koiulpoi

Here's the report if anyone wants to look at it....  https://apps.fcc.gov/eas/GetApplicationAttachment.html?id=1736507

 

Looks like it supports BC0, 1, and 10.  So PCS, Cellular 850, and 800SMR.  Very cool!  Curious of the PRL of how the priorities and such are setup though. 

 

EDIT:  Funny how the pics show a NiMH battery but the test report shows Li-Ion.

Our store has a demo Phone Connect 2 I could... "borrow" and see. It's got a USB port, so theoretically something like QPST should work (though I have no idea how to do that).

Edit: battery is definitely NiMh inside it.

Yes, it does. Here's a pic from the back of the box of one.

The notable section is: "Operates within Sprint's licensed frequency band of 800/1900 MHz (CDMA)." Sprint doesn't have any licensed 850/Cellular, so...

If those were my ONLY two choices? I personally recommend the LG Optimus G over both, for similar hardware, a more dev-friendly manufacturer, and a closer-to-stock experience at $100 less...

But, to actually answer your question, I'd go with the Galaxy S4, mostly because there appears to be a higher rate out out-of-box failure of the HTC One. This is my subjective experience, of course.

When it comes down to it, both are Snapdragon 600s with 1080p screens, so for the "day to day" phone use stuff, you won't notice a ton of difference. The Samsung Gimmicks and HTC Gimmicks I don't feel will actually matter past Week 1 of use.

Some of us could probably handle the manual band class toggle because we have pretty good mental maps of where CDMA2000 is deployed in what spectrum.  But I do wonder if the manual toggle bug would not allow band class 10 CDMA1X + band class 1 EV-DO simultaneously.  Any experience, guys?

 

AJ

In my experience, it does not allow it. Once you have manually set a phone to 1900 MHz (BC1), it will only ever use BC1 for 1X or EV-DO, even if your PRL is set up otherwise. If you set it to 800 MHz (BC10), it will only ever connect to 1X on BC10, completely ignoring EV-DO on BC1. However, it will still scan and connect normally for LTE on 1900 MHz.

I personally have been manually setting my phone to whatever works best, and haven't been hurt by it yet.

koiulpoi, how do I find the "select radio band" function on an AOSP ROM? Hopefully it works on my S3.

Well, first off let me say that you probably do NOT want to do this. Manually picking a radio band forces your phone to use only that band until you change it. It kills automatic scanning for other bands, as well as autoroaming. This lasts until you switch back to stock and hard reset / reprovision your device.

At any rate, it's:

1) Open the dialpad

2) *#*#4636#*#*

3) Phone information

4) Menu

5) Select radio band

6) Pick your band. Cellular is roaming (usually), PCS is native Sprint, Band Class 10 is ESMR 800 MHz.

I also believe that, without something like Digiblur's modified PRL, or native coverage in the regular PRL, switching to BC10 won't help anything. Could be wrong, but that's what I experienced: forcing BC10 with a regular PRL did nothing but show "no service".

Big drop in RSSI, but what's going on with the pilot signal for ec/lo?

I don't know...? Right now my Ec/lo on 800 is -3.5 dB. I actually have no idea what ec/lo means.

The second and third pic are the same.

Whoops, absolutely right. Fixed. If you wouldn't mind editing your post to remove the giant quoteblock...

I've definitely experienced the "customers treat you as vermin" situation. There are people across all spectrums.

Which, it's kind of amazing how badly some reps are treated, and how badly some do at their job. I love my job; I get to help solve issues, help teach people, help fix things. When someone's day is made brighter by actually dealing with me, it brightens my week. I've found that, if you lack a genuine care and concern for other people (whether they be your customers or otherwise), you'll never have that experience.

Now, I'd probably be better off in some other industry...

Sure thing. Parts of West Michigan just got (non-accepted) 800 MHz, including the site closest to my home. I'm sitting in my basement (duh), with my phone on the table next to me. I've used the "select radio band" functionality to force the phone on to one band or another. This is on a 3G-Accepted site, by the way.

