koiulpoi

From what i can tell sprint just took phones that really dont sell and slapped a new sku barcode sticker on the side.

 

Sent from my LG-LS970 using Tapatalk 2

The iPhone 4 for free on contract has been one of our top sellers for several months.

Interesting to note that you don't have to prepay. On my T-Mobile account, it's autopay but prepay.

 

I wonder why they don't make customers prepay? They could sign up with no credit and get a free month of service, over and over again?

Who knows? I would guess that eventually your account gets flagged or something. Or, you know, you'd lose your phone number because the account attached to that # now has a running balance that you'd have to pay. Or that perhaps the phone itself is flagged as from a non-pay account so you have to buy a new phone every time, mitigating any possible gain. This is all just speculation, but it all seems likely from what I've seen with postpaid accounts.

Yeah, they launched Sprint prepaid for people with poor credit who can't qualify for a postpaid sprint plan yet still want the premium Sprint experience (vs. a prepaid carrier like Virgin or Boost).

Sprint As You Go is actually a postpaid plan. It just has no contract. Unlike prepaid, you don't have to pay for your first month of service when you get the phone. There's no "minutes cards". You get a bill via email, and you pay it, just like everyone else. You can be covered under sprint's Total Equipment Protection, etc.

 

It's interesting to note that, due to the inclusion of unlimited everything (including minutes), you're getting the "Simply Everything" plan, normally $109.99, for $70. You still don't get unlimited roaming, of course.

The main issues with the GS2 are battery eating (making the batteries bulge),

Hm. I honestly have not noticed a higher rate of failure with the GS2's battery than other devices. The Samsung Replenish seems to be the one that suffers from battery issues. Other than that, swollen batteries are a common-ish problem with Lithium Ion type. I believe it's caused by overcharging, but again, haven't found any real trends other than age.

 

and general freezing (especially the Sprint ID stopped working bug).

I have seen that twice. Both times, the phone was so overloaded with "free" games and apps that the phone was running around half speed. Hard resets fixed the device in both cases. Android includes very little in protections against things that run in the background, or things that request

 

Sadly, I experienced all three issues. And no, my phone has no water damage and no exterior damage (yes, Im normal, its fallen on the carpet a couple of times).

I'm sorry you're having odd issues with your phone. Are you certain there's no water damage? It's rare for me to open someone's phone, find corrosion, and have them say "Oh, right, there was that one time..." Usually, it's "But it's never been in water! Sure, I took it in the shower with me that one time..."

 

As I said, look at the sprint forum complaint board. Most of the posts are the same thing over and over and over again. Theyre the same widespread issues, issues that fortunately dont seem to affect any other samsung phone sprint sells.

I'd rather not check that. Yes, it is a problem phone, but so is the EVO, the EVO Shift, the EVO 3D, the EVO LTE - and even the GS3 is starting to show some weird issues. I could list off more. I currently work at one of (if not the number one) busiest Sprint Repair Center in West Michigan, and the issues I see that people bring in are what I base things off of.

Of course, Sprint requires that you do a 2 year contract if you're going to add a tablet w/cellular access to your account, even if you pay full retail price for the device.

 

Good luck shooting yourself in the foot there, Sprint... You could be making more money off me if you'd let me activate the device on your network without a darn contract.

AFAIK if you pay full retail you don't sign a contract... If you sign one, you get $100 off the MSRP. I can check on this tomorrow at work for you to be sure, but I'm pretty sure we've sold tablets off-contract before at our store.

 

Edit: whoops, this post is from months ago. Oh well, let me know if you want me to still check.

Further, the G2 is a defective phone. Go to the sprint forums under the samsung page. 95% of the problems are GS2 related, even though that forum is for ALL samsung phones. The problems havent been fixed, so signing customers up to a knowingly defective phone is a very bad policy idea. Once you lose a customer, good job getting them back.

Err, defective? What problems? The biggest issue we see is people dropping them and smashing the screens. The second biggest is the "voltage too high; charging paused" issue - which is, 95%+ liquid damage/corrosion in and around the charging port. That's not Samsung's fault. Actually, a whole host of weird issues are due to some kind of liquid intrusion. And yes, I have had people blame Sprint and Samsung when their phone that has corrosion on the board stops working...

