Smartphones

xadion_sl said:

Coverage has never been an issue with me on Sprint- its building penetration that is terribad

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Yep, thus the end of my parenthetical statement - wonder if Tarrant still pokes around this thread (and/or he's still in the loop with Sprint stuff), supposedly Sprint is getting access to a band or two with better penetration "soon" but no idea how soon that is.

[And got WAY worse moving to hurricane territory - even though hurricanes are rare to hit this county, everything is still built with the same cinderblock reinforcement which seems to block even worse]

Sprint is sitting on tons of spectrum from nextel but they need to build out the infrastructure to use it. Their current signals use high frequency's which allow great distance propagation but suck with penetration. It's not as simple as swapping out 700mhz on these towers as they have half or fewer than they need to properly deploy on a lower frequency without dead zones.

I believe there are other issues as well with using those nextel bands.

Kedwyn_sl said:

Sprint is sitting on tons of spectrum from nextel but they need to build out the infrastructure to use it. Their current signals use high frequency's which allow great distance propagation but suck with penetration. It's not as simple as swapping out 700mhz on these towers as they have half or fewer than they need to properly deploy on a lower frequency without dead zones.

I believe there are other issues as well with using those nextel bands.

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Well, once they switch I know I'll be covered in my case though - 90% of my life I stick to Merritt Island, and the island is 2-3 miles across for everything except Tropical Trail. With a tower almost dead center on the island.

http://www.cnet.com/products/samsung-galaxy-s6/

Other upgrades force uncomfortable tradeoffs. The S6 and S6 Edge lack a removable battery and a microSD card slot, not to mention the Galaxy S5's waterproofing. Meanwhile, the curved strips of screen that make up the Edge's borders do so little compared to the Note Edge's screen that it's hard to justify their existence other than giving you something to do with those curved edges. And Samsung's own untested Exynos processor (versus the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 that will be found in most of its high-end Android rivals) is a performance wild card. (We'll test it when we write our future full review.)

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well fuck..i guess i'll be holding on to my s5 a bit longer.

That glass bevel edge seems largely pointless on the S6 and prone to damage.

Goddamnit Samsung, the S6 is so underwhelming, please make the Note 5 be this to make up for it:

That is a mockup I'm sure, and would cost $2k+ to buy if it ever became real.

They've been expanding their 800mhz spectrum, which is the spectrum you need to penetrate into buildings.Sprint planning large network expansion adding 9,000 new LTE sites nationwide - Sprint 4G Rollout Updates

Alkorin_sl said:

I'm sure that's what they said about the iPhone before it was released, and now we've got $50 Chinese knockoffs that are basically functionally identical.

All things in time.

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Oh I'll believe it in time - but that bend would be so problematic with current items right now, even if it's just a very skinny joint it would be - much less an actual foldable screen.

joeboo_sl said:

Goddamnit Samsung, the S6 is so underwhelming, please make the Note 5 be this to make up for it:

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I wonder how many bends it could take before you start to see wear. The idea is interesting but it would have to last 2 years to really be useful.

Exactly Selix - it's still sci-fi or unaffordable possibility for the mass market right now from a practical use standpoint.

Bendable/flexible OLEDs are definitely around, but I don't know how extremely they can be bent. I'm assuming they have to stop well before being folded completely in half. You never see a picture of one that's bent much further than "U"-shaped

Wow, the S6 has no micro SD slot?



I was planning on picking one up this week. Damn. I'm still rocking the Galaxy S3 and I've been due for my upgrade for a month now but was waiting for this.

A friend is at the Mobile World Conference in Barca right now. I'll just ask him when he's back. He's all up in the smartphone space.

I think we are going to see some bendable screen devices in the market 3-4 years from now.

Alex_sl said:

A friend is at the Mobile World Conference in Barca right now. I'll just ask him when he's back. He's all up in the smartphone space.

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Been pretty much all over that officially no SD card, no waterproofing, no removable battery. No word on pricing either. (Often means to brace for a price hike)

It's going to be a good year to be HTC. Only weak points from the M8 addressed and ahead of the game with a bigger battery, probably better life since it doesn't waste it on 4K on a 5.1 inch screen, and what looks to be a better camera. And with a known quantity in processor quality versus a completely unknown one. (Or other manufacturers as they release theirs - but HTC and Samsung are the releases we know of for sure so far on the high end)

At least unless Samsung users are becoming as sheepy as Apple ones.

Vaclav_sl said:

At least unless Samsung users are becoming as sheepy as Apple ones.

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I went with a couple iPhones before my Samsung Galaxy S3, S4, and S5.

The way this is shaking out, I just think I will hold this S5 and wait to see what rolls around next year from everyone.

Smartphones are going to go the way of TVs very soon. Little reason for people to rush out and upgrade every year and with carriers charging full price, removing subsidies and pushing payment plans people will start thinking long and hard if that upgrade is worth the $40 a month per line extra.

If you're sitting on a 5+ inch 1080p screen with a quad core processor and 2gb or RAM why exactly are you going to rush out and upgrade again? Apple has another generation to catch up (RAM) but they won't be immune.

Still loving my S4 but was thinking of getting the S6, Pass. Removable battery is a fucking must for me. Think I was more into getting another phone just for the shiny. There isn't really anything about the S4 that I don't like and will probably end up keeping it for awhile. That is until something really shiny comes out and then my gadget addiction will take over.

Cellphones are too new of tech to have "really" done any large cycles of life other than the beginning of small and quick cycles- we are in a big loop right now- the primary change factor at the beginning was form and function (or hardware and software) as with anything one of those will outpace the other- and in smartphones you basically got two ecosystems with form focus and function focus going off on differing loops but everything in the end is still connected. Form (hardware) is entering a end of cycle I feel and the next big things to move phones to be distinguished will be their OS (or UI) again- this was big in the latter cycle when HTC sense ui and touchwiz etc. where big factors in choice- but soon hardware took over and now that its settling down software and OS will make a distinction again. on this I think BlackBerry is actually ahead of the game working to make, what is essential a "black berry secure" android phone.

I think out of the brands currently LG stands in good working order because they can always bust out WebOS (hello audi watch) as a stand alone OS or at least as an "android with webos" UI interface etc. whomever "LG or HP" has the entire code and patents of WebOS's synergy and face detection code needs to put that crap into devices now.