So, some more comparisons between my wife's 6+ and my 7+ on T-mobile after my clean 10.3.1 install:
1) at home, LTE voice calls seemed to do better (other person said I wasn't cutting in and out like previously)
2) calling while at Target with my 7+ the other person said I was still cutting in and out a lot
3) while at Target my 7+ really struggled loading a web page...wouldn't open anything with LTE on..turned LTE off, and 4g also struggled but did better
4) with my 7+ it took 4-5 minutes to send a picture in a text...receiving a picture gave me the "downloading icon," and that took about 3-4 minutes also
5) sending regular texts struggled also (taking 1-2 minutes)
6) as soon as I stepped out of Target my 7+ did well
7) with my wife's 6+ browsing was much better with LTE even on..took about 3-4 seconds for pages to load
8) texts seem to send pretty quickly on her 6+
9) the person on other send said I sounded better/clear/no cutting in and out
I'm no cell phone techie, but my little takeaway is that the 6+ performs better than my 7+ with Intel. I believe T-mobile struggles inside buildings anyways, but the 6+ is able to perform better with bad reception.
It's unfortunate that my brand new 7+ performs like this. I came from AT&T & was using the 6 with no issues.
Now I can't make up my mind what to do -- still owe over $600 for this 7+ to T-mobile:
- just settle for this crappy performance,
- buy the Qualcomm outright/full price to see if it does better, pay off this 7+, and then sell it somewhere
- or pay off this phone, switch to AT&T, keep this phone, and see if it performs better
Advice appreciated!