Sprint iPhone 5 Situation

[Statusquick]

I'm hoping someone can help me out here:

So I received my iPhone 5 a week ago from Sprint, however I ended up getting a replacement due to scratch on my camera lens.

With the replacement phone I received from the genius bar, I am only able to receive voice and text. Data says 3g, however when I go into Safari, it gets the dread roaming circle and finally reaches the error "Could not activate cellular data network."

I've called Sprint and they've had me hard reset 4 times, network reset twice. Nothing is working. I've called Apple and they wanted me to do the same. Both companies are blaming each other and trying to get me to call the other company.

My solution that one of them (I don't care who) sends me a new in box Sprint branded phone has been rebuffed. Does anyone have any advice as to what I can do? This has taken 2 days of time my life already. Please help with any advice you can.

 

[PAC88]

Try turning off LTE if you don't have it in your area

 

[AJAAY]

Try removing the iPhone off your Sprint account and reactivate it.

 

[jlake02]

I'd head to an Apple Store (in a Sprint coverage area) and directly show them the issue. Make them fix it one way or the other. If they give you a new phone don't leave until you've tested it and the problem is gone.

GL!

 

[Statusquick]

After 3 days of arguing with Apple and Sprint, I've decided to return the phone.

Replacement phones 2 and 3 still had the exact same error, so Apple blamed Sprint (which I agreed with).

Talking to Sprint, they did their BS upgrade towers protocol and it still didn't work. Blamed Apple for yet another defective phone.

One Sprint Supervisor even had the audacity to say that there was an outage going on with the Sprint data towers and that was the reason for the error occurring, to which I responded "Why are all my friend's S3's working?"; "It only affects iPhone users..." to which I countered, "I'm standing in a Sprint store with the iPhone 5 demo unit and it's connecting to 3g just fine. That's stupid."

Anyway, thank you for everyone's advice. I hope no one ever has to go through the same experience.

 

[Preed08]

After 3 days of arguing with Apple and Sprint, I've decided to return the phone.

Replacement phones 2 and 3 still had the exact same error, so Apple blamed Sprint (which I agreed with).

Talking to Sprint, they did their BS upgrade towers protocol and it still didn't work. Blamed Apple for yet another defective phone.

One Sprint Supervisor even had the audacity to say that there was an outage going on with the Sprint data towers and that was the reason for the error occurring, to which I responded "Why are all my friend's S3's working?"; "It only affects iPhone users..." to which I countered, "I'm standing in a Sprint store with the iPhone 5 demo unit and it's connecting to 3g just fine. That's stupid."



Anyway, thank you for everyone's advice. I hope no one ever has to go through the same experience.

I HATE when crappy reps do this!

 

[richmds]

Well you made the right choice, you would have ended up with a lot of frustration only to realize it is Sprint.
Anyone else have this issue work with Sprint, Apple stores cannot help unless it is a damaged phone.
Sprint keeps pushing people off onto Apple stores which just ends up wasting your time. Or return it within the 14 days, because after that you are stuck with Sprint for 24 months.

 

[tymaster50]

I'm hoping someone can help me out here:

So I received my iPhone 5 a week ago from Sprint, however I ended up getting a replacement due to scratch on my camera lens.

With the replacement phone I received from the genius bar, I am only able to receive voice and text. Data says 3g, however when I go into Safari, it gets the dread roaming circle and finally reaches the error "Could not activate cellular data network."

I've called Sprint and they've had me hard reset 4 times, network reset twice. Nothing is working. I've called Apple and they wanted me to do the same. Both companies are blaming each other and trying to get me to call the other company.

My solution that one of them (I don't care who) sends me a new in box Sprint branded phone has been rebuffed. Does anyone have any advice as to what I can do? This has taken 2 days of time my life already. Please help with any advice you can.

This wouldn't happen on AT&T and Verizon lmao

 

[Hankster]

Hate to say it but that's what you get with Sprint. While I enjoy competition in the industry, Sprint is a joke of a company and is nothing compared to the powerhouse of ATT and VZ. Sprint's coverage is horrible, data is slower and overall has a weak network. While you may save $10, you give up performance and reliability.

 

[avanpelt]

On iPhone 5 launch weekend, Verizon was having an issue in the Southeast U.S. that truly did only affect iPhone 5 handsets.

When you attempted to do anything over the cellular data network if the connection hadn't been used for a few minutes, the iPhone 5 wouldn't attempt to make any data connections for 5 or 10 seconds and then all of sudden the data loaded almost instantaneously. At first, I thought it was a DNS issue, and then I thought it was my handset.

Then, I found out several other people from TX to FL to GA were having the same problem with their iPhone 5 handsets. One guy travelled from Miami to NYC and reported that he had the problem in Miami, but not in NYC. At that point, we knew almost for certain that it was a regional Verizon issue.

There were several dozen of us from the MR forums that reported the problem to Verizon. They never told us what the problem was, but it was resolved for everyone by about 11 AM ET the Monday after the iPhone 5 launch the previous Friday. Sure, I pay more for Verizon's service, but that's why. They fixed the problem and it hasn't happened again since.

I say all that to say that, in Sprint's defense (didn't think I'd ever be defending them), there could be a network problem that only affects iPhone 5 handsets. That was definitely the case with Verizon's issue that I just described. My third-gen Verizon iPad didn't have any of the problems the iPhone 5 did, so it was definitely device specific.

However, the network issue that Verizon was having was showing up on in-store demo iPhone 5 handsets as well. It was funny because people were reporting that they had iPhone 5 and Android LTE handsets side-by-side in the store and the iPhone 5 handsets all had the data lag issue and the Android handsets did not.