[entropism]

Here, from an employee (me): Sprint will NEVER activate a phone that doesn't have a Sprint logo on it. Simple, end of story. Trust me, I wish I could get around it on a few phones, but it's not happening.

As for coverage, especially in NYC: I've been with Sprint for a loooong time, and I worked in NYC for the majority of that time. I've had about 5 dropped calls total in about 10 years that were due to MY phone. And no, I'm not using the phone for about 100 minutes per month, there were times I was using 4000+ minutes per month for work.