Vince

Anyone notice a lack of HD voice on Sprint to Sprint calls the last few days?

 

 

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Yes. It's hit or miss lately, but when I connect with my wife, it seems more instant as opposed to that cut after like 3 seconds while it's switching over.

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I still connect to band 25!

You're only changing the first scan priorities. The network decides what band to put you on right after that initial scan. Band 26 was never meant to be used for anything other than a coverage expander, and offloading capacity in certain circumstances. It will always be 3rd in priority, with 41 being first. The only device that can override this is the HTC M8, because you can actually enable/disable all 3 sprint LTE bands.

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Here in NYC there is no difference in performance. I don't know if that's different in different markets.

 

My brother has pre paid T-Mobile and my cousin has Post paid saw exactly the same performance.

New York is wideband, and you're lucky. They need to figure something out in Chicago to get it better than 10x10. Having that be your only LTE offering is trouble in 2015. Every other provider has multiple bands for traffic, yet they still do decent on rootmetrics reports here. Like o said, I was impressed at the density of their network, volte, and wifi calling. They really seem to have that stuff figured out. With faster LTE, they'd be a viable second option here since I need unlimited data, and really only have two choices.

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So I have the T-Mo test drive iPhone 5S

I want to know if that test drive program gives you higher network traffic priority than any other customer--maybe to give a better impression of their offerings. Also, I would like to see a comparison between two identical devices; one prepaid, one postpaid.

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iPhone 6 updated to 55023

Did anyone find out what's different with this series of PRLs vs xx022? Thx

Here's a email screenshot from a Sprint engineer that I was in contact with last week. Even though they mixed up bc1/10, you get the point.

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Comparing networks can be a very complex thing to do since a lot depends on the device you want to use. Does the device carry all of the bands each carrier has? For instance the IPhone 6 and 6 plus carry all of Sprints bands. For t-mobile, the IPhones do not have their 700a band. This may be irrelevant in the Chicago area, but if you leave the metro area, you need a phone with 700a if you have tmobile. As for the Samsung devices, more of them have the 700a band radio. Being both a former sprint and current TMobile customer, I can say that when I first got TMobile around a year ago, it was far ahead of Sprint, but now and going into the future, low spectrum problems will cost TMobile customers in the Chicagoland area

 

 

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Chicagoans will still need B12 on their device if they travel; Michigan and Indiana both have it.

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I'm observing super low ping times lately. Best so far is 29ms on LTE and 69ms on 3G. Any one else been seeing a huge improvement in this area too??

 

 

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Yep. When I came back to Sprint a week or so ago, that's the first thing I noticed. I wonder if they changed the way traffic is routed? Www.iplocation.net shows me connected to "sprint Chicago pop in Chicago, Illinois." T-Mobile was always Minneapolis or KC. Cricket was anywhere but close, usually California or Texas (which is why their latency sucks in Chicago).

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Does downgrading your OS revert the carrier bundle and modem firmware, too? I haven't rolled back in a while, and can't remember.

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Thanks to the admin who broke my large post into paragraphs; I was late for work, and tried to get as much information out before I had to punch in, and didn't have time to edit.

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I can help give a little review of Chicago if needed.

Over the last month, I have tested Cricket, and T-Mobile.

I'll start with T-Mobile: their network is dense, and LTE is everywhere, even indoors in most places, more so than Sprint who has band 26, which I found odd. Volte and wifi calling worked so well, that I couldn't complain one bit. Their weak spot, as mentioned, is only being 10x10. It works fine in less crowded areas, but in crowded areas, it could be a mess. Maybe it was because I was prepaid, and there were priorities in place, but speeds in the city were not good at all.

T-Mobile would be worth a second look here with 15x15 or better.

Cricket: I was pleasantly surprised about how well AT&T's network worked. I've never been on their network before, and had to try it because everyone I know with them, never, ever loses LTE. Band 17 is an absolute monster. It's so strong, and I was thoroughly impressed. They're running 10x10 b17 and 5x5 b4 here in Chicago. I saw b2 when I was in Minooka, so I don't know where their pcs licenses really are. Speeds were consistent, even in Chicago.

My problem with them was the throttle, the pings, and the 20gb limit. I use 25gb a month without even trying, so it was tight with them. I've been a Sprint customer since the Nextel days, and that's where I'll stay for the foreseeable future.

Sprint still has 3G drop issues for me in some places, or anywhere indoors that's not near a tower. Leaving my phone on the table rectifies that problem after a re-scan. The speeds here are fantastic, and anywhere that has band 41 (almost everywhere I go) has very, very usable data.

