koiulpoi

Wow, that's ridiculously cheap. If I didn't already have a TF300T, I'd jump on that. I'm almost considering getting one for, like, a birthday present...

I already use Google Voice for texting, and can easily move to things like GrooveIP to use GVoice for, well, voice as well. Easy jump for me.

 

I also find it funny how the article says that 10 GB for $100 is a "very reasonable rate". Compare: Sprint's Hotspot/Tablet plans offer 12 GB for $80, while Verizon's "data-only" plans give you 10 GB for $60 (+20 for a hotspot, +10 for a tablet, +0 if it's just HomeFusion). That makes AT&T's "very reasonable" rates easily the most expensive. I do applaud them for dropping their rates, though (matching VZW's 10 GB/$60 rate), even if it is only for data devices and not phones (and not if you have phones on your account).

The thing's $1100 off-contract. That being said, it's nothing that anyone outside of a few specific industries will even care about.

 

The non-IS version is something close to $100/$300, and is one of the most rugged phones out there.

Yea but people have been upgrading to lte phones for about a year now and still no service. I have yet to pick up any lte in north jersey. Its a slow painful and poorly executed upgrade on sprints end and alot of customers are reminded of wimax. A common complaint is that sprint will announce the next 4g version before finishing lte and we will be right back where we started.

I'm sure somebody more eloquent than I will jump in here, but Sprint and their (sub)contractors are completing Network Vision work at an incredible pace. Much faster than VZW's rollout was. People seem to forget that it wasn't instantaneous across the country for them. This is nothing like the WiMAX rollout.

 

Of course, NV is ~3 months behind, but I'm pretty sure NJ is in active deployment. More info in the sponsor sections.

As LTE/NV has lit up across Michigan, I've noticed a significant increase of customers complaining of dropped and blocked calls. Correlation likely.

So is open enrollment where I can go to a sprint store and put tep on a used device?

Yes, anyone without TEP can enroll during March. Now, technically, the device has to be in "good working order"...

I bought the phone off eBay so I cannot take my phone in for repair at a sprint store.

If it's not a hardware repair or replacement, they'll charge you $0 if you don't have the protection plan.

That being said, it is "open enrollment" month for TEP, so if you found someone nice enough to put it on long enough to swap it out for you...

Yeah, our store took down our Galaxy SII demo, as it's not been required for a while. We don't currently have any in stock, and probably won't for the near future.

So... Wii Fit all over again?

It won't be any time soon, I'm afraid.

 

Robert

Oh, no, I completely understand that you're busy! Why not pass the data to someone else to write the article and just give you all the credit I'd volunteer, but I don't think I'd know what to do with the data; I'm just curious to see it!

The Victory equals or bests every device I've ever tested in 1x and EVDO on 850 and 1900 and LTE on 1900. It's a solid budget device when it comes to radio performance.

 

My sister in law picked one up on my recommendation based on where she lives and works. She says the difference between the Victory and her OG EVO is night and day when it comes to signal strength, and voice and data connections.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

So, that RF comparison article... *poke*

When I read this, I thought you meant 200 "printing stations" nationwide. Seemed odd to me. "Why would I want to print-on-demand to some place like California?"

For new Sprint accounts only. $99.99 for the S3, $249.99 for the Note II on upgrade.

 

 

Sure, I would enjoy that. Are you coming to the S4GRU National Convention at McCormick Place in Chicago this summer? We have to decide if we wish to nominate Robert for a second term.

 

AJ

give me the time and the place, and I'll get it off of work.

Free space path loss is predicated on the decrease in field strength density over distance as the signal spreads omnidirectionally like a growing sphere. Or, to put it in simpler terms, power is quartered with every doubling of distance. So, 1 m to 50 m is a doubling of distance about 5.5 times. That is a 34 dB path loss. But 1 km to 50 km is also a doubling of distance about 5.5 times and the same 34 dB path loss. Thus, the degree of path loss seems to diminish with distance. The greatest degree is close in to the transmitter.

 

AJ

The density of a sphere is actually a great visual metaphor. I got it! It's similar to a video game portrayal of a shotgun, actually.

 

So can we, like, sit down some day, sip some whiskey, and just talk about nerdy things? I'd like to pick your brain for a while.

Absent the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and maybe the LG Viper (both of which Sprint never should have released as LTE devices), all Sprint LTE devices have utilized Qualcomm baseband modems. And Qualcomm makes few, if any modems any longer that are CDMA2000 only. If the MSM has a "9" as its second digit (e.g. MSM8960), then it is 3GPP/3GPP2 with LTE. Similarly, if the MDM has a "6" as its second digit (e.g. MDM9615), then it is 3GPP/3GPP2 with LTE.

 

AJ

While I did not know that (super interesting stuff), it only adds more wonder to my question. The Galaxy S3 uses the MSM8960, as does the EVO 4G LTE, but neither are "advanced worldmode" devices, and are unable to connect to any GSM/UTMS service. The Photon Q, with the same chipset, is. What's the difference? If it's easy to include, why not do it?

