iPhone/AT&T question?

[jdubwaldo]

I think Sprint has upped the antie in terms of customer service, if I've needed to talk to someone, I've actually called and gotten a human, yahoo!  A heck of a lot better than my AT&T experience thus far.  With the new AT&T activation have realized they have "hours".  So late some evening I need help they are "closed", What is that!?!?

[mean]

I would personally go for the Droid or Eris on Verizon as a first choice, with Sprint HTC Hero as a second and a T-Mobile Cliq or MyTouch as distant third. I don't think the iPhone is going anywhere in the foreseeable future, but I would bet that Android is the way of the future. I have a feeling iPhone will be relegated to the status of 'Mac of the smartphone world' within a few years: an early pioneer and innovator eventually left in the dust by those who came after and copied them, with a not-insignificant, sometimes rabidly fanatical user base.

[shaffe]

Just pray every day that you never have to use their customer support or walk into one of their stores and that 5$ a month savings will sure seem like a great deal. 

#1, I have never had problems with Sprint customer service.

#2, the savings from ATT/Verizion plans to Sprint plans is a heck of a lot more than $5.  Consider that an individual can get an unlimited data and messaging plan at Sprint, with any mobile anytime, and 7:00 nighttime minutes, for $69.99.  At ATT for an iphone you're paying $89.99 for only 450 anytime minutes and 9:00 nighttime minutes.  A Verizion plan with 450 anytime minutes, unlimited data, 1500 text messages, and 9:00 nighttime minutes is $99.99 monthly.

[jdubwaldo]

shaffe - agree on this point.  Plus I get a 17% employee discount of some sort through my company on Sprint.  15% on Verizon, AT&T wouldn't match either.  The mobile to mobile is huge, we hardly call a landline of any sort, ever!

[shaffe]

If you can  manage to talk to the right person at Sprint, I was able to get a $20 monthly recurring credit for the next 24 months to extend my contract last week.  I then went out and purchased my hero that night using my phone upgrade eligibility.

Not being a Sprint customer right now I'm not sure of the avenue you'd go with, I went through Account Services via the *2 menu on my phone.  But if you got a hold of the right person I'd bet they would give you the same thing in order to add you/bring you back.

[geeman68]

In regards to the iPhone, I can only go by my friend's experiences.  Most of them enjoy the phone immensely but almost all of them get hodgepodge signal/3G/service depending on what they are doing. Most of them don't even go into the app store anymore because its just too damn full of crap but love the handful of apps they do have.  

I, myself am still with Sprint and have the Palm Pre.  I think its a great phone and if you use Facebook and Google services (email/calendar/contacts) works awesome as the phone natively syncs to those services.  I make any updates on my phone or on Google via the pc and they update each other.  I also enjoy the multitasking abilities and the included Sprint NAV.  I've never had to buy a seperate GPS unit.  

I will agree that for Sprint, if you want an Android phone, the Hero or the Moment are two great phones and I'm sure as time goes by even greater options will become available.  I am very happy with the Pre for its great form factor, a QWERTY keyboard and the Preware community.  Applications are growing each week and I'm looking forward to the next major hardware iteration for the WebOS.  

I think Verizon does have the best overall coverages, but they nickel and dime you to death and have just raised their termination fees as well as added additional charges for using the Droid.  I will never pay the rates at AT&T to use an iPhone but wish we had it on Sprint.  Good luck and have a great Christmas holiday!

[dublin]

Back in September, I was browsing in Best Buy and a phone salesman there said that Apple is moving the iPhone to Sprint in early 2010 due to Sprint's 4G network. I haven't heard anything about it since and kinda figured he was blowing smoke up my ass. Has anyone heard anything similar?

[im2kull]

I've had consistently excellent experiences at the downtown store. Customer service is what you make it.

I'll second that I think the HTC Hero is the best phone available right now, and I still contend that Sprint has a good network. Verizon's is obviously excellent, but they strip their phones. The HTC Touch Pro came to Verizon with a weaker processor and less memory. Besides, you can roam for free on most Sprint plans.

For what its worth, HTC's are some of the most well built phones right now.

Anyone here have the Droid?  That sucker must be like 5 pounds! It seriously is like a mini brick.

