[Sprint HTC One (M8)] bigblueshock:
Hello,

Just a FYI, this is NOT a direct rant or rave. I believe these are obvious facts. Just wanted to see peoples thoughts.

I am from New York. I mainly work in the 5 boroughs in NY, Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island, Queens, and Manhattan, and I live in Long Island. I have been through the 3G, 4G wimax, and 4G LTE Transition. I have also been through multiple phones. HTC Evo 4G, HTC Evo 4G LTE, HTC One (M7), and HTC One (M8).

Unfortunately when driving around, all the LTE phones dropped back to 3G way too often. I assume this is because some towers have not been LTE upgraded yet, weak spots, and I may be driving past those towers with no LTE.

I gave the M8 a shot and it helped with the Tri-Band Spark (connecting to the 800 mhz spectrum when the 1900 was out of range). I understand Spark roll out isn't complete yet. A prime example is driving around and having Pandora internet radio cut out because the phone loves to swap between 3G and 4G when there is a weak 4G signal. Pandora is NOT critical, it's just the principle of the matter if it cutting out. I will not rave about any other carriers, but let's be honest, there's some carriers out there where you could drive around ALL day long, go inside buildings, etc, and not loose LTE once.

The situation was all too common where I would be in a mall, or large store (such as walmart or sears) trying to look up something in the store on my phone. Not only would it be on 3G but pages would not load. Indoors in a mall or a store I almost never was able to acquire 4G. Only in Spark areas where I would actually hit the 800mhz spectrum.

Also another example. Yankee Stadium in the Bronx which is outdoors, Address 1 E 161st St, Bronx, NY 10451. My friends have different carriers and I wanted to rave about sprint's new Spark service on my HTC M8. Both times I was there I got FULL LTE service, but it was completely unusable. Webpages would not load, speedtests would not work at all, and I was laughed at. Changed phone to CDMA Only mode and webpages actually loaded, but barely. I know it wasn't the phone because LTE worked at home in Long Island with no problem. I had the most up to date software on my phone at the time.

The M8 was my last hurrah with Sprint for now. Here is the main flaw in my book. Spark would need to have strategically picked the frequency band with the best speed, but I guess that's not possible. It's counter productive for my phone to be connecting to a Band 41-2600MHz frequency with weak signal/slow speeds, over a Band 25-1900MHz signal. It's also counter productive for my phone to be connecting to Band 25-1900 MHz spectrum with slow speeds over a Band 26-800mhz with high speeds. I was in a hotel for a few weeks at a time in a Spark enabled area. I was near a window getting LTE Band 25-1900MHz and only pulling about 1.5 mbps. I strategically had to put my phone further into the hotel room away from a window to obtain Band 26-800 mhz which gave me over 10MBPS!

I will miss Sprint. I liked them, they had great customer service, and I may come back in a couple of years when New York / 5 boroughs are fully ready. Network Vision has definitely improved speed and coverage, just not how I expected yet.