Verizon Band 4 Update

[BigDinCA]

Verizon has been pretty ****ty about unlocked phones on their network.

Sprint is the same way. The U11 unlocked won't work over there, and they actually have an agreement w/ HTC. A lot of it comes down to the CDMA aspect. Sprint phones have a different software version than all the other U11s because that's how the CDMA radios get activated.

 

[sangs]

Verizon has been pretty ****ty about unlocked phones on their network. The Pixel is the only one I can think of that currently works flawlessly, and that's because Google had an exclusivity deal with them to carry it in stores as well. My wife's unlocked Pixel from Google works exactly the same as a store-bought model.

In general I think they simply want you to buy devices through them, which is a really crappy business practice.

This little unlocked thing called the iPhone works perfectly well with Verizon also.

 

[Andrew72501]

Both in the same location (Central NJ) using Speedtest app, both on same SIM for Verizon

Band 4 Pixel XL - 54.34 Mbps down, 23.51 Mbps up
Band 13 HTC U11 - 14.73 Mbps down, 8.72 Mbps up

Bye bye HTC. That was shady af listing Band 4 support for VZW when I bought the phone from your website at launch.

***Verizon Buyer beware*** Stay away from the U11 if you want a fully capable device on this network

 

[AustinTech]

Ouch. That's pretty deceptive of htc.

 

[Gunnyman]

I still think Android Central should clarify their article about The U11 Working fine on VZW without CDMA.
They said HTC did Certification with VZW.
They said Wifi Calling and VVM would work.
None of that turned out to be true.
I bought the phone in part because of that article. Now I've returned it and have had to sic my credit card company onto HTC to get my money back.

 

[Andrew72501]

I still think Android Central should clarify their article about The U11 Working fine on VZW without CDMA.
They said HTC did Certification with VZW.
They said Wifi Calling and VVM would work.
None of that turned out to be true.
I bought the phone in part because of that article. Now I've returned it and have had to sic my credit card company onto HTC to get my money back.

Switching over from a U11 to an unlocked Pixel XL the past few days has been eye opening. Here I am sitting in Band 2 now. It's not as fast as 13 right now (12.72 down 4.79 up) but the point is I have now seen the Pixel use all three of Verizon's LTE bands, whereas the U11 was on 13 this whole time.

Big difference between an officially supported phone and whatever the U11 purportedly is running on Verizon right now.

Lesson learned. If you are going Verizon, get a phone they sell. Otherwise you'll be U11'ed.

Update: Pixel just switched to 13 as I was sitting here in the same area . 8.77 down 1.44 up. I suspect that if you're in any type of area that has 2/4 coverage on VZW you are really shortchanging yourself running a device that only runs on Band 13. Yes it works, but you're not getting a great experience.

 

[srmccoy]

I still think Android Central should clarify their article about The U11 Working fine on VZW without CDMA.
They said HTC did Certification with VZW.
They said Wifi Calling and VVM would work.
None of that turned out to be true.
I bought the phone in part because of that article. Now I've returned it and have had to sic my credit card company onto HTC to get my money back.

I reached out to the author about this twice on Twitter with no response.

 

[cmurgia]

So after having relatively few problems over the last month, my phone dropped it's connection to Verizon this morning. Tried a few things, but ended up calling Verizon. Tech was not helpful in the least and said several times that the HTC U11 is untested and not supported on Verizon. Then he tried selling me a phone through them. The only thing that fixed it was a hard reset, and I'm not doing that every month.

This U11 is going back.