Yup that was me lol. It's like you can't think outside their box when your posting there. But it's a very informative forum. First time I've encountered such negative feedback there 🙂
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Carrier Sprint is pathetic
- Thread starter Squilly
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Yup that was me lol. It's like you can't think outside their box when your posting there. But it's a very informative forum. First time I've encountered such negative feedback there 🙂
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
How often is that happening? I ask, because halcyoncmdr, a Sprint tech you can find over at s4gru.com and on sprintusers.com mentioned at one point that there is a handful of iPhone 5s that do this consistently. It's a hardware issue and the only resolution is complete replacement of the phone. But of course, it's not an issue that is well known by the Sprint techs and not at all by the CSRs.
I would take it into Apple, explain the issue and have them look at it. Even if you bought the phone through Sprint Apple will not charge you anything to examine your phone.
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It's my understanding that the Admin (Robert) and most of the management are coming from the Howard forums and other places and that s4gru was a sort of refuge for Sprint users that think like they do. I've never been on the Howard forums but from what I've heard Sprint users are bagged on pretty hard over there.
My chief objection is mainly their "whining" policy. They define what "whining" is and there are strict repercussions for "whining."
Lammercy
macrumors regular
Interesting but I have a 5C though could that still be what's happening with my device? The 1x shows up at least a few times a day but I mostly stay on 3G. I'm thinking about having Apple take a look at it. Actually just sitting in bed right now and woke up my 5C to see LTE replacing the 3G symbol, signal was low and LTE disappeared shortly after but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this means the LTE is beginning to reach a little further into my neighborhood!
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
No, this would not be the issue for your 5c then. It was a limited amount of iPhone 5s (plural, not the new 5s) that this happened to.
What you mention is a good sign. Having been through this, this is how it happens. I was in Walmart by my house a few days ago and got an LTE icon for a few minutes then it went back to 3G. Each time I've gone over there since I have picked up the signal. Tonight it was in the parking lot and that same tower I found out later reaches my house.
So, based on what you said there's hope that you should be getting usable signal shortly.
davidg4781
macrumors 68040
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
What it means is that Sprint is limited to using certain cellular frequencies that it has license to in Texas. There may be other cell providers that have licenses to use frequencies in Texas that Sprint has license to use in other states, but not in Texas.
That constrains Sprint to keeping it customers within those frequencies that it's limited to. The more people you have using a resource the less that is available to the whole and the more congested it gets to deliver that resource.
In other states Sprint could simply shift it's customers to the frequencies it has licenses for, but it can't do that in Texas because other cell companies are already using those frequencies.
davidg4781
macrumors 68040
Thanks, just curious because I have 2 issues affecting my coverage. Where I live there's a nice big white hole on Sprint's coverage map. Very annoying, to say the least. I'm not sure this would be cause of their limited spectrum though.
2nd issue is where I'm from and where 3 of my phones are, data is terrible. .01Mbps speed terrible. There's also only one tower covering that area. So could be spectrum or bandwidth.
Either way, I'm hoping to switch to AT&T soon.
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
Always go with what's best for you. Granted, Sprint's been terrible in the last year or so, but we stayed because the price of moving to another carrier would have been a burden.
Sprint is proof that if you throw enough money at something even the incompetent can complete a task. It takes way more resources, time and effort, but enough money can make it happen.
For me, I am chalking this up as the equivalent to having been on AT&T when the original iPhone launched. Unfortunately, those lessons were there for Sprint but they ignored them.
Leet Apple
macrumors 6502a
I detest sprint and their inability to upgrade their service. It's seriously a ripoff to pay for data when you get 26.6k modem speeds all the time.
I am so glad I left, now I just need my fiance to get off their stinking service. We would drive around and do speedtests against each other and where she gets 1mb down/up, I get about 30.
I havent seen her score higher than 1.5mb down/up. SPrint claims LTE is coming but I doubt it.
When we went to Cleveland she got a whopping 5 mb on LTE
I am so glad I left, now I just need my fiance to get off their stinking service. We would drive around and do speedtests against each other and where she gets 1mb down/up, I get about 30.