[dangerboy]

When looking at smart phones you need to take a hard look at the operating system.  While Palm's new WebOS and the Android OS are both improving rapidly, they still lag the iPhone OS in terms of speed and responsiveness.  Both have a noticeable lag between you pressing a button and the phone responding.  It's really is to type faster than the phone can keep up.  There can also be a bad lag when switching between applications or launching apps.  The Droid and Pre both suffer from this.

Android and WebOS should improve over time, but at the moment the iPhone is by far the most responsive and smoothest phone around.

[KC0KEK]

Next-gen iPhone speculation: www.i4u.com/article28787.html

[staubio]

When looking at smart phones you need to take a hard look at the operating system.  While Palm's new WebOS and the Android OS are both improving rapidly, they still lag the iPhone OS in terms of speed and responsiveness.  Both have a noticeable lag between you pressing a button and the phone responding.  It's really is to type faster than the phone can keep up.  There can also be a bad lag when switching between applications or launching apps.  The Droid and Pre both suffer from this.

Android and WebOS should improve over time, but at the moment the iPhone is by far the most responsive and smoothest phone around.

...and it achieves that by simply not doing some important things like, oh, multitasking.

[DaveKCMO]

the samsung moment is a complete disaster (bulky, awkward keyboard, port covers). if you must have a keyboard and android, get the droid (for the same price!). otherwise, please wait... sprint will have a lot more android choices in 2010.

as for the future of the iphone, i will tell you that nearly every company we talk to puts that platform at the top of the list for development. will that wane as quickly as it arrived? perhaps, but i wouldn't count on it. android and blackberry are neck and neck right now, but android clearly has the edge since google's app store is pretty much unrestricted (RIM is still far too fussy). the challenge will be whether the android platform becomes too customizable so that everyone's phones start to look (and act) like myspace layouts or windows 95 themes.

also, the iphone is available worldwide in pretty much the exact same form factor, which adds to recognition and the overall brand.

palm simply misfired and will probably not recover unless they go back to making hardware that runs other operating systems (like android). the exclusion of wifi on the pixi has pretty much sealed their fate as bit player.

[KC0KEK]

When looking at smart phones you need to take a hard look at the operating system.  While Palm's new WebOS and the Android OS are both improving rapidly, they still lag the iPhone OS in terms of speed and responsiveness.  Both have a noticeable lag between you pressing a button and the phone responding.  It's really is to type faster than the phone can keep up.  There can also be a bad lag when switching between applications or launching apps.  The Droid and Pre both suffer from this.

In some cases, it's not just the OS at fault, but also the GUI (e.g., TouchFLO) that some handset vendors layer atop the OS in order to differentiate their smartphones from rival handsets running the same OS. These GUIs mean more work for the processor, making performance even more sluggish than when running just the stock OS. That's why I disabled TouchFLO on my HTC Touch Pro a few months after I got it.

One example of how bad and widespread the GUI problem is: Googling "+TouchFLO +sluggish" yields more than 90,000 hits, and ""+TouchWiz +sluggish" gets about 67,000.

[staubio]

In some cases, it's not just the OS at fault, but also the GUI (e.g., TouchFLO) that some handset vendors layer atop the OS in order to differentiate their smartphones from rival handsets running the same OS. These GUIs mean more work for the processor, making performance even more sluggish than when running just the stock OS. That's why I disabled TouchFLO on my HTC Touch Pro a few months after I got it.

One example of how bad and widespread the GUI problem is: Googling "+TouchFLO +sluggish" yields more than 90,000 hits, and ""+TouchWiz +sluggish" gets about 67,000.

And a lot of this can be tinkered with, which is a blessing and a curse of more open operating systems. With Windows Mobile, you can load any number of new ROMs. A little-publicized HTC ROM update cleared up most of the lag issues with TouchFLO and it is super fast. You can put any number of additional customizations in piecemeal. Android is probably headed that direction too.

Of course, if you want something that "just works" it isn't a dream come true.

[KC0KEK]

A little-publicized HTC ROM update cleared up most of the lag issues with TouchFLO and it is super fast.

