[Motorola Photon 4G] bitbang3r:
Return the Photon, and run away from Sprint until Network Vision is imminent for your city. There's no good reason to subject yourself to Sprint or Motorola right now.

Let's start with Sprint. Right now, their 3G is in a state of collapse nationwide. "5 bars and 50kbps" is only an exaggeration in the sense that lots of guys now routinely see speeds that are LOWER. And in most places, it's going to get a LOT worse before it gets any better. The icing on the cake is that if your area's upgrade experience is anything like the experience they had in Houston, and we're having now in South Florida, 3G data will basically cease to exist for a month or more while they're doing the upgrade itself. With a wimax-capable phone, it's annoying, but semi-endurable with the knowledge that it's going to be a lot better in another month or two. With a LTE phone, you basically have no working data service during the transition. No working 3G, and no wimax to limp along with in the meantime.

Believe it or not, in some areas, guys who've disabled EVDO and forced their phones to use 1xRTT have been getting faster throughput than EVDO (due to the way traffic is routed on Sprint's back end).

Now, the Photon itself. If you don't mind owning a phone that's a locked-down consumer appliance with about as much potential for end-user enhancement as an iPhone, it's a nice phone. Otherwise, you're going to hate it.

Don't try to rationalize the purchase by thinking someone will crack the bootloader eventually. They won't. Yes, HTC and Samsung's attempts at locked bootloaders have been quickly cracked. That's because HTC and Samsung go through the motions, but don't really know how to do it... nor do they really WANT to do it. Motorola is another matter entirely. It's their religion and way of life. They have decades of experience making hardware with military-grade encryption. Spend an hour or two reading about real custom ROMs on real Motorola phones, and let it sink in just how grim the situation really is. In 3 years, maybe 4 Motorola phones have been meaningfully unlocked... and two of THEM were semi-open to begin with. The remainder have either been uncrackable, or have temporary solutions that can be taken away by Motorola at any time... possibly, without your permission.

We all hope Google will clean house, make Motorola non-evil, and unlock the bootloaders. If that's their plan, they've done a great job of keeping it a secret so far.

This is harsh, but assuming you're still within the 15-day return period and can walk away from the Photon and Sprint without penalty... do it. You have nothing to gain by choosing Sprint today. If you're in an area where T-Mobile is good, they're probably your best bet today. If you can live with 100 voice minutes (no free nights/weekends, either), T-Mo has prepaid for $30/month with 100 minutes voice, unlimited text, and 5 gigabytes of data (after 5 gigs, speeds drop down to EDGE). If you like the Gnex, you can buy an unlocked GSM Galaxy Nexus from Google for $350.

If you want to keep the door open to Sprint, maybe you can get a year-old Sprint phone like the Galaxy S2 and reflash it to Metro PCS (I'm pretty sure the Gnex and GS3 will be Metro-able soon, but I'm pretty sure neither one is Metro-flashable yet). Stay away from Virgin, though... they use Sprint towers and backhaul, and are as dysfunctional as Sprint right now.

Choosing betweeen AT&T and Verizon is kind of like choosing between death by firing squad and electric chair, but AT&T is probably a tiny, tiny bit less bad just because at least you can use an unlocked GSM phone with AT&T and avoid most of their blatant control attempts. I'm totally sure about the specific ways Verizon defiled and tainted their Nexus, but I've heard a Verizon Gnex reflashed with non-Verizon ROM is basically a wifi tablet that can make voice calls.