Overstew

Aren't there dedicated teams for each region? Seems kind of far-fetched to leave a lot of markets in the Southeast untouched. I wonder how Ericsson would have done if they were in charge of NGN here.

With the amount of debt Sprint is facing I fear the upgrades will be delayed in favor of markets where Sprint has higher marketshare. I'm guessing Jacksonville will probably start NGN in Q4 of this year.

I like everything except the front of the device. Looks way too much like Samsung.

There are also rumors of the new HTC not being available on CDMA providers. Of course, I take that with a grain of salt but I also see it being entirely possible seeing as HTC devices didn't sell very well in the last year. They also cancelled that kick-started cloud smartphone for CDMA carriers.

Hello Mikejeep, I updated today to the newest version of Signalcheck Pro but I am still not seeing a value for WCDMA or HSPA+ connections. Just found out it's all 3G connections on the T-Mobile GS7, not just my at-work DAS.

It'll have USB type C but I doubt wireless charging because of the metal build.

I got a lot of battery out of HTC's 2600 MAh battery in their M8. I believe it when they say they're optimizing it. I'm getting kind of pumped for the Tuesday announcement!

I've done this almost every upgrade. I call in, just ask if they can waive it and they did it 95% of the time, also saying "It's a one time thing since you've been a loyal Sprint customer."

I wish Duval county was easier to look up cell tower permits on. There's no way of telling unless you know who submits the permits for Sprint. Doing a company lookup for 'Sprint', 'Ericcson', or 'Nokia' all prove fruitless. Next time I am in that area I will check on it.

Hello Mikejeep, Looks like other apps read the signal fine on my work DAS, but not Signalcheck.

..Anything for Nokia markets?

LG devices from my experience are always built cheap and they tend to depreciate in value more than any other flagship. I've learned not to purchase LGs on launch for this very reason. The G4 is already in the upper $200s to lower $300s new.

I meant, even if they have similar amount of towers, T-Mobile's are primarily focused in urban environments but AT&T/Verizon have them more spread because they also cover rural. But I am also going off T-Mobile's superbowl advertisement that specifically says they have more LTE towers than Verizon.

That is a shame. Wonder what the hold up is? Haven't been to that area recently.

From my experience, in most cases, it is. Sprint's good at maintaining a signal (this is why their reliability scores always look good), but they need a lot more capacity either by densifying or rolling out a lot of B41 carriers. They're already in the process of it via NGN, but T-Mobile has the highest amount of LTE towers out of the major four and their rural presence is low, which means they have even more in major metros.

Same. By the screenshots, it looked interesting but it needs some polishing and additional options before it is daily driver ready. Still neat to play around with though.

Well, there's other regional carriers that might be interested. USCC has B5 spectrum in some areas.

So, just curious. Does anyone know/think if Sprint will expand their 800Mhz presence? IIRC, B26 is a superset of B5, which makes the spectrum available for B26-use, if the spectrum is contiguous. I feel like Sprint could really use a 10x10 channel before the time 600Mhz is available.

So, just curious, has anyone tried the new UI from Samsung? http://www.xda-developers.com/samsung-advanced-ui-new-touchwiz-is-a-ui-giant-leap-forward-two-steps-back/

I can see this happening to prevent them from worrying about grabbing low-credit customers that'll churn without paying off their devices. But to make even the loyal, high-credit class customers require auto pay is downright stupid.

As far as loyalty goes, I used to feel the same way as you. I never thought I'd buy a different phone apart from LG after the G2. But, my GPS/screen was plagued with issues on the G2 and the G3 that my friend bought because I recommended it had numerous issues as well. I can safely say that LG is no longer an option for me or my friend for that matter. They make other great electronics, but I think their phones need a revamp (not this gimmicky module system.) I really appreciate that HTC continues to offer premium audio for users and the beautiful metal builds before anyone else did. Not to mention they only gained $1/per phone sold in the year of 2014. Their flagships just aren't profitable, while their iPhone counterpart makes a few $100 each phone. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I am impressed with their device support and additional warranty information even though they make significantly less money than the competition per device sold. They're also often the fastest OEM to update their phones to new releases. I'm just about ready to purchase the device now. I believe they moved the bottom speaker to implement the capacitive buttons on the front and decrease the bezel on bottom. This never really bothered me on previous iterations of their devices, but some people did not even consider HTC after seeing their larger-than-average bezels on each device. Supposedly another problem they fixed was the random black bar underneath the screen, eliminating device real-estate. The new Snapdragon 820 is something that'll be better in the temperature management this time around as the M9 was plagued with overheating, hopefully. I've also noticed that the last year or so, even flagship has shipped with a worse processor (Snapdragon 810) in terms of power management with smaller batteries in favor of thinness. With Samsung increasing their battery capacity, I can really see them leading the next revolution in the smartphone world, battery capacity. Samsung appears to have knocked everything out with their S7 in regards to what the average consumer wants. Now I'm open to see what the competition will do from here. As I've already stated, I'm not impressed with the LG G5, but I am open to see what Motorola and HTC do later this year. Especially if HTC is doing the next Nexus, I'd like that! But before I get ahead of myself, I'm going to watch the HTC 10 announcement and go from there. Rumors say the device may be available as early as two weeks after the event, or the first week of May.

Hello Mikejeep, My DAS at work reads on the T-Mobile variant of the Galaxy S7 as No Connection. Any ideas?

HTC has always been superior to the competition in terms of audio quality (Big fan of the HTC One M8 here.) The appearance of the device doesn't WOW me (aside from the great looking XDA renders, but real world leaked pictures do not do it any justice imo.) However, I am also reading there is a 3500 MAh battery (or at least 3,000) so if HTC does 3500, I will probably purchase this device. Also hoping HTC continues supporting the developers with the bootloader unlocks. I'd hate for such a great processor be locked down tight (like it is on the S7.)

The RootMetrics results do show that Sprint has degraded, but does a 94 rank really lag that much behind the competition? I'm sure 1H 2016 will be posted soon, I wonder if Sprint will still be rated above a 90. I am curious when NGN is starting for us. We're seeing results nationwide but I do not see anything in Florida (aside from maybe Orlando.)

In my area, I only have B41 on one site. I think the map is fairly accurate there. However, the speeds on B25/26 in many areas are sufficient. They could use B41 in a lot more areas.