HTC Evo

[Jarochai Alabaster]

If you're paying more than 50 for unlimited talk/text, you're getting assraped without lube. Seriously, how the fuck does a company charge that much? I pay 45/month for unlimited talk + text + picture messaging. Of course I never make use of pix messaging since my phone doesn't have a camera. I'm actually worried that when this phone finally dies I won't be able to find a replacement that doesn't have a camera. Never had a camera phone, never wanted one.

[Kulaf]

Sprint is not even remotely an option where I live. I would be constantly roaming and they have no network coverage here at all. AT&T is not even a viable alternative because their coverage is spotty. Personally I love Verizon. I am in a coastal community and I get great coverage and am in their 3G network coverage. That's more important to me than whether I can save 10 bucks a month on an unlimited plan when I never break 400 minutes.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

I've had horrible experiences with Verizon customer support. T-Mobile was shit. AT&T is the best service I've ever had and the reception on the iPhone 4 vs the Edge model is far superior.

[Harlowe]

I know a few people that work for Verizon and one that works for Sprint. I could have sworn they've all mentioned that both companies lease/rent towers from each other, so they should have virtually the same coverage.

Sprint is definitely cheaper and Verizon is in the process of phasing-out their somewhat hush-hush "cheaper" programs that they no longer want to offer, so more than a few people I know (myself included) are switching over when their contract is up. Also, if this matters to a person, Verizon won't have any technical/repair people in their stores anymore. They've been in the process of phasing it out over the past year and just in the past week or two ended their contract with Flextronics (the company contracted to handle their in-store technicians/repair). Sprint still has their own technicians, they didn't outsource it. As far as CS goes - I thought Verizon has become fucking awful. A few years ago, I would have had a completely different view of them.

So far, I'm happier with Sprint and I love the HTC Evo. When I was with Verizon, I was using a Blackberry and the newer models have sucked ballz. I loved my older model from 2+ years ago.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I think they're all bastards. I used to be on the cutting edge. Hell, I had one of the first flip phones in 1994 (or was that 1993?). I've been screwed over by pretty much every carrier out there. Sprint was the worst for ages. I guess that's why they're the best to deal with now - because they sucked and lost most of their customers. About the only carrier I ever liked was Nextel and they were bought by the carrier I hated the most /shrug.

What I do now is keep a cheap T-mobile prepaid phone. I put $100 on it and the 1000 minutes I get are good for a year. I'm more of a homebody these days and even though when I do travel I burn those minutes up fast, it's still worth it. About $10 a month to have a cell phone most of the time! Seems like in the past, no matter what I did or what plan I had, I always seemed to get a bill for $200 a month.

The Evo is almost enough to bring me out of hibernation but it's more of the draw of a cool gadget than something I really need. Even on the road I can find wi-fi most of the time and whip out a laptop or my little netbook and even the netbook has a built in camera for Skype and such. And the netbook is orders of magnitude more powerful than a "smartphone".

I might have to eventually switch though because my dad is now living at his ranch in Idaho and he pretty much only gets Verizon service. I've been spending a lot of time there and it's really annoying having to climb a big hill to call my wife when I'm staying there. Seems like it's true that Verizon has the best network, because when we were on vacation in Montana, his Verizon phones were the only ones with service. Seems like whenever we're out of a major area, we all end up borrowing one of his phones. Pretty much all major networks were represented on vacation and only the Verizon ones got service.

[Harlowe]

I can't argue with that, not a one of them are consistently good. I have to admit when I had Sprint about 7(?) years ago, I hated the company.

[Kulaf]

Right now both Sprint and Verizon use CDMA for their tranimission protocol. Since Sprint doesn't charge a roaming fee you can ride Verizon's network and get service in areas Sprint doesn't have coverage. However Verizon is going to be transitioning away from CDMA and towards their new LTE protocol based on GSM. This could put a hurting on Sprints coverage.

http://gigaom.com/2010/06/21/verizons-c ... sma-board/

[Fallakin Kuvari]

IIRC Sprint is moving in that direction too, Kulaf.

I'd have to look at what their 4g network actually is, but I do believe its LTE.

[Kulaf]

No, Sprint is basing its 4G network on WiMAX.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX

[Harlowe]

It's going to be a very, very long time before they move away from CDMA for voice. Their entire Network is CDMA.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Oh yea, WiMAX... duh. Thanks Kulaf.

[Taxious]

All I know is t-mobile service blows (comparing from Verizon before I switched to t-mobile). I constantly get voicemails without my phone ringing, texts that don't send, slow (30-to-90-seconds-for-a-google-search slow) internet browsing, etc.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Out of the WiMax alliance, Clearwire is bleeding money and getting terrible reviews for their service and Intel is backing away from it (though they deny it). This is a company that was playing up WiMax to be the most important technology since the web itself. From what I can see, the world is leaving WiMax behind. Cisco has already dropped it in favor of LTE.