Sprint?

Peen

My wife and I are strongly considering switching away from AT&T because their crappy network is bumming us out. We're thinking right now about Sprint but don't know anyone that has them. Has anybody on here had great experiences with them? Bad?

jefe414

Where do you live? In Southern CT they have spotty reception.

Sentry

Sprint was the worst cell phone company I ever had. I couldn't get a signal with them if I were standing on the roof of their headquarters humping their transmitter.
I have AT&T now, and the only thing that keeps me from hating it is my experience with Sprint. Do you get what I'm saying? Sprint made AT&T seem awesome.

Tox

I have Boost which runs on the Sprint network. The only issues I have are that in certain buildings (like Walmarts) I have no signal. It might be worth looking into Boost, you can get their unlimited everything plan (except data) for $50, and there's no contract. The downside is you buy the phones outright up front, so it's more of a hit initially, but over the course of two years, the phone pays for itself.

Djeet

Live in Austin and stay in metro area mostly. Coverage seems as wide/deep as AT&T (some hilly spots in a certain section of highway are in and out for any provider as well as in some building/areas of built up complexes). Had a lot more failed/dropped calls with AT&T. Call quality was about the same. 3G was faster than AT&T's data, but not sure if there've been data infrastructure upgrades to AT&T in the past 14 months I've been with Sprint. Loving saving $50/month for family plan (2 phones) and genuine unlimited data.


Edit: W/r/to 4G, I've an EVO and turning on 4G on this thing will mean the battery will last only 3-4 hours, so I never use it unless I'm debugging a problem with my data connection (e.g. hmmm ... internet's slow, I'll turn on and off 4G and see what happens). My wife's got a galaxy S 2 and she says 4G doesn't really run her battery down too bad.

The Crowing One

I use a Sprint 3G/4G dongle for work while I travel. I go all over the country, and so far my co-workers and I have found a handful of places where it actually gets 4G service. For me it has been downtown Boston and Manhattan. Nowhere else, and we travel quite a lot.

Phives

From what I've heard Sprint has the smallest network of the major providers. I have them though and live in Indianapolis and I really haven't had any issues with them except they don't really have 4G in most places.

Peen

Thanks for the responses so far guys. I live in Philly and I'm not really worried about coverage. I'm more interested in reliability and customer service.

The Crowing One

I have two phones on Verizon and my network card on Sprint. I tend to do a lot of work out of the Philly area, and I have yet to find Sprint's 4G network around there. My Verizon phones always have top notch service, and I've had a number of times when I had issues with phones/service that Verizon has taken care of without too much of a squeaky wheel (both hardware and plan issues). The lack of the unlimited data on Verizon is a limiting factor (I'm grandfathered into the good plan), but it depends on how much data you need/want.

I can say that Verizon isn't the best, but I've been immensely happy with them for what they are. If you follow tech news, you'll see that Sprint and a few other carriers have been in deep water recently because they've installed keylogging spyware on their phones. Verizon is confirmed not to be running the software in question.

Sentry

Peen wrote:

Thanks for the responses so far guys. I live in Philly and I'm not really worried about coverage. I'm more interested in reliability and customer service.

Yeah. I live in Phoenix, the fifth largest city in the country and I could never get a signal, so, yeah...

Thanatos

I am on Sprint, I live in Seattle, and I get better service with my phone than most of my friends who have AT&T.

They're the cheapest of the big 4, but they have a reputation for having bad customer service (though, the handful of times I've had to deal with them, they've been just fine).

Lindsay Lohan

I'm on Sprint in Maine and they're the best cell provider we've had. Their priced pretty well, the unlimited plans are nice and I've had nothing but the best customer service from them. We've had US Cellular, Verizon and TMobile prior and I'm happiest with Sprint.

L Ron Howard

I have Sprint. I've had them for like four months now. No real issues here. But my phone is the first smart phone I've ever had.

Darkewolfe

I have Sprint for the unlimited data. I've had Verizon and AT&T. The coverage is still spotty, even in the heart of DC. The 4G coverage is pretty lame. The customer service is immensely better, though, and it's slightly cheaper even with an unlimited data option. I probably won't bother to renew with Sprint next time I up, even though I like them as a company better, just because I don't think the $30 or so a month I save is worth the 50% call drop rate I get and the almost non-existent 4g coverage.

Dehumanized

the cool thing about sprint is they are slightly cheaper and even though their network coverage isn't as good as att/verizon, they have essentially unlimited free roaming on verizon towers (2G only, though), so you are almost never out of voice/texting service

the bad thing is they have a reputation for bad customer service. hasn't bitten me yet :bz

also they don't throttle/cap data usage which is cool

MushroomStick

I live in the Chicago area, Sprint has never dropped a call on me, and 4g nets me 8 - 12Mbps on speedtests. Sometimes the 3g gets a little slow when in a super crowded area (the 3g is still plenty fast enough to stream netflix by my relatives' houses in Galena though). If you do decide to go with Sprint, I recommend any of the Evo phones.

The Crowing One

MushroomStick wrote:

If you do decide to go with Sprint, I recommend any of the Evo phones.

Pppshaw. Galaxy Nexus is gonna be second to none.

Dehumanized

sprint hasn't picked up the galaxy nexus yet

MushroomStick

Did Samsung ever start updating the software on their phones? In a timely fashion, I mean. A few weeks ago a guy at work said his Epic still didn't have gingerbread yet.

SmokeStacks

I had Sprint a little over a year ago. I never had any issues with dropped calls, and this was using an ancient Palm Treo 755p. I live in a capital city with a population of around 200,000 and the only place I have ever had issues with reception was inside of walmarts and warehouses. basically, any giant metal enclosure.

Unlimited data usage was a goddamn godsend, since I would tether my phone and use it as a 3G modem when I was in the field.

Sprint should have some kind of trial period, so if you sign up for service you'll be able to test their network out before being committed. Alternately, you could always buy a cheap CDMA phone off of craigslist, activate it with Sprint, and not have to worry about a contract at all.

MushroomStick

I think you can bail within the first 30 days without any penalties.

TraceofToxin

I've had Sprint for 5+ years.

0 problems.

I've travelled all over the country and never lost service when someone else still had it.

I don't use 3g much though, primarily texting/calling.

Only dropped calls inside military facilities or when trying to call from the middle of nowhere.

MisterGrok

I lived in the San Francisco area and just recently moved to Upstate NY. I had incredible reception up until I got north of Delaware., I often find myself on roaming or only at a couple bars. The 4G has been pretty useless, I have an Evo, and I believe the last city I was in that got me 4G reception was Austin. (I drove through on my way to NY.) However, calls still drop far more rarely than AT&T ever did for me when I was in San Francisco.

MichaelLC

MushroomStick wrote:

I live in the Chicago area, Sprint has never dropped a call on me, and 4g nets me 8 - 12Mbps on speedtests. Sometimes the 3g gets a little slow when in a super crowded area (the 3g is still plenty fast enough to stream netflix by my relatives' houses in Galena though). If you do decide to go with Sprint, I recommend any of the Evo phones.

Yeah, Sprint has been good here in Chicago for me too. CS is crap, but we never really deal with them. I've got an Opitmus S (low-end Android) and wife has a Blackberry Pearl, which she's finally dumping next month.