Which one? I might try it. I've seen a few on HTC's Web site, plus there are a ton of homemade ones floating around on sites such as SprintUsers, but I've never gotten around to trying them because I'm actually pretty satisfied with Windows Mobile 6.1 as it is.

And is there a chance of bricking the phone? Or will a hard reset wipe a bad ROM and automatically fetch the latest one from the carrier?

[staubio]

Which one? I might try it. I've seen a few on HTC's Web site, plus there are a ton of homemade ones floating around on sites such as SprintUsers, but I've never gotten around to trying them because I'm actually pretty satisfied with Windows Mobile 6.1 as it is.

And is there a chance of bricking the phone? Or will a hard reset wipe a bad ROM and automatically fetch the latest one from the carrier?

Well, it is an official release, so it is supported. No problems for me. There isn't an auto-recover function like you mention, though, so if it failed right after clearing the old ROM before flashing the new one, I'm guessing it could break, but I've read the forums and there are very, very few issues.

http://www.htc.com/us/SupportDownload.a ... &dl_id=683

[mean]

And a lot of this can be tinkered with, which is a blessing and a curse of more open operating systems. With Windows Mobile, you can load any number of new ROMs. A little-publicized HTC ROM update cleared up most of the lag issues with TouchFLO and it is super fast. You can put any number of additional customizations in piecemeal. Android is probably headed that direction too.

Ala CyanogenMod?

[ShowME]

Sprint Employee Referral Offer Pricing.  www.sprint.com/sero  If anyone is interested send me a PM and I'll reply back with a buddy of mine's email address and last digits of his employee ID. 

Everything Plus? Data - with Any Mobile, AnytimeSM
Introducing Any Mobile, Anytime, forget about restrictive calling circles. Our Everything Data plans give you unlimited data, messages and calls to any mobile, anytime while on the Sprint Network. That?s access to over 250 million U.S. mobile phones nationwide.

This plan includes
Any Mobile, Anytime: Unlimited domestic calls from the Sprint network to and from ANY U.S. mobile phone regardless of carrier. Any network, any time.
Data: Web surfing, email, GPS Navigation, Sprint Music Premier, Sprint TV Premier, BlackBerry Internet Services (BIS)
Direct Connect: Direct Connect and Group Connect (for capable phones)
Messages: Text, pictures and video
Talk: Night calling and weekends starting at 7 p.m., nationwide long distance and no roaming charges
More about what?s included in this plan

  Anytime Minutes  Monthly Price  Additional Anytime Minutes   
    500  $59.99  45?/min     
    1000  $79.99  40?/min 


Everything Plus? Data Family - with Any Mobile, AnytimeSM
Introducing Any Mobile, Anytime, forget about restrictive calling circles. Our Everything Data plans give you unlimited data, messages and calls to any mobile, anytime while on the Sprint Network. That?s access to over 250 million U.S. mobile phones nationwide.

This plan includes
Any Mobile, Anytime: Unlimited domestic calls from the Sprint network to and from ANY U.S. mobile phone regardless of carrier. Any network, any time.
Unlimited data: Web surfing, email, BlackBerry Internet Services (BIS), GPS Navigation, Music Premier, TV Premier, NFL Mobile Live and NASCAR Sprint Cup MobileSM
Unlimited messaging: Text, pictures and video
Talk: Night calling and weekends starting at 7 p.m., nationwide long distance and no roaming charges
Lines 1-2 included. Lines 3-5 are $14.99/mo./line
Additional plan options:
Unlimited Nights & Weekends

Unlimited Nights & Weekends starting at 7pm! - $0.00

Nights and Weekends starting at 6PM - $10.00
  Anytime Minutes  Monthly Price  Additional Anytime Minutes  Lines   
    1600  $109.99  40?/min   
    3200  $149.99  25?/min   
 

[KC0KEK]

I've had Sprint's SERO plan for a few years. It rocks. I see that the rates have increased, but they've also added a bunch of services.

[Pork Chop]

Verizon won't get the iPhone for at least another year or two, once they switch over from the old CDMA network to GSM. Apple isn't going to create a CDMA phone just for Verizon when 75% of the planet uses GSM and Verizon is going that way anyway.

Verizon is not switching over to GSM they are going to use LTE for their 4G network, which is not GSM.