wtsguy
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Everything posted by wtsguy
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You have to cycle airplane mode on the EVO LTE in order for it to get a 4G signal. If it has a 3G connection, it will not look for a 4G signal. I hope they fix this soon with an OTA or something, that can't possibly be how it's supposed to work right?
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I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that way. I wouldn't call it the "vast majority", but it certainly does feel that way if that's where you live and work. I was downtown Naperville today for lunch and the entire time there my Evo LTE had 0-1 bars outside, and the entire time I was inside eating my phone was on digital roaming. I feel like I'm being too negative on these forums lately, but it's really frustrating hearing about all the good things and I'm roaming in the middle of Naperville. For the record, I've seen little to no improvement in all the areas you've mentioned. All of the western suburbs are a crap shoot. I would add West Chicago, Winfield, Carol Stream, Bartlett, and parts of Aurora to your list. Downtown Aurora is especially poor, and Winfield / Warrenville are complete dead zones for me. I'm starting to think it's my phone, because I've read people are getting 4G in Yorkville and St. Charles as well, but I've been through both those towns this weekend and saw nothing.
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I was going to say... If Sprint isn't making money on a $50/mo SERO plan, then they're doing something very wrong. I don't know the first thing about running a cell company, but the way I see it - using my phone doesn't cost them money. Whether I use the phone or not they have to pay for tower costs, backhaul, etc. I don't believe there is a per minute or per megabyte cost to the companies as they'd like us to believe.
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Robert, I can definitely empathize with how it must look on your end. However, I do have a lot of friends and family on Sprint service and I'm not exaggerating when I say that the service has been completely unusable for several months. Yes, we do know there's an upgrade coming, and so do my friends and family because that's all Sprint customer support reps say when you call in and complain, but that doesn't change the fact that you can't download anything because 3g is slow or nonexistent, you can't hold a call because it drops every 2 minutes, you don't get texts, you don't get voicemails until way after a person left them. The rollout has been going on for months and for a lot of us, we see no noticeable increase in the quality of the service. I couldn't hold a call when I got my EVO months ago. I still can't hold a call on my commute. I look at the Sponsor maps and see NV towers dotted all around me, but I still can't stream Pandora because my speeds are dial-up. Granted I am not everywhere at once, but I can count 2 towers off the top of my head where I know I get a guaranteed strong and fast 3G signal and the signs of upgrade are obvious. Two towers. Fortunately, one of those is where I work. I'm sure they're making a ton of progress behind the scenes, but it certainly doesn't feel that way. I'd be happy to hear from other suburbanites and their experiences though.
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Chicago and Boston LTE discoverable on Sept 21
wtsguy replied to Rasta Cheesehead's topic in Markets
They haven't even begun deploying in the city proper yet, give it a few months. -
Did you misspeak here or do you really think Verizon prices will go down over time? Mobile costs have gone up over the recent years, not down. I have no loyalty to any company, I will always go where it's cheapest. If Sprint raises prices, I will recalculate where it's cheapest to be and I will go there. I can say that Sprint hasn't earned any good will from me at all with the way my service has been since I became a subscriber several months ago. Most of the time I would categorize my service as completely unusable (either no data, or dropped calls, or slow data) and even today when I have LTE/NV towers all around me the service is just as bad as it was 4 months ago. Once the network improves to "usable", that doesn't give Sprint an automatic pass to raise prices IMO.
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I still can't even stream Pandora or Google Music on my commute because the 3g speeds are so slow... I have no idea how they think they can pull off any sort of pre-launch by September 21st. I'm just happy to see they are keeping up the pace, but where I live there has been no improvement over the past few months and it has only gotten worse. Unless the maps are wrong, my hometown area of Wheaton, Winfield, Warrenville, Carol Stream, West Chicago, area is a blackhole for Sprint.
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Still no improvements in the Winfield, Warrenville, and Wheaton areas in the suburbs. Driving down Winfield road and Naperville road are outstandingly bad because the data signal drops entirely, you can't even get 1x. There are a few random towers here and there that push decent speeds, but the pockets of good and bad make it impossible to stream music on my commutes. It has been really frustrating and more so as I have to continually read about how close we're getting to launching a Chicago market when my service is as bad and spotty as ever. Based on real world experience, I can't imagine the Chicago market launching this year - unless it's a "launch" in name only.
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The reason Sprint won't turn on the Chicago market anytime soon is because you can't launch the Chicago market without any towers live in CHICAGO.
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I have no idea how you guys are getting that kind of battery life. I'm running MeanRom 2.1 and I get about 10-12 hours on a charge before I need to plug it in. I generally get pretty good signal and spent a lot of time on wifi. I seemed to get better battery life on stock where I was seeing up to 15-18 hours. With heavy use I get about 6-8 hours, which is in line with my other Android phones. I blame it on the big screen. I'm really upset there's no vanilla AOSP rom out yet. I'm dying for a vanilla Android rom, because this phone's hardware is completely wasted by Sense.
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Mostly speaking anecdotally, as I have friends and family who have left, but I think the next quarter will be a little tougher on them unless they pick up some outcasts from Verizon because of the share your wallet plans. Also, I think only the Chicago market is having these kinds of problems, not nationwide, so the numbers in this market won't have a huge impact on them overall.