 

Oh, there's also the phantom menu keypress issue, which 75% of the time is solved with a screen replacement (defective capacitive keys), the other 25% requires a motherboard or full device exchange. There's also the power button/resetting issue which requires either the button to be replaced (solder job) or a motherboard/device exchange.

 

That being said, I could list off just as many or more issues for just about every single other smartphone on the market. We see more GS2 issues because more people have GS2's (it was a very popular phone; still is), and have had them for long enough that problems begin to crop up. Usually you don't see the real problems until a device has been out for around a year. If Sprint refused to sell phones that had issues, there would be no phones for sale.

I have no problems with anyone that is a part of the GLBT community. Its just I wasn't expecting someone to post about same sex love on s4gru. But anyway its just a build up of all the crazy post I see in the threads here at s4gru and when I saw that one I was like wtf.

What, and the one about straight lovin' was ok? Lovin' is lovin'. Here at s4gru, we literally do not care what creed, race, sex, gender, whatever you are. We only care that you are excited about wireless. Which probably gives a very distinct (male-leaning) demographic anyways, but that's not the point. The point is, you should be more offended by Charlie Ergen's antics than anything I ever post.

Wtf......... the things you guys say on s4gru

What? Not all of us are straight. Some of us are lookin' for nerdy love in all the wrong places..

nope. Haha she's one of a kind.

 

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 2

Or maybe a super-nerdy non-straight brother? Eh? Eh? No...?

All I know is one quick email I received from a source who said that FIT testing was under way in "MN" and they had very good LTE 800 results getting 33Mbps+ at 3 miles away. The source didn't have any more info than that. MN is Minnesota, but it's possible that it was actually Montana.

 

Robert

What!? This is huge! How did I miss this?

Well if your phone is using the stronger signal is that not exactly how it should work?

It did in the first instance, and not in the second. Both cases had a 1900 MHz signal of better than -70 dBm, and an 800 MHz signal of worse than -100 dBm. Very odd if you ask me.

So, wait. $50,000/year (let's not be conservative with our guesses here), at 38,000 sites, is a little under $2 billion. That's... that's really something.

It was in Waco. Yes, I did report that. However, it was not scientific. I was parked on CDMA 800 Channel 476. I initiated a phone call and went back to the Engineering screen. It changed to a PCS channel. I assumed at some point during the call, it handed off from SMR to PCS. But it's possible that it changed when I went into my dialer before the call was placed.

 

I wished I had done more testing back then. But I jumped to a conclusion that hand off had occurred. I haven't had CDMA 800 since.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

My phone, while parked on 800 MHz, will sometimes jump back to PCS while it's connecting the call. Now, I've only seen this happen twice, where the 800 MHz signal was around -102 and the PCS signal was around -63, and also using Digiblur's PRL for service not officially launched...

 

Edit: That being said, I also experienced (on the same signal on the same sector/site), that my phone refused to jump back to PCS, even with the 800 MHz signal being unusable. The call got more and more garbled, faded, and then dropped completely - in an area fully covered by PCS. Only happened once. Will have to test again.

That's what she said...

 

 

AJ

Hang on, lemmie go grab my female coworkers and a sound recorder app, and that'll be correct.

This looks a pretty neat compromise option in lieu of an SD slot.

That's a really cool project. Sadly, I'm not gonna run around with an OTG thing sticking out my slot all the time. Definitely something to stick in my "bag of goodies".

Opened up a box and played with one here. Speakers are loud and very nice, screen looks amazing. Build quality is solid. Curved back makes it wobble on tables. Android UI is fast and smooth. I've never seen Sense move so quickly and lag so little. Either Sense 5 is a total rewrite, or the new Snapdragon 600 is just that good. Power button is a little hard to use. Also noticed the signal fade for 1X; when looking at engineering screens, the EV-DO signal was +0.23, which I figured must be wrong. Camera seems to work well. Only two navbuttons is weird, but putting appswitch on double-tap-home works well, and the new Sense appswitcher works a lot better than the EVO LTE's "cards".

 

Overall, I like it. The lack of SD card slot makes me shy away a little bit, as I have all my data on one, but 32 GB of storage is great.

 

Overall, from a first impression, I rather like it. We'll see if Sammy's extra $50 will be worth it.

