Does anyone know for fact, not speculation like I'm going to do with seeming sound evidence, if Sprint controls access to its 4G service based on the version of Android that you are running? Here is what has happened to me over the last few months...
Things were getting a little stale for me with my stock Sprint Galaxy S3 so I decided to finally try rooting my phone and installing Cyanogen. In the mean time Sprint has been slowly deploying 4G services in my area. My stock ROM was at version 4.1.2 and when I installed Cyanogen I went to 4.2.x. I was happily surprised to see that my 3G changed to 4G and my SpeedTest app did show speeds that went along with that change, as well as I was getting about a 1-2 bar better signal in my area. I figured that the Galaxy S4 probably had 4.2.x installed and it was Sprint's "selling point" to encourage customers to upgrade to get 4G service on the newer phone even though the older ones were just as capable.
After a short while I saw that Cyanogen released a build with 4.3 so I very quickly upgraded... and found that I lost my 4G service and everything that seemed to go along with it. At this point I had a couple of other issues so had to go back to Stock for a few weeks, which was back to 4.1.2 but rooted only the phone. At that time I was getting pestered that there was an update available but since I was rooted I didn't update until I returned back to Cyanogen 4.2, saw 4G again, then 4.3 where 4G vanished again.
To me it looks like they are regulating what devices have access to 4G based on the version of Android they are running and by seeing it show up from 4.1 to 4.2, but the lack of 4G beyond 4.2 have me concerned that they may not be developing as fast as I'd like to think they would for the newer versions of Android. Has anyone else seen this behavior or have any idea why my 4G service appeared with 4.2 but vanished with 4.3 and now 4.4?
Things were getting a little stale for me with my stock Sprint Galaxy S3 so I decided to finally try rooting my phone and installing Cyanogen. In the mean time Sprint has been slowly deploying 4G services in my area. My stock ROM was at version 4.1.2 and when I installed Cyanogen I went to 4.2.x. I was happily surprised to see that my 3G changed to 4G and my SpeedTest app did show speeds that went along with that change, as well as I was getting about a 1-2 bar better signal in my area. I figured that the Galaxy S4 probably had 4.2.x installed and it was Sprint's "selling point" to encourage customers to upgrade to get 4G service on the newer phone even though the older ones were just as capable.
After a short while I saw that Cyanogen released a build with 4.3 so I very quickly upgraded... and found that I lost my 4G service and everything that seemed to go along with it. At this point I had a couple of other issues so had to go back to Stock for a few weeks, which was back to 4.1.2 but rooted only the phone. At that time I was getting pestered that there was an update available but since I was rooted I didn't update until I returned back to Cyanogen 4.2, saw 4G again, then 4.3 where 4G vanished again.
To me it looks like they are regulating what devices have access to 4G based on the version of Android they are running and by seeing it show up from 4.1 to 4.2, but the lack of 4G beyond 4.2 have me concerned that they may not be developing as fast as I'd like to think they would for the newer versions of Android. Has anyone else seen this behavior or have any idea why my 4G service appeared with 4.2 but vanished with 4.3 and now 4.4?
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram