Not necessarily. We don't know how far along Sprint has gotten with their Network Vision project rollout. They have been spending billions of dollars doing a comprehensive upgrade of their network -- both towers and backhaul -- over the past year or so. Sprint EvDO was actually suffering some performance problems around the early part of this year, but those have gone away as the work has continued. I think they might actually be well positioned to take on substantial extra load now, even if it goes through a few growing pains at the early stages. Also the other big thing about Network Vision is the new tower baseband chipsets with SDR (software-defined radio) that allow them to switch from, for example, WiMAX to LTE when they want to (and rumors are that they will actually start LTE rollout early next year). As to your point about data speeds, the typical EvDO speeds are no worse than any other EvDO network around the world, Verizon included. Anyone who knows a thing or two about mobile broadband knows that HSPA has always provided superior throughput to EvDO and is more expandable (AT&T currently goes up to 21mbps HSPA+, T-Mobile does as high as 42mbps). EvDO just has the edge in spectrum efficiency. Speaking of spectrum -- unlike AT&T which has major spectrum issues, Sprint does not have any such problems. If you will recall -- they have that fat juicy 800MHz band they got from Nextel (the only silver lining from that horrible acquisition), and they are in fact starting to phase out iDEN so that leaves that wide open for both CDMA and LTE usage. Even the Galaxy S II they just released already includes support for CDMA 1x on the 800MHz band. So in summary -- I think your concerns for Sprint's network are way overblown. Their #1 problem right now is getting subscribers. That is problem 1A, 1B and 1C for them. That is why they are so desperate to prevent the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, and that is why the iPhone is so important to them.
Yes, Sprint has been making upgrades to their network, and I'm sure it will help. I'm overblowing it with regards to them actually being able to sell all those iPhones they are rumored to get, or however many they may be aiming for. Another reason why I feel like this is because I'm assuming this phone will be a 3G phone with support for the current Sprint network. Isn't CDMA 1x on the 800mhz band for most Sprint phones since they have the roaming agreement with Verizon for analog? I never really commented on HSPA+ but I guess my problem is that it's not very good in the states compared to other countries where HSPA+is actually decent, but I specifically commented on real world EVDO speeds for Sprint. I used to be a customer and know of alot of people with Sprint. I think it's fair to say real world speeds with Sprint may vary. Later things will be different as you stated due to that spectrum they have, but I want to see how they handle transitioning everyone to LTE. The more WI-MAX devices they continue to sell, the longer they have to maintain that network. Which you can't deny man, it sucks. I know the problem isn't really with WI-MAX, as if utilized properly on the right spectrum, it can be great. I see dark clouds for Sprint not just exactly on the technical stand point. Alot of their customers come for the pre-paid cluster of multiple brands that serve as MVNO's. If Sprint can handle the next couple of years correctly, they can become prominent again. LTE shall help, I'm just wondering if they're going to deploy their own, or share with Lightsquared? Or both? lol
I hope so. My gf just got unlimited everything with Verizon for $20 a month (employee plan) and got a Charge? And that damn thing got 15mb/s down and 5mb/s up on speedtest.net app. My evo was just under 2mb down.
However in the case of iPhone they are all stuck using whatever version of WebKit safari is. The iPhone 5 is going to have a monster of a gpu that is going to crush even the gs2.
If anyone is stuck in class like I will be during the event, gizmondo will have a live blog that automatically updates with info from the event. http://live.gizmodo.com/
would be classic if this thread was moved to d&d. anyhow, it'll be fun to see what apple has in store today. partner plans on preordering to finally upgrade his iphone (1st gen operating on at&t's edge). utterly ridiculous if the sprint exclusive rumor is true.
WebKit is an open source project, and was not invented by Apple -- it was actually originally based on the KHTML project (from the KDE web browser). WebKit browsers do not depend on Safari.
How so? It would be no different if Jobs were giving the presentation. We would be 45 minutes in with still no phone announcement.