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There is no multi-tasking on the EVO LTE. Anyone who tells you otherwise, and I hate to say this, doesn't know what they're talking about. Under stock conditions, the phone will kill off background processes VERY quickly. What this means for the user is having to reload web pages everytime you exit the browser to do something like send a text message. Games, applications, and anything running in the background will likely be killed the second you hit the home button and switch to another app. If you're in a reader app, like a forum browser or a news reader, exiting out will kill the application forcing it to reload and you will lose your place. I guarantee you it's the most frustrating experience on the phone. Here is a youtube that illustrates the problem: Watch how the One X has to reload every time the guy switches apps. Fortunately, this can be mostly "solved" by rooting and installing a custom rom. I'm using MeanRom. After 3 days of stock use on this phone, the lack of multi-tasking was already driving me up a wall and I had to root it. I think I even had problem with background streaming apps like Pandora, Spotify, and Google Music, as well as background GPS logging apps. Please take this into consideration when buying the phone. It's still a great phone hardware wise, but the multi-tasking issue is such a huge oversight that I have trouble recommending the phone to anyone who isn't a techie and knows how to root. If you're basically a "dumbphone" smartphone user, then multitasking won't mean anything to you anyways.
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They are leaving in droves. We are holdouts because we understand the benefits of unlimited data, LTE, and a cheaper bill - but to the average user who can't make a call, receive a text, or even get working 3G data, it's not worth sticking around and we can't blame them. People are paying a lot of money every month for service that just plain out doesn't work in many areas, regardless of what supposedly awaits us in a couple of months, that's a long time to put up with the service the way it has been lately. I just switched to Sprint a month ago, but I knew going into it that I was going to have a hell of a time with it, and I have. In the suburbs it's so hit or miss that it's frustrating to say the least. There are specific areas all over that are complete dead zones, and even in the midst of an upgraded network I don't see the reason for that. We're all trying to stay optimistic and positive here, but will we all be able to stay in that frame of mind for at the very least another 60+ days? I also don't believe for a second that we'll see LTE by September, let's temper our enthusiasm a little bit. Chicago is a humongous market, and December seems more reasonable to me based on the fact they haven't even touched the city of Chicago yet, and huge swaths of the suburbs still aren't covered.
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Under Verizon, 6gb shared data is $80, then you add 3 smartphones at $40 a piece, so you'd be at $200 before taxes.
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Are you sure about that? The share everything plans are more expensive than any Sprint plan, or the same when it comes to unlimited family plans, in just about every possible way.
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Does anyone randomly go into roaming mode in the Chicago area? Are these just Sprint dead spots? I was getting my car fixed today in Carol Stream and I had 1 bar of 3g that constantly switched to 1xRTT roaming. I couldn't maintain a Sprint connection so I roamed for the 3 hours I was getting my car repaired (at dial up speeds, too). I don't understand how you could roam anywhere in the Chicago market? According to Net Monitor, the Sprint tower was between .5-.75 miles away, there's no reason why I should be roaming. I also get extremely poor connections all the way down Winfield Road north of I-88, drop calls constantly, no 3G or dial-up speed 3G, and switches back and forth from roaming. Dead zones, or just a side effect of NV upgrades?
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I drove up and down Route 59 today in that area and didn't find any 4G. Looks like they shut it down already.
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I've been all over Naperville, Lisle, Wheaton, Winfield, Carol Stream, Batavia, and Aurora over the past 2 days and have not seen any 4G at all. And believe me I'm constantly checking and running speedtests. I am, however, seeing a huge disparity in 3g speeds. There is no middle ground, it's either dial-up speeds, or 1mbps+ speeds.
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WiMAX and 3G are two different technologies, run off two different pieces of equipment, run by two separate companies.
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Robert, who says you've lost your optimism?!?
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LTE Speed Expectations vs, What we actually need
wtsguy replied to Feech's topic in Network, Network Vision/LTE Deployment
3-5mpbs is all I need. My home connection is only 5mpbs DSL line and I can't think of anything I can't do with it. I simply have no need for that much speed on my phone, and wouldn't know what to do with it. -
It's so weird in the Chicago suburbs right now because you're either on an upgraded tower, or you're on a legacy tower and the differences are so stark that it almost breaks the phone. For instance, streaming music on a car ride is almost impossible because one minute you're getting >1mpbs speeds and the next you're getting <100kbps and back and forth continually. There is no middle ground, I'm either getting the best speeds I've ever seen on 3g or, or the worst. http://i.imgur.com/KlEJN.png
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At Central Dupage Hospital in Winfield, 1528 kbps down and 608 kbps up. Near Hollywood Casino in downtown Aurora, 40 kbps down and 48 kbps up. lol
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eHRPD is just a software standard to help LTE and EVDO communicate, it's not a network itself like "3G". So when it says eHRPD on your connection, it's still only 3g (EVDO revA)
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My 3G speeds in the west burbs have been a mixed bag, but generally pretty good. I hit a tower in Carol Stream that gave me >2.0mbps, and the lowest I've seen is ~300kbps. It's strange seeing such a wide range of speeds with little consistency between towers, at least coming from my last carrier (USCC).
