Sprint Having Speed Issues with iPhone 4S

[david803sc]

I was reading online that some Sprint customers were complaining about very slow speeds with the Sprint iPhone 4S, than last night I went with my friend to a Sprint store in Charleston, SC he wanted to upgrade two of his 5 lines to the 4S while waiting in line we talked to the 4 customers in front of us, all were returning their iPhones and switching back to their older ones. All of them complained that the internet was too slow for them with the iPhone. They all said their other device were not having this issue only their iPhones.

Just makes me wonder if in some markets Sprints Network and the iPhone radio on the data side are having a problem communicating, which could be causing the really slow speeds of less than 1mb.

I would say maybe it is the backhaul network, but when the customers are saying they only see this problem on the iPhone and not their other smart phones, it really makes me wonder. I remember AT&T at one point had to send a firmware flash to all their cell sites to improve communications with the iPhone specifically, I think this may be a similar situation.

By the way my friend never got his phones they said he was not eligible for an upgrade on any of his lines, although before we left his house and he called customer service that rep told him 3 of his lines were eligible

David

 

[docgerrard]

Yeah I have had this experience. Returned a Motorola Photon on Sprint for the iPhone 4S, and although browsing, pandora, youtube do work fine, it definitely is significantly slower when it comes to downloading things. The app store is almost unusable.

My photon was doing just fine a few weeks ago, so I am pretty sure its not Sprints network, at least near my house.

Do you guys think it is a hardware issue or a software issue that can be fixed via an update or something?

 

[mspman]

I don't know, but it's killing me. I expected to see a bit of a slowdown when I switched from AT&T, but this is ridiculous. I'm running Speedtest and routinely seeing download speeds of LESS than 100kbs. I'm thinking of jumping to Verizon, but it's only been a few days... let's see what they say.

 

[ultrahertz]

I've already returned my Sprint iphones due to the horrendous slow speed. I do not believe it was a radio issue. I believe it is a fundamental overloading of Sprints 3G data network.

12 midnight EDT = 1-0.9 mbps (acceptable)
8 am EDT 0.6 mbps (no worse than Verizon's day average)
9 am EDT 0.3 mbps (getting slow)
10 am EDT 0.15 mbps (crawling)
12 noon EDT 0.05 mbps (useless)

meanwhile, I tested my 3G iPad laptop (AT&T) side by side and at each of those times it was getting 1.2 mbps pretty consistently. Web pages that took 15 s to load took 4+ minutes on Sprint iphone pretty consistently.

Since the iPhone was getting good speeds at what one would expect to be lower usage times of the day, but dropped as the day wore on, this would seem pretty consistent with network overloading.

FWIW speaking with a Verizon subscriber here in Ann Arbor, which also uses CDMA, Verizon has a similar problem with the network slowing down through the day, although speeds do not crawl down to quite the slow speeds Sprint showed.

What a waste of time for me. Since I ordered the phones by mail, I have to send them back to get credited by UPS. I should have gone to AT&T.

 

[JNaut]

Same for me on Sprint. Web browsing and streaming Pandora/Rdio works fine, but downloading even a 5MB app takes forever. Coupled with the fact that I random get put into roaming mode with a 5-bar signal, I'm really thinking about returning the phone and going with Verizon.

I'll give it until the end of this week to see if anything changes.

 

[mcruzader]

To those of you who are thinking about switching and use Radio Apps such as Pandora, do you think you'll go over the imposed 2GB of internet use the other companies offer, that is another reason why I am thinking about switching to AT&T, I don't know if 2GB is enough. What do you think?

 

[docgerrard]

To be honest, since Pandora works fine i used it pretty much all last night. For at least an hour. I didn't use more than 40mb of data of streaming pandora for an hour.

i guess it depends on how much you plan on using it, but for short commutes, you would definitely be fine

 

[david803sc]

To those of you who are thinking about switching and use Radio Apps such as Pandora, do you think you'll go over the imposed 2GB of internet use the other companies offer, that is another reason why I am thinking about switching to AT&T, I don't know if 2GB is enough. What do you think?

I stream "Hot 97 Classic" when I am driving through my iPhone on AT&T and never have any issues with it, nor have I gone over my 2GB cap, the first month I just used the "My AT&T" App from the app store to check my data usage, I would suggest you do the same, it is easy and quick with the app.

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Yeah I have had this experience. Returned a Motorola Photon on Sprint for the iPhone 4S, and although browsing, pandora, youtube do work fine, it definitely is significantly slower when it comes to downloading things. The app store is almost unusable.

My photon was doing just fine a few weeks ago, so I am pretty sure its not Sprints network, at least near my house.

Do you guys think it is a hardware issue or a software issue that can be fixed via an update or something?

My bet is the problem is 80% radio maybe 20% backhaul but this will vary from market to market as each market will have different hardware and firmware revisions at the cell site. I believe there will be an update Sprint will roll out to their sites that will greatly improve this problem, like I said in my first post AT&T had to make some changes a few years back to some of their sites for the same reason, and even though Sprint and Verizon both use CDMA, the hardware vendors may be different and also the firmware revisions may be different.

We really need some Sprint users from different markets to post their results and see if it is certain markets or the entire network.

 

[jgalan14]

I had sprint for 18 months or so , had Verizon and AT&T , Verizon had great service for me but it was too expensive when I switch from Verizon to sprint I was saving $40-$45 at months , AT&T well area where I live in las Vegas was knew so they had too many problems and decided to leave them

Now to sprint speeds , idk about iPhone getting lower speeds but one day I was testing iPhone 4 on Verizon vs the droid incredible , side by side and the incredible alway got higher mbps on the test I thought it was weird, but so far I seen it more then once so idk if that counts , in still on sprint and got me the iPhone 4s you guys were freakin me out all this weekend about sprint speeds but to me they seen normal and I can't do everything that I was able to do with my evo 3d, I usually watch some YouTube , pandora, twitter , read articles , download a few apps during the day etc .

 

[iprime]

What a waste of time for me. Since I ordered the phones by mail, I have to send them back to get credited by UPS. I should have gone to AT&T.

You can return your phones at a Sprint corporate store even if you ordered online. I returned mine on Sunday after using for 2 days. The speeds were abysmal and I didn't want to risk getting locked in a 2 year contract with them.