Sprint's 3G speeds for iPhone 4S

[BizzyLeo]

I've had my 4S since early November, hooked up to Sprint's unlimited "3G" data network. Since the launch of the iPhone 4S on Sprint, I read that there was a small number of people who were reporting extremely slow data speeds over Sprint's 3G network. Now that I've had my phone for a while, I'm sad to report that I'm one of those who have had the misfortune of suffering through the SLOWNESS of Sprint's network.
I'm wondering who else is still suffering through the so called 3G speeds of Sprint's network. I'm also set to go in to the Apple store this week to have Apple take a look at my situation. Hopefully it's possible to fix it.

To be fair, my speed situation has improved a little bit. But they're very inconsistent and Sprint has been of little help for the past month and a half.

P.S. I will post a screen cap of my data speeds within the next few hours.
Looking forward to reading your remarks.

 

[eagandale4114]

You can check what they are doing in your area here:
https://network.sprint.com/search/

 

[pilot1226]

I've had my 4S since early November, hooked up to Sprint's unlimited "3G" data network. Since the launch of the iPhone 4S on Sprint, I read that there was a small number of people who were reporting extremely slow data speeds over Sprint's 3G network. Now that I've had my phone for a while, I'm sad to report that I'm one of those who have had the misfortune of suffering through the SLOWNESS of Sprint's network.
I'm wondering who else is still suffering through the so called 3G speeds of Sprint's network. I'm also set to go in to the Apple store this week to have Apple take a look at my situation. Hopefully it's possible to fix it.

To be fair, my speed situation has improved a little bit. But they're very inconsistent and Sprint has been of little help for the past month and a half.

P.S. I will post a screen cap of my data speeds within the next few hours.
Looking forward to reading your remarks.

There's nothing you can do. Sprint's data is just slow, it's not the phone that's the problem.

You have two options, basically:

1. Live with it for the time being and hope the iPhone 5 has LTE support, which Sprint is rolling out across the country and is supposed to be done by the end of 2013. Even the fastest 3G CDMA Sprint Data speeds are still nowhere close to AT&T's HSPA+ data network. Remember, if you choose this option, that you probably will not be eligible for the upgrade price and you'll have to get a brand new phone from Sprint at full retail price.

2. Cancel with Sprint, paying your Early Termination Fee of probably around $300 after prorating, and start service with AT&T which has HSPA+ speeds (3.5G). You can't bring your Sprint iPhone to Sprint, so you'll have to try selling it to another Sprint customer. If you decide to do this, make sure you transfer your number to the new carrier FIRST, which will automatically disconnect this line of service with Sprint.

Good luck. I'm personally holding out until April when my contract is up with Sprint, and I'll wait and see how the iPhone 5 launch looks in terms of speed and packages. For reference, I'm hoping that the i5 has LTE support with Sprint and then I can just stay a Sprint customer. If it doesn't, I'll either consider the i4S with AT&T on a regular contracted plan, or I will consider buying an unlocked i4S from Apple and using it with a T-Mobile MicroSIM card since they have Unlimited Talk, Text, and Data for about $50 per line with their value packages. The caviat with T-Mobile at the moment is that 3G data speeds aren't supported, but they are rearranging their 3G spectrum and some people are successfully using 3G data speeds on the T-Mobile iPhone. Keep in mind that T-Mobile doesn't officially support the iPhone and any and all 3G data speeds are due to the tower configuration, nothing you can do on your phone can make you get 3G.

 

[SR45]

Use this link for data coverage on multiple carriers


About cellular data usage

http://www.rootmetrics.com/map/

 

[sviato]

Pretty sure my edge speeds are faster than sprint 3g

 

[eclipse01]

In my area Sprint is no faster then VzN, but ATT blow them both out of the water, but then again I only pay $67 w/ Sprint for an Iphone, I cringe to think how much I would be paying anywhere else.

 

[drir1990]

Where I live (Phoenix, AZ), I get good speeds on Sprint. I switched from ATT and the speeds are definitely slower but how fast do we really need speeds on a phone? As long as I can surf the web and stream video and music without much lag, I don't care what the actual speeds are. And in caparison to Verizon, my brother-in-law has a Verizon iPhone and every time we have done speed tests side by side, the Sprint iPhone wins. I think people that are having issues with Sprint's speed are either expecting too high of speeds or are in an area that are poorly served by Sprint, in which case, they should consider switching to a carrier that would be more reliable for them. Here is a screen cap of a typical speed test for me.

 

[oscsjc]

Jacksonville, FL

Anyone know of speeds/signal in the greater Jacksonville, FL area?

 

[eclipse01]

Where I live (Phoenix, AZ), I get good speeds on Sprint. I switched from ATT and the speeds are definitely slower but how fast do we really need speeds on a phone? As long as I can surf the web and stream video and music without much lag, I don't care what the actual speeds are. And in caparison to Verizon, my brother-in-law has a Verizon iPhone and every time we have done speed tests side by side, the Sprint iPhone wins. I think people that are having issues with Sprint's speed are either expecting too high of speeds or are in an area that are poorly served by Sprint, in which case, they should consider switching to a carrier that would be more reliable for them. Here is a screen cap of a typical speed test for me.

