No 4G? What Gives?

[Squirrelxss]

Ok man, do u work for sprint, because your pitch has me on sprint's website about to pull the trigger.

[skidaddy]

Sprint is charged $4.46 fee for every 4G phone by partner / subsidiary Clearwire. Do a search, it is quite the corporate soap opera. This translates to the $10 fee Sprint charges all 4G handset, whether or not you live in 4G service area. Makes sense as phones do roam. My market just went CDMA in last year. Live in the mountains so don’t even get coverage at home (do have nice views though) use a Airave 1xRTT, nice for voice and text. So if I get a phone without 4G over two years I save $240 for something I will have little opportunity to use. Guess I could play around with Wi-Fi but lots of features only work on the Sprint network.

Only questions will Sprint additional $10 surcharge my $30 Sero plan for a “smart phone”. My Windows 6.5 Samsung Intrepid or for that matter TP2 do not. This would be another $240, it adds up.

[chardog]

4g is not needed. if speed is such a concern, jump on wifi. Sure you wont have wifi on the go, but how often do you NEED it? 3/5's of my work is from remote locations. it's not hard finding a play with wifi to use my connections. Even 3g tether is enough to remote into other systems to do your work. I guess if you're doing a lot of mobile downloads, then you'll need 4g, but who the heck does that?

[smu]

Originally Posted by chardog

4g is not needed. if speed is such a concern, jump on wifi. Sure you wont have wifi on the go, but how often do you NEED it? 3/5's of my work is from remote locations. it's not hard finding a play with wifi to use my connections. Even 3g tether is enough to remote into other systems to do your work. I guess if you're doing a lot of mobile downloads, then you'll need 4g, but who the heck does that?

I agree...I posted in the Epic forum (my wife has the Epic) that I was less than impressed with 4G. For what people normally do with a phone, 4G is next to useless. 4G sucks the battery dry, so the phone keeps 4G turned off as much as possible. By the time you factor in the latency to turn on 4G to download a mobile website or sync your mail, you might as well not even have it. Even tethering isn't faster unless you are streaming video or doing BitTorrent, which we don't do...so while I don't doubt that 4G is wonderful for those of you who:
1.) Are streaming Internet TV/Netflix to your phone all day long
2.) Are doing constant torrents
3.) Have a small, portable nuclear power plant
4.) Have it constantly plugged in to the wall (really mobile, lol)
But for the average user, its current incarnation is more of a gimmick than a necessity, more or less like iPhone people bragging about having over 100k apps when they use about 10 regularly. An app/feature unused is a useless app/feature for the person in question.

As for those saying the extra $10 a month is "no big deal", well, I'm glad that you're either:
a.) made out of money and are completely innured to high monthly charges
b.) getting fully reimbursed or pre-paid by your company for your cell service
c.) don't remember the days when cell plans were only $20 a month (agreed, text and Internet were not available back then, but still...you're talking about 3.5x the price)
As for myself, I don't want to pay for a feature that is ostensibly useless to me...and because Sprint didn't have enough chutzpah to negotiate a better deal with Clearwire. Since most people keep phones about a year, I would have rather Sprint charge an extra $50 for the handset to offset the cost rather than nickel-and-dime me for "crab and shrimp at the buffet" when I'm allergic to shellfish.

I'm not trying to start a flame war or disrespect those of you who are okay with paying the extra money, I'm just trying to explain why some of us have a real problem with the fee and why we don't think it's a problem if the 7 Pro doesn't have 4G.

[brownhornet]

Originally Posted by chardog

4g is not needed. if speed is such a concern, jump on wifi. Sure you wont have wifi on the go, but how often do you NEED it? 3/5's of my work is from remote locations. it's not hard finding a play with wifi to use my connections. Even 3g tether is enough to remote into other systems to do your work. I guess if you're doing a lot of mobile downloads, then you'll need 4g, but who the heck does that?

4G is not needed for YOU... but when you work a job where youre mobile a lot of the day with a laptop and having to use a mifi for a connection, 1-2 megs vs 10-12 is PLENTY of reason why 4G is NEEDED for me. I dont have the luxury of sitting in an office. Then again its easy to say its not needed when its not available for you.

[skidaddy]

Looks like those of us who were holding out to see if SERO or other grandfathered plan could get this phone without the “smart phone” $10 fee got out an answer. Effective Feb 1 all smart phone new activations will get the surcharge though it will cover 4G. Unlikely any will ship before that.

One thing I’ve also heard reported is that this fee will apply to any activation so if you switch phones as I use a older Sanyo that has a great radio for voice in the fringe areas that newer phones don’t cover well. Switch back to my Intrepid and gotcha.

Will have to decide if I want to upgrade by April Fool’s Day when a new set of rules comes in for Premier phone upgrades.

Great ride while it lasted however I use the phone very little on the network. There does not seem to be a plan for someone who want a Smartphone when traveling occasionally for email and limited web.

[Phenom1211]

This has been indirectly stated a couple times in this thread, but I wanted to expressly point it out on the off chance that anyone isn't aware of it. While it appeared to be in the beginning, the $10 extra fee is not only for 4G capable devices. So don't think just because the newly christened HTC Arrive doesn't have WiMax means you'll be able to avoid this charge. The fact is, any new activations of this or any other smartphone starting January 30th WILL be charged the fee.

As I mentioned before, this isn't breaking news in the slightest, but just in case here's a link to one (of surely) many blog posts detailing the change.

Sprint notices you're using data, is adding $10/month fee to all smartphones

P.S.
On a more directly thread-related note, I am also inexpressibly disappointed at the lack of WiMax on the Arrive. It's a deal breaker for me as although my profile lists my location as Duluth, I spend a great deal of time in the Minneapolis area and would love to be able to utilize the 4G there.

[yankees45us]

Sero customers luck out with this phone. They were paying the $10 charge anyway if they wanted an android or webos phone. Now they can have a wp7 phone for only $40 a month. I may get this phone for my wifes sero plan. She hasn't had a smartphone since the palm centro.

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[tiny17]

Originally Posted by yankees45us

Sero customers luck out with this phone. They were paying the $10 charge anyway if they wanted an android or webos phone. Now they can have a wp7 phone for only $40 a month. I may get this phone for my wifes sero plan. She hasn't had a smartphone since the palm centro.

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Stealth Guards

SERO users will be forced to pay $50 total a month for this phone. If my Diamond wasn't so sketchy, I would hold out forever. Free wifi hotspot and tons of other features @ $30 month can't beat.

[tiny17]

I am actually glad about it not being 4g because the current generation of 4g chips kill battery life. I would rather have my battery life coupled with the slower speeds of 3g then be with a dead phone halfway through the day.