Keep in mind that Atlanta is a SouthernLINC market; thus, Sprint has to share rebanded SMR 800 MHz with SouthernLINC. For that reason, there may be no LTE 800 in Atlanta. Or, if there is, it will likely be 3 MHz FDD bandwidth, as compared to the 5 MHz FDD bandwidth available outside of the Southeast and IBEZ. So, LTE 800 could help with coverage in Atlanta, but it would not likely help with speed.

Now, this is going to sound stupid as I don't fully understand the tech, but what would require Sprint to stick with FDD LTE? Would TDD LTE not be efficient on 800 MHz, or is the band simply not "rated" for it? My understanding is that the asynchronicity of TDD LTE makes it more spectrally efficient for data tasks.

By the time Network Vision is rolled out, the 4G LTE coverage will be slightly smaller than the current 3G footprint. If you get 4G LTE coverage currently, especially in-building, then being band future proof is actually not that big of a deal. It's only if you have in-building coverage issues, or live in a marginal service (rural) area that 800 MHz will be required.

 

2500 MHz, on the other hand, is more for capacity than anything else, so you're not missing anything, really.

 

...and Rob beats me to it, lol.

just came across this site trying to find information about the supposed new Sprint towers in Byron Center, MI. I work for a local lawn care company here in West MI and am feed up with how often I drop calls. I downloaded the Sensorly app last night, I'll run it today while I'm out in route. I live just south of the new Speedway in Byron Center and haven't been able to pick up the 4G signal at all. My daughters go to school & daycare by the McDonalds closer to Gezon Parkway on Byron Center Ave. I don't recall every picking up a 4G signal up there just the wifi signal from Starbucks is crazy strong because I can pick that up at the intersection. Is this tower on Byron Center Ave live now? If not, does anyone know when it will go live?

According to your user info, you have an EVO 3D. That device uses 4G WiMAX. The WiMAX footprint is what it is; it will never get any larger. The Byron Center site uses 4G LTE, a completely different type of signal on a completely different frequency, and will require you to purchase a different phone.

I was gonna go buy $20 worth of video games, but I spend more time on this site. Sent your way.

 

...

 

Screw it, I'm buying the games too.

You know, the more I read about the House Intelligence Committee, the more I think their name is an oxymoron...

For those talking about the "$50 more" issue...

 

Sprint gives you $350 off the MSRP for signing a two-year agreement. The full price is $599.99. Therefore, it's $249.99 on-contract.

 

Do note that on T-Mobile, it's $149.99 and $20/month for 24 months, so $629.99 is the total price. Very similar to Sprint's.

 

I have no idea why AT&T provides a larger subsidy. They sell it from $199.99 from $639.99, so $440 off.

 

I can't find any concrete evidence of VZW's pricing.

I am going to do that! I think its obscure to charge us that. I guess sprint is hurting for customers to give new customers and extra 136 dollars off.

That activation fee is bs anyway....I will be calling to try to get it waived

If you have the Credit Union discount, all activation and upgrade fees are waived. A lot easier to switch your discount than to call and be yet another angry customer on the phone...

But you did not fire it up and check out the engineering screens??? I am a little disappointed in you...

 

 

AJ

Trust me, I would have done that, but we haven't gotten inventory nor demo devices. We'll be getting them tomorrow. So that'll be fun, telling people coming in in the morning to come back later.

Not one hundred percent true, its handled on a case by case basis. IE: If the warranty ended last week, and youre a 5 year customer, it will be handled at no cost. On the other ends, early upgrades arent exactly rare (again, depending on your personal history).

 

Also, many times reps will add the warranty (even when its not open enrollment) and tell you to wait a couple of days to call Asurion.

 

That being said, Id prefer a mix of both, wouldnt you? Hassle free in-warranty returns (no cost) and for a fee out of warranty repairs.

And the same is true on Sprint's side of things (although I bet VZW's early upgrades will shrink along with their general upgrade policy), as a CSR will handle things depending on account history, etc. The fact that fees can be waived is, um, a bit irrelevant to a discussion of policy.

 

Also, I do believe putting insurance on after the incident has occurred and claiming it happened after coverage started is called insurance fraud and is rather illegal, "open enrollment" or not. But, we're not discussing insurance; Asurion does not handle warranty claims in any way beyond 30-day reships of their own refurbished phones when they are Out-Of-Box Defective.

 

Of course, such a mix would be better. I still prefer Sprint's methodology over VZW's.