Not true. The 10^-9 watts is the radiated power received by the total area of the cell phone antenna, not the transmitting power of the cell phone tower.

Oh, yes, so I gathered. I used -60 dBm as an example, but I can see that being immediately next to a site could be... a lot?

 

My idea is "signal passing through a human", which what I've learned (thanks to wiki, AJ, and you) is that in almost all cases the power you could be exposed to by an average cell tower is exceedingly small, even compared to what mobile devices themselves put out... and we put those by our heads.

Well, cell sites can transmit a fair amount of power -- from several watts to several hundred watts. And if you are only 1 m from the antenna, then you are going to bear the brunt of that output. But path loss is logarithmic. Even using the free space model, at 50 m from the antenna, path loss is already 34 dB greater than it was at 1 m from the antenna. So, say that power at 1 m is 500 W (highly unlikely, but for the sake of argument). Then, power at 50 m is already down to 0.19 W.

 

AJ

Free space is worse than buildings!!!!</badmath>

 

Now, the answer is probably "yes but unfeasible", but... couldn't someone then reverse that equation to figure out how much power a cell site is radiating? I imagine it would require something like the area of the phone's antenna or something like that...

Suspicion is that it is T-Mobile because Nextel International has multi mode iDEN SMR and W-CDMA AWS handsets already.

 

AJ

A Google search of the name "Prepaid Wireless Wholesale, LLC", the company they're apparently partnering with, turned this up:

 

http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view;jsessionid=gNXLR3xS5xnhb7t3CcNrWxBpTFbL92Mlgp95l5FCmWVThGC0hLCn!-1705390101!956499833?id=7022127885

 

which says that they run on T-Mobile's GSM network. So, 10 points for Ravenclaw.

because essentially all LTE chipsets also contain W-CDMA/GSM capability per 3GPP standards.

Interesting! So why do you think, besides cost and testing, aren't all Sprint LTE devices also "Advanced Worldmode" devices?

Considering the power outputs that cell sites broadcast at, I am not surprised.

 

I was at a site and felt the onset of a headache about an hour into it.

Actually, it seems (waiting for AJ, Rob, et. al. to join in) cell sites broadcast an exceptionally small amount of power. The strongest signal I've ever seen is -60 dBm, which according to wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm

is 1.0 nW, or 10^(-9) watts. Compare this to some of the handheld low-power ham radio equipment, which blasts out 5 Watts without thinking about it. Quick edit: funny, the same table actually includes handheld ham radio equipment at +37 dBm, or 5 Watts. Legal limit, ho!

 

Edit2: So, -60 dBm has the note of "The Earth receives one nanowatt per square metre from a magnitude +3.5 star." The Andromeda Galaxy, which is barely visible on a moonless night in an area with barely any light pollution, is magnitude 3.44. So being within a few hundred feet of a cell site hits you with the same amount of radiated power as a single star you can barely see.

LTE would go farther. About 10dBm farther.

Which is "inside your average building" vs "only on the street", if I'm remembering my numbers correctly.

 

Which... if "dBm" is a logarithmic scale, a reduction of 10 dBm is equivalent to the signal being reduced by a factor of 10, or 90% loss. If that's true, houses are brutal, and I'm surprised we ever get in-building coverage at all with anything.

Yes, absolutely. The past is gone, there is only the present and the future. Things are getting better every single day, and it's not going to stop for a while.

 

And pretty soon here, we'll have 800 MHz voice, 800 MHz LTE, and 2500 MHz LTE. It's gonna be great.

Well, I was hinting 4% may be low but that's probably just my opinion. I get a lot of customers at my job that feel entitled to more than they should be.

My experience is that humanity is a very entitled species. I also find that setting good expectations tends to work that off. YMMV, of course.

 

Edit: liked your response to that guy on XDA. Lol

You missed accidentally clicked the wrong person!

That's probably true, but with a job being in Customer Service, I tend to think those numbers might be a bit off.

In what way? I work as a Sprint Service and Repair technician, and I find that to be almost exactly true. Anything above and beyond said 2-4% tends to be my own fault (or the fault of my peers) in hindsight. If you disagree, I'd say spend a week and actually count the number of "problem" customers you can't bring around. They seem to be much larger in number simply because they are more memorable and more "crazy" than everyone else. One loud idiot feels like 100 regular folks.

They don't always cost nothing. I paid $99 for the second one even I wanted to get the 3g version over the 1x version. They gave me the first one.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

There's a "3G" Airave and a "1X" airrave? News to me. At any rate, delivering data over the Airave is silly; it connects to an internet connection you own as backhaul, so Wi-Fi should be available, almost always faster than the maximum that the Airave can provide.

 

That being said, OP, the Note II and the S3, much like Digiblur said, are kings of RF. My sister (who lives in a fringe area) went from a Photon (supposedly the best) to an S3, and she claims her calls drop less, and are overall clearer. I'm inclined to believe her.