I havent seen her score higher than 1.5mb down/up. SPrint claims LTE is coming but I doubt it.
When we went to Cleveland she got a whopping 5 mb on LTE
SantaRosa2.2
macrumors regular
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
Now only if Sprint could provide those speeds reliably over their network (like AT&T/VZW). 😱
My friend just got a 5S in Boston and his speeds have taken a nosedive over LTE recently on Sprint. Sub 5mbps. Better than their EVDO though.
I always crack up at the posts on S4Gru. Some people drive hours away to take LTE speed tests and then post them on the internet to proclaim how great Sprint is.
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
Yeah, getting that to expand is the next challenge. Part of the problem is that there are only so many towers broadcasting LTE. All of a sudden you get a bunch of people with LTE enabled devices connecting to those towers and it's the same damn thing all over again that is happening on 3G.
As they light up additional towers that congestion will ease, but with the slow backhaul delivery that'll take time.
It's really pathetic, less than 5mbps, but again, when you've been in the 0.25mbps 3G sub-basement for so long
As to s4gru. I had to laugh. A bit of the new Sun City Sensorly mapping was done by Robert, the admin over there. He was staying at a hotel near Arrowhead mall which is about 20 minutes north of where I live. All he had to do was come south a bit and he'd be in solid 3G only territory at least until a day or so ago.
What's truly funny to me is that now, in my area there's a whole bunch of LTE lighting up around me, but because it seems that no one registered on s4gru.com lives in the West Valley or comes in to my neighborhood it hasn't been mapped. Someone did a very small portion in my neighborhood, but I haven't seen anything else so it had to be someone passing through. I'd map it, but Sensorly doesn't have that feature on iOS.
My time on s4gru.com is shortly coming to an end and I'll be glad to not be needing their info any more.
SantaRosa2.2
macrumors regular
I agree. I lose all my LTE altogether just driving a couple miles from my house.
Still 3G most everywhere else. The funny thing is I get great LTE at my house where I don't need it because I'm on Wi-Fi most the time. And where I need the LTE, seems like it's always 3G.
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
Cool!
I've had Sprint for 14 years, but only last year was the start of not being happy with the network. Up until last year I didn't have an LTE capable device and my old HTC did fine on 3G.
Now that LTE is here in PHX things have gotten much better!
Yeah, this is the downside to the Sprint way of rolling out an LTE network. It is pretty much saturated the moment a tower goes online, especially with all the new iPhones/Galaxys out there.
If they launched areas at a time, instead of tower by tower, this congestion issue should be alleviated...
Yup, he's been on Sprint since the iPhone4. NV has been complete in his part of the city for a few months now. Sub .5 mbps EVDO speeds are still the norm.
I'm not sure that more towers would help though. They just need to boost capacity at each tower. I've pulled better speeds in the middle of a Red Sox game then he has gotten at 3am when no one is awake.
I think he was the same guy who drove all the way to Denver to map the new 2.5ghz LTE network. Pretty ridiculous.
Once iOS gets mapping abilities, I feel like the maps for EVERY carrier will be better.
If I'm driving somewhere, I usually just leave sensorly running in the background on my Android. It really doesn't use too much data.
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
That right there is one of the main issues I have with Sprint. The entire rollout has been dictated by the Marketing department. Marketing thinks it looks good to list markets/cities as live. Never mind that most of the markets/cities they started off listing were small towns with one or two towers.
It inflates the numbers but in reality just looks dumb and like they are trying to light up podunk places and not real metro areas.
Sprint's policy of allowing people on to the network whenever a tower goes live with LTE is actually a good one. But they should have just kept quiet about it and then announced once a market/city was complete and not when it only covered 40% of the population of the area like they do now.
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
CrimsonKnight
macrumors 6502
eyoungren
macrumors Nehalem
Based just on the graphic, I assume he did a speed test on LTE, switched WiFi back on, made a screenshot and then posted the pic.
Otherwise the network column would have mentioned which WiFi network he was connected to I think.
Just my assumption.
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That's really good!