Forcing 1900 MHz tends to between this:

and this:

This is actually an improvement over legacy 3G, as I would rarely see any signal at all down here. Most of the time, I just set it to airplane mode as the constant scanning (and occasional roaming) would kill the battery.

Forcing "Secondary 800 MHz" (aka ESMR):

Now, mind you, since I'm almost certainly the only one on this entire sector, things like cell breathing aren't an issue. But it's an absolutely incredible difference. Again, I'm in a basement (partially underground), in a wood house, in a valley, in the middle of a forest.

And, before anyone asks, no engineering screens as I'm running an AOSP-based ROM. I'd quick whip back to TouchWiz, but the "select radio band" functionality crashes com.android.phone (whoops), so I can't easily show one or the other.

If only someone could figure out how to get, say, the Galaxy Nexus's engineering screens on to other phones...

Actually, it's not that similar; Sprint's Preferred Retailers aren't franchises at all. We still have to follow all Sprint national promotions, our planograms are usually identical. The major differences is that ASCs have less access to certain tools, and other similar things like the upgrade now program.

As I'm sure you know, managing customer expectations is key to keeping satisfaction high. When a customer comes in to a store with a big Sprint logo, where they've purchased phones before, had phones repaired at before... it breaks that expectation and leads to unhappy customers when employees have to say "We can't do that. You have to go to a Corporate store."

It may be the reality of the industry, but it could definitely be better.

Frankly, I'd be all for Sprint simply purchasing all Preferred Retailers.

I used to be exceedingly introverted. As I've matured, I've more or less gotten over that, and have come in to a balance. My introversion used to be hugely hampering on my ability to deal with, well, anyone. Now, I'd like to say that I could be friends with anyone I meet.

And note that he doesn't actually say how this is going to make it cheaper and better, just that it will happen...

I just don't see how WiFi offloading is going to make VZW and AT&T lower their pricing.

This is how it's supposed to work:<snip>

It's a great program, that I'm very familiar with. If only Sprint would figure out how to make things uniform across Corporate Retail vs Preferred Retailers. It's really bad for Customer Service when somebody comes in and asks for an early upgrade, and we can't... but another store can. And, sometimes, Account Services. Nobody is happy having to be sent to another store.

We sell a lot of them here. I've heard rave reviews, and an occasional terrible review. The PC2 is much higher quality than the PC1, if customer reviews are any indication.

You do get 3 months free and a waived activation fee if you sign up soonish.

I am starting to wonder if it is related to google's new music streaming service (which is quite good).

 

Overtaxed google pipes serving up a lot of new music I/O.

Been an issue since LTE was lit up in Lowell, MI back in February, and possibly before.

Went through an extended testing period that got more than a few people involved, and finally came to the conclusion that I'm naturally a INFJ, with a secondary of ESTP, with a mask (combination) of ENFP. Yay for not fitting in to categories and stumping people!

The same thing is actually completely true on Android with its "recently used apps" page (hold down home on your S3, for example).

And yes, tons of people believe that in order to save battery, they must clear those out, which mostly does nothing. Or run "task killer" apps that waste more battery than they save. On Android at least, managing your wakelocks and uninstalling unneeded apps is a way to save battery that actually works.

That being said, the people I hear this from also tend to believe that the white iPhone has a faster processor than the black...

Yes, absolutely. The issue where Play Store downloads go slower than 1X speeds, Google Talk and Hangouts video fails to connect, and all other Google services often fail to work.

I personally noticed this issue immediately when Lowell, MI got LTE. It was a problem from the very beginning that LTE was turned on. I was in the store, watched a customer's Photon Q switch over to 4G, and then soon after tried to update apps. They did not work. Confused, I ran a Speed Test, and got 27 Mbps. After a bit, I determined that Google services were somehow being throttled or did not connect properly.