That is pretty impressive, currently blows my speed out of the water!

 

[scaredpoet]

No surprise you're getting good speeds there. Arizona and the southwest (including Southwest Texas, all of New Mexico and parts of Washington and Nevada outside of Las Vegas) are probably the best areas for Sprint because they weren't originally owned by Sprint. That part of the network was deployed by Alamosa PCS, an old Sprint "network affiliate."

They did a way better job of building out and future-proofing their leg of the network than was done in most other areas, including the parts of the network owned by Sprint itself prior to the Nextel merger and affiliate buy-up.

 

[LoloBond]

There's nothing you can do. Sprint's data is just slow, it's not the phone that's the problem.

Wrong... the problem is a mix of towers and the phone and Sprint is working on it, but as always they wont tell anyone (no clue why), Verizon had a similar problem when they got the Iphone, ATT at least last time I check, like a year and half ago, speeds were crap in NY. With my wife's Epic I get 1.8mbps down and 500-900k up, but with my iphone sometimes I get that, but most of the time speeds are crap.


edit this is my iPhone speed at work after I complained for 2 weeks they came and update the tower.

 

[imeth]

Where I live (Phoenix, AZ), I get good speeds on Sprint. I switched from ATT and the speeds are definitely slower but how fast do we really need speeds on a phone? As long as I can surf the web and stream video and music without much lag, I don't care what the actual speeds are. And in caparison to Verizon, my brother-in-law has a Verizon iPhone and every time we have done speed tests side by side, the Sprint iPhone wins. I think people that are having issues with Sprint's speed are either expecting too high of speeds or are in an area that are poorly served by Sprint, in which case, they should consider switching to a carrier that would be more reliable for them. Here is a screen cap of a typical speed test for me.

I LAUGH.... THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL that ATT is slower than Sprint here.. I live in AZ as well PHX, TEMPE, Scottsdale, Laveen.. all over so I would know.. thank you very much

 

[NtotheIzoo]

I LAUGH.... THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL that ATT is slower than Sprint here.. I live in AZ as well PHX, TEMPE, Scottsdale, Laveen.. all over so I would know.. thank you very much

I'm fairly certain drir1990 is stating Sprint's speeds are definitely slower than ATT's, not the other way around.

 

[trajen]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

iPhone 4S with Sprint. SLC, Utah 200Kbps on average for download. You don't even want to know upload speed.

I emailed customer support and got the run-around. An hour later my phone lost service, regained service and I saw ~1.2Mbps speeds for a couple hours then went back to 200Kbps speeds.

File this under #firstworldproblems.

 

[ZombiePete]

Sprint's network is hit-or-miss. I had it for a year and was really disappointed in it most of the time, especially in urban areas. In the San Antonio I never knew what kind of connectivity I was going to have going from one place to another; at one of our most popular malls on the north side of town I had no 3G signal at all.

It was a tough pill to swallow after enjoying AT&T's network in its former headquarters town. I am glad I am back on AT&T, frankly. Sprint's technology and frequencies really limit how much they can fix the problem with 3G; I am pretty sure all their efforts will be focused on getting LTE up and running, and that is a battery killer. For doing stuff on my cell phone, it's hard to beat HSPA+.

 

[DesertSilver]

I was with Sprint for 13 years and left 1.5 weeks after the iPhone came out due to the data speeds I was experiencing. Whether it was due to the iPhone or not, something happened since I was regularly getting 1Mbps range with the Android phones it replaced. With my iPhone on Sprint, I NEVER saw above 400kbps with the SpeedTest app, with 4-5 bars. And I commonly was getting down to double digit numbers. See this thread for a post of my Sprint/Verizon side-by-side (literally phones next to each other) data speed comparisons.

My wife on the other hand didn't want to deal with switching carriers and "doesn't care about the data speeds" so she's still on Sprint with her iPhone. Sprint hasn't gotten much better in the couple months the iPhone has been out. I had to argue with the retentions people just to get a $15 credit to her account since I was informing them that the data speeds were not as advertised. And they claimed they could only do $15 because that was the "data portion" of the Everything plan, which was BS.

I stayed with Sprint for as long as I did because they treated me well and had great phones. Something changed, although not for everyone, when the iPhone came out though.

 

[drir1990]

I LAUGH.... THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL that ATT is slower than Sprint here.. I live in AZ as well PHX, TEMPE, Scottsdale, Laveen.. all over so I would know.. thank you very much

I was saying that Sprint is slower than AT&T. My boyfriend still has AT&T. The one thing I have noticed when comparing Sprint and AT&T is the ping speeds. The ping on AT&T (at least in the areas where we live) is significantly higher than Sprint.

