noticed that the moment I switch from 2000 back to 65009, my 4G LTE refuses to connect.

So, still no word on why the note 2's on PRL 2000? I've noticed some 4g auth issues with 65009, but it work fine on 2000, so I wonder if 800 ESMR and 4G 1900 aren't playing nice.

Also, heh. 16015 is MBB, yet our Store's GS3 is on it.

If they can pull it off? Sure.

So far, other than price, I've been unimpressed with Huawei.

The decision to drop the 1X indicator started with 4G-capable phones. I imagine (much like AJ said) they figured having too many different signal bars and whatnot would confuse the living daylights out of the average customer. 

I think it's an odd expectation for them to change their advertising, as if it were "true to life", the bottom number should be zero. I've walked my phone in to fringe areas of EV-DO and gotten zero KBps. Yet, for an advertisement, don't you think saying "3G speeds of zero to 2.5 meg!!!!" would sound pretty stupid?

Lastly, while it may be incorrect nomenclature, it's still what the industry uses to advertise. To the marketing departments of Sprint and VZW, 1x is slow and/or doesn't exist, while 3G is 3G. Get it?

Last post i am going to make, I promise.

 

The thing is AT&T and Verizon provide the service for free...this really the only thing I dislike about Sprint. I can deal with it though, because i rarely have issues with my phones and if I do and need to get it fixed I pay the $35 and then go home and complain to Customer Service and get it credited back to me once i bring up the fact that we have been with them for 10+ years.

AT&T and VZW will replace it for free in the first year only. If you're not paying their protection plan, you're seriously SOL in year two. Sprint, while they may charge to handle warranty problems in year one, keeps the same policy in year two, year three... and for used and refurbished devices.

Secondly, it's $50 now for a non-ESRP repair or exchange. Has been for a while now.

I'd keep ESRP on ($4/month), as it covers a lot more than you might think. All electrical and mechanical failure from wear and tear, plus some cracks and damage to the housing and screen. It's basically everything but destroyed or liquid damaged phones. With the issues I see every day, ESRP is worth it, in my opinion. Asurion, well, not so much...

Lastly, going off an earlier post, it really has nothing to do if it's your "fault" or not. Sprint really doesn't care. And not only that, but many, many problems that one might call a manufacturer defect could more accurately be classified as abuse or misuse. The problem with the EVO being stuck in car mode is almost always due to damage (either shock/drop or liquid) to the charging port. If you sent it in to HTC, they might have sent it right back. Phone manufacturers are known to reject warranty issues for unrelated things, for even just a couple drop nicks on the casing. Sprint covering it for $35/$50? Seems worth it...

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