My 3G drop problem might be related to the iPhone, and not the network, as people with android around here don't complain as much as I do. Sprint gets my money. We're a priority market for them, we have more spectrum than most Sprint markets, with the addition of the pcs-b from uscc, and an additional spark carrier popping up. I see Sprint taking 1st place in Chicago by the second half of 2015 on rootmetrics.

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What's the modern firmware version on 8.3? It's on the About page in Settings.

 

 

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2.23.03

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So iOS 8.3's release notes talked about how it patched a bug that caused devices to sporadically connect/disconnect to/from known wifi networks. Am I the only one who has actually noticed an INCREASE in sporadic disconenctions from wifi? Ever since I upgraded, my wifi signal strength indicator changes rapidly and a majority of the time that I look at or use my phone at home, I'm on 3G/LTE. (Luckily I on occasion get Band 26 and my 3G has been working like a champ )

 

-Anthony

Yep. What's up with that? It seems like every time the screen is off, wifi disconnects. Not every time, but a lot of times.

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When can we expect an update?

He needs an 8.3 jailbreak to do some digging around to see what got changed from 8.2.

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This is nice, and it's a start.

"The biggest difference between the two offerings is that Sprint's service is limited to 15 countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Russia, South Korea, Spain and the UK. T-Mobile's roaming plan offers free data service in more than 120 countries around the world."

Source: http://www.cnet.com/news/sprint-to-offer-free-international-data-roaming/

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I've seen that zero dots/3G a few times recently. Not sure what it's all about, though.

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Mine is not so good. Same old stuff. Still dropping to 3G constantly in the same spots. I guess I'll learn to live with it, as we probably won't get another carrier update until September with 9.0.

Edit: I wonder if I have a bad SIM card? Couldn't that be a cause of weird connection issues? I've had the same Sim since my 5s. (About 17 months)

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It does not appear so on my iPhone 6+. I have been toying with it and no luck on enabling WiFi calling.

You can't get it activated? Or you just don't see wifi calling (settings - phone)? iOS 8.3 shipped with Sprint carrier 19.0, but requires carrier 19.1 to enable it. Go to settings - about. It should immediately prompt you to download a new carrier bundle.

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Just tried this with someone with an iPhone 6 Plus. It didn't sound like the call was in HD, but it was better than a normal non-HD call. Anyone else experience this?

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Is it possible to have wifi calling after updating to iOS 8.3, jail breaking it (once it's available) and using a carrier hack (specifically the one from itweakios that came out for Sprint a few months ago)? In other words, is wifi calling specific to the carrier number?

It's specific to the carrier bundle. Think of the carrier bundle as a file that enables/disables different toggles and options within the OS. That's why some of these bundles are able to enable tethering and such. You could ask the person who made it to enable wifi calling.

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And I don't know how to check for additional carrier information on the iPhone 6

Dial *3001#12345#* then click "Serving Cell Info."

BTW, Go Royals!! Fun baseball so far!!

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Anyone else glad they fixed this? I was tired of my URL bar looking like "why.didnt.apple.fix.this.sooner."

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I downloaded the last couple carrier bundles from an Apple manifest file. The value for "LTE Band Pref" in the carrier.pri file is unchanged from Sprint 18.1 to 19.1. It DID change from 17.1 to 18.1 though. Not sure what to think of that.

 

 

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What were/is the value? I think I've looked in there before with iFile, and recall the value being something other than a clear-cut "25, 26, 41." That value shouldn't matter, though, as it's probably similar to the LTE band preference on an android; it only relates to the initial scan.

Sent from my iPhone 6+

As a comparison, T-Mobile's implementation of wifi calling on iOS includes HD audio and handoff to/from wifi/macro networks. Hopefully sprint will be able to support similar functionality soon. Does anyone know if there is something inherent in Sprints implementation of wifi calling which prohibits these two functions?

 

It's probably just Sprint being Sprint. Get it out there to silence the crowd; fix it later.

Sent from my iPhone 6+

another update - when getting to the point of selecting the ipcc file, itunes will only let a dude select an ipsw file.

Are you using Windows? If so, you have to follow those directions. You need to input that line of code in a command prompt to allow iTunes to see IPCC files. If you entered the code, and still can't see it, reboot. I had that problem, but it was easy to fix.

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If I have fantastic Sprint signal - I'd rather use the network than wifi for calling.

I'll still use it. It does have benefits, like better audio quality to non-Sprint numbers.

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