burnout8488

Binghamton, NY was added. However, band 41 is not accessible unless you're sitting under the tower.

Binghamton is now a spark market on the coverage map update effective today! I'm 99% sure it's still useless unless you are sitting directly under the site, but it's official nonetheless. We're still waiting on B26 optimization, sheesh!

Yup, the Kona in my Framily won't grab BC10, ever. We aren't in an optimized environment though so time will tell if it will get a stronger signal when it is cranked up. I think it would be cool to not have a smartphone sometimes too. If Sprint offered a flip phone with great 1x800 and 1xRTT, with HD Voice, it would be a no brainer for a lot of people looking for a simple device. I hope HD Voice makes its way into every device within a year or so... it's too good not to have.

Sprint's got a new flip phone for postpaid customers now. I don't know of any reason to get this over the Kyocera Kona (or vice versa). It doesn't appear to support HD voice, and may or may not have BC10 (1x800) enabled. With the $96 price point, I surmise it only exists to have a flat $4/mo Easy Pay offering. Sprint: http://shop.sprint.com/mysprint/shop/phone_details.jsp?deviceSKUId=89000746 PhoneScoop: http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=4622

Soooo is this it from Sharp? Surely they can't just release one phone and call it done.

I have not experienced optimized B26 yet either, and I've been up and down the Northeast plenty of times in plenty of cities. Maybe this will be a springtime task up here, I know another member from NC said his area just got optimized down there.

In many markets, optimization lags. Every site might have LTE but B25 and B26 may still be at low power levels and downtilt. Even in Philadelphia, I drop to 3G much more often than I should. Clearwire B41 is strong and works great, but indoors the B26 LTE still isn't optimized, and this is a big metropolitan area. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same issue in Minneapolis right now. Sprint is not inherently weaker than the other carriers, as you suggested. However, at this stage in your market's deployment, it might be.

51105 here on 18.0 as well.

By the end of 2015 I'd love to see the highway GMO sites in NE PA, I-81, and NY get tackled. I feel like even these have higher priority than Western PA does. Even Tmo is starting to get LTE in the boondocks on highways and rural routes. Fingers crossed for some 90 or 180 day activity once any new schedule map info arrives. There's just so many GMO sites left, it's discouraging :-( And an update: 8 months now with B26 and no optimization. Bleh.

That's incredible, and a ray of hope for us un-optimized B26 area users. VoLTE is gonna be nice!

He had me at "e-penis spectacularity" too.

Gotcha. It sounds like the ISU will go through without a hitch. We did both unlocks separately, ISU first, then they performed the DSU after it was complete. They separated them within the conversation and told me when they were performing both. It sounds like I very well might get lucky on this one.

I went into this trying to get only an international unlock for travel later this year. Figured I'd ask about the domestic in case I want to switch devices later on... and according to the chat rep, they did it. I was quite surprised. To sum it up: "[05:53:21 PM] Darlin S: Awesome your device is now unlocked for domestic use." Either they found a way to force it despite me being under contract, or their attempt won't work despite the "system" saying it did. Apple chat confirmed that they got a request for the international unlock. If the domestic doesn't work, I won't be mad, but it would be cool to have the freedom to test out other prepaid SIMs.

I wish I could, being JB'd kind of prevents this right now. :-( In any case, I just chatted with a Sprint rep who said they performed an international unlock, then performed a Domestic unlock on my iP6.... and I am still under contract. So, either it won't work, or it will and they just skirted the policy. I'll try it out tomorrow on an ATT sim at work, but only doing the ##update# dialer update. They did mention that the international unlock requires a restore, while the domestic unlock only requires a "##update#" to take effect. Time will tell...

Has it received any software updates yet since launch?

Just to confirm... there's no real reason to do a full-restore after an unlock, right?

Towers. No apostrophe.

I haven't noticed a single thing wrong with either beta. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough. In any case, it's been rock solid stable, wish I had more to report! I'm on 8.1.2, JB'd with not many tweaks, for what it's worth.

What kind of equipment is used to optimize sites? Is it simply just a laptop running an application that connects to whichever site the tech wants? Maybe a web-based app with a login screen only for Sprint techs? I see "drive testing" get thrown around here a lot, so that prompted the question. Is it some crazy console with levers and knobs?

In my experience this doesn't really have an effect on my phone anymore. The task switcher is just a glorified "recent apps" list. Only the most recently used apps will stay "alive" for a short period in case you switch right back to them. The only reason I used to do this was because of a bad habit I had from the Blackberry days. I haven't needed to kill any apps from the task switcher on my iPhone 6 and it runs like a dream.

Yep. Turn off find my iPhone, turn on airplane mode, jailbreak! Super easy with TaiG.

Thanks guys, I figured there were way too many variables in this scenario to be able to make an apples to apples comparison. Also, it could be possible that Sprint's B25 hasn't even been optimized yet on this site, and the only reason I even get it is just because of close proximity. Maybe T-mobile fires up their sites and immediately has an optimization crew go to work. I did notice this particular highway got T-mo LTE coverage in a very short timeframe.

I work in a small and what some would consider rural town. (Owego, NY) Sprint LTE has been active since early 2014 on B25 1900mhz. (B26 is on, but non-optimized so it currently provides no gains over B25.) My iPad has both Sprint/Tmo plans on it. T-Mobile JUST turned on their LTE a few weeks ago, and Band 2 (1900Mhz) is active. It is amazing, as far as signal is concerned. Sprint can only hold a -110dBm B25 signal, and is usually on 3G most of the day. Both carriers are co-located on the same site. I work a quarter mile away from it, my building is line-of-sight with the tower. Why is T-Mobile stronger than Sprint? I've been waiting months for Sprint to optimize 800Mhz just so I can use LTE indoors, and T-Mobile barges in with amazing 1900Mhz that never seems to drop indoors. That, and they couldn't possibly have optimized already, right? Main question: Is T-Mobile inherently "stronger" than Sprint on the same frequencies?

I'm curious about this too. There were mumblings that iOS8 might have opened up the APIs to allow this type of app without a jailbreak. Has this been confirmed, or is the necessary info still only possible with a JB? EDIT: Gotcha!

Color me interested.