The reason it seemed like traffic shaping is that it definitely seemed to happen more during certain times of the day. Again, other web browsing was not affected.

If no other markets are affected, it could be an issue with the Kentwood 4G Core.

I had filed a CTMS ticket related to it, and last I checked it is still open and pending. Sadly, I've lost the ticket number. I'll file another soon, if this keeps up.

I note in the article that it being a large-sized/phablet device is completely and utterly rumor and speculation.

I got CDMA800 in Lowell over the weekend and I was also picking it up occasionally at Tyler Creek, but it was a weak signal, so I'm not sure where it was from.

You should try something like Signalcheck or CDMA Field Test or Netmonitor to try and see the site location. My experience thus far has been that NV Cells squawk the actual tower's address, instead of ~1 mile from it as legacy ones do in MI.

bla bla unicorn

...what?

Me:

Motorola Photon 4G (no 800 MHz support, no ICS, dropped like a bad habit)

HTC EVO 4G LTE (couldn't make phone calls outdoors, great device other than that)

Samsung Galaxy Note II (it's huge and fast and I love it. Waiting on the Note III)

Good idea.  Consider it done.

 

For anyone coming new to this discussion, FYI, it was extracted and moved from another thread, hence the posts about it being off topic.

 

AJ

I thought this looked familiar...

So, realistically, what's stopping a manufacturer from combining NVidia's Tegra 3 or 4 with a Qualcomm modem? Or do the same thing with The Exynos Octo in the GS4? I had read that the reasons they went with the Snapdragon Dual in the USA GS3 instead of the Exynos 4 Quad was that the Exynos had some issues with LTE, which were later resolved (obviously, as we can see with the Note II). Is there some other issue? Some other hurdle or manufacturing issue? From my point of view, it's just Samsung using Qualcomm SoCs out of, well, laziness.

Your phone needs to use less power to maintain a stable signal, and needs to scan less when it's always connected.

That being said, the general public has no idea that this happens. "I go in to roaming and my phone dies really fast. WHY!?"

Do we value Anglo skinned allies more than yellowish skinned?

Why. yes, yes we do. America has had an intense fear of Asia since at least the 80's.

Your average American doesn't know the difference between China and Japan, which only makes it worse. Sometimes, I think that Americans see non-Americans as a strange sort of alien creature, as non-humans, something different to be feared. Something unknowable.

Rememeber that Senator Orrin Hatch's reservations about Sprint-Softbank can be summarized as: "Softbank is Asian. And they've bought from Huawei before. Who has ties to the Chinese government. Who might have tried to hack us. Therefore, Softbank is probably evil."

AFAIK setting it to CDMA-only only disables the LTE scan, and the phone should only disable EV-DO when connected to LTE. As such, you cannot get LTE without the setting on LTE. Sounds like the rep you spoke to was new, or a fool.

This may seem simple, but, in the S3's dropdown menu, one of the options is "Mobile Data", make sure it's enabled. I've done it too.

Sprint has no other top-notch choice BUT Qualcomm for CDMA+LTE.

Broadcom and nVidia currently don't have CDMA in their new modems and since Intel still doesn't have a modem to wow us with, I'm gonna say Intel's never gonna have CDMA.

 

However, if we are to believe nVidia's SDR modem-pitch, they have an infinitely flexible solution so .  . . maybe they could add CDMA? Depends how real Verizon's intent is to deploy VoLTE next year.

Sure. Except, my Galaxy Note II over here has a nice Qualcomm (Gobi? (iirc?)) baseband, while the processor is Exynos 4 Quad. My post was alluding to the fact that every Sprint smartphone in 2013 will use the Snapdragon. Which, frankly, is silly; the note's Exynos works great, and doesn't suffer from battery issues, despite not having a unified SoC doing the lifting for all of CPU, GPU, and baseband radio.