I was with sprint since 98. I waited for 4gLTE for Minneapolis area. When it came it was nice where it was but when a storm knocked out my power for 20 hours and I ran my Note 2 thru 3 batteries trying to connect to poor service I tried Verizon. Wow! 4gLTE nearly everywhere. A three hour road trip thru farm land the whole way with 4g. My home and my second job both with 4g when sprint barely had 3g. I switched to Verizon. I don't even need a spare battery anymore. I must have used 1/2 of my power trying to stay connected to Sprint service. Verizon is more money but return on dollars spent is much higher.
I did try an S4 when I first changed but brought it back 3 days later and picked up a real phone again.
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I easily burn through almost 20 GB of data a month, I don't think Verizon has a plan with that much data without having to pay penalites. They are always late getting the newest phones (GS4 is a good example, the HTC One an even better one), they've had trouble with their updates for phones lately for which they are usually slower than the other carriers. They nickel and dime you to death, charging extra for little things like visual voicemail, they customize the software in rather annoying ways, like taking out certain features altogether, or adding annoyances like the persistent wifi notification in the notification shade. Yes, they have the best network out there, but if Sprint really will turn to the dark side and start throtteling, I might switch to the evil empire (AT&T) since they've been on a tear lately with rapidly expanding LTE markets and lots of exclusive phones (although I am not interested in any of those exclusives). I am not sure why Verizon even partnered with Red Box...you can barely watch a full movie AND use your smartphone for things it was designed to do.... media consumption and Video calls. I pay 7.99 a month for Google Music, I want to use it without feeling guilty. Naturally all carriers aside from Sprint limit your smartphone usage significantly. Why do I need so much data? Most of it is getting used up by Google Music, YouTube, and Netflix. I only get 3 MBit on my wifi connection at home, and having to watch YouTube videos buffer all the time is unacceptable to me when my large phone plays them at a higher quality no problem.
I realize that Sprint has a lot of catching up to do, but now they are the king of Spectrum, and have some money in their pocket. They also have 800 Mhz spectrum for better building penetration and are adding 2.5 Ghz to support LTE some more. All it takes is money and some brains to get their network going. If they can do that and still stick to unlimited for everyone, then they will be a much more capable competitor to big Red and Blue.
Lets see what happens. Verizons network with unlimited data and simple, affordable, all inclusive plans, that's what Sprint could land up being one day if they play it smart.
Oh, here's a little write up about the "King of Spectrum" I mentioned above:
Sprint Nextel Corporation (S): The New Spectrum Powerhouse | iStockAnalyst.com