 

[BizzyLeo]

Where I live (Phoenix, AZ), I get good speeds on Sprint. I switched from ATT and the speeds are definitely slower but how fast do we really need speeds on a phone? As long as I can surf the web and stream video and music without much lag, I don't care what the actual speeds are. And in caparison to Verizon, my brother-in-law has a Verizon iPhone and every time we have done speed tests side by side, the Sprint iPhone wins. I think people that are having issues with Sprint's speed are either expecting too high of speeds or are in an area that are poorly served by Sprint, in which case, they should consider switching to a carrier that would be more reliable for them. Here is a screen cap of a typical speed test for me.

I wish I could say the same. This is a screen cap of the WORST I've had with Sprint. Honestly it's hard to argue that my speed can get any worst...
At this point all I can do is laugh...or something

I believe that screen cap is from last week.

 

[SuperSnake2012]

Have you tried updating the phone's cell service? Go to the phone dialer, enter ##UPDATE# and press the send call button. It will update the phone. When it's finished, restart the phone and try it again. That helped me a little bit. This was done in the Bronx, NY:

The one at 18:04 was before doing the update, and the next two are after doing it.

 

[pilot1226]

Have you tried updating the phone's cell service? Go to the phone dialer, enter ##UPDATE# and press the send call button. It will update the phone. When it's finished, restart the phone and try it again. That helped me a little bit. This was done in the Bronx, NY:

The one at 18:04 was before doing the update, and the next two are after doing it.

Those speeds are pathetic considering how much you're paying for it. I've said/seen this a million times and I'll say it again: What good is unlimited data if you get 0.5 mbps down and up?

The worst of it is the fact that Sprint has the guff to demand I pay another $10 per month per line for a "Premium Data" surcharge.

 

[lordofthereef]

I LAUGH.... THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL that ATT is slower than Sprint here.. I live in AZ as well PHX, TEMPE, Scottsdale, Laveen.. all over so I would know.. thank you very much

I laugh, because as sure as you are of yourself, you lack reading comprehension skills.

----------

I was saying that Sprint is slower than AT&T. My boyfriend still has AT&T. The one thing I have noticed when comparing Sprint and AT&T is the ping speeds. The ping on AT&T (at least in the areas where we live) is significantly higher than Sprint.

FWIW ping (almost) doesn't matter, at least now at the speeds we are seeing, unless of course you are playing an online game over 3G. For the vast majority of data consumption, ping won't make much of a noticable difference.

 

[BizzyLeo]

Have you tried updating the phone's cell service? Go to the phone dialer, enter ##UPDATE# and press the send call button. It will update the phone. When it's finished, restart the phone and try it again. That helped me a little bit. This was done in the Bronx, NY:

The one at 18:04 was before doing the update, and the next two are after doing it.

I've done that quite a number of times, especially in the first 2 weeks after I got the phone. The most annoying part is that sometimes my data works well. And I get excited that I have a phone that works fast. And then just like that, I cannot even do a simple google search.

It's sad because my previous phone company, a humble little prepaid service that was not data friendly (Metro PCS) loaded data way faster than freakin' Sprint. It's those frustrating moments that make me regret getting the 4S. It also makes the phone look like a shiny piece of crap - though I know it's not the phone's fault. The battery is another issue which I can compromise, but Sprint's service is abominable. Even their customer service sucks [bajingo]!

 

[scaredpoet]

I've done that quite a number of times, especially in the first 2 weeks after I got the phone. The most annoying part is that sometimes my data works well. And I get excited that I have a phone that works fast. And then just like that, I cannot even do a simple google search.

It's not network settings. It's the network itself. Those bursts of fast just happen to be lucky periods when not much activity is going on and there's a little but of extra unused capacity.

The ##UPDATE# thing is a placebo. It has a use and does something, but that something is unrelated to data usage on the Sprint network itself. Sorry to say it, but it is what it is.

 

[SuperSnake2012]

It's not network settings. It's the network itself. Those bursts of fast just happen to be lucky periods when not much activity is going on and there's a little but of extra unused capacity.

The ##UPDATE# thing is a placebo. It has a use and does something, but that something is unrelated to data usage on the Sprint network itself. Sorry to say it, but it is what it is.

Maybe so, but I have been experiencing faster 3G speeds that are more along the lines of what I was getting on my Evo before upgrading to an iPhone.

 

[BizzyLeo]

It's not network settings. It's the network itself. Those bursts of fast just happen to be lucky periods when not much activity is going on and there's a little but of extra unused capacity.

The ##UPDATE# thing is a placebo. It has a use and does something, but that something is unrelated to data usage on the Sprint network itself. Sorry to say it, but it is what it is.

I figure this is true. I notice my speeds pick up a little more at night, after midnight. I still don't see it acceptable that I can't get the network to work for me at any other time of the day.
I don't expect the 3G speeds to be the fastest but I do expect it to get me info quick enough for me to not lose patience.

Wish there was something else I can do.