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If you are planning to purchase a new smartphone from Sprint, there is no better time than now. The carrier is rewarding all who pick up a smartphone online and an accompanying new line of service with a $100 American Express gift card. To put it another way, all online purchases will basically come with an additional $100 rebate, making the proposition all the easier.
The deal covers any and all smartphones (including that brand new Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE) and runs from today until August 26th. Head over to Sprint’s site for all the details.
[Sprint via AndroidPolice]
hmmm nice
I wish current off-contract Sprint customers could take part (judging by the ‘new line of service’ requirement). It’s like in order to get the good discounts we (Sprint customers) have to leave and come back. Seems counter productive. Maybe the ongoing customers should get even better deals…just sayin’.
Only for new lines of service, not for upgrades or renewals.
So if I signed up for Sprint as a new customer right now and got a shiny new 4G/3G phone, I’d get 100 dollars from this card and a free tablet. Not bad.
Except that “free” tablet requires a two-year data contract,
Sunday afternoon, my wife and I went to a Sprint store located at 3675 Satellite Blvd Ste 125
Duluth, GA 30096, you can call it “The Atlanta 4G LTE area”.
She wanted the mighty Galaxy S3. We were considering Sprint as our first choice for its “UNLIMITED” data plan/Price. Once there, we tested the phone’s speed…
Ladies and gentlemen, what a disappointment: 0.3 to 0.5Mbps at the best (to be fair, I did all the possible updates to the phone). I could not believe it.
We were in the Sprint Store (not a booth at the mall) and their signal/connection was horrible. It was really sad.
When the first EVO 4G came up (June 2010), we signed for 2 of them, but after 7 or 8 months with “4G”, we noticed 4G WiMax was a bad idea—we canceled contracts and jumped to Boost prepaid $50 unlimited everything (now I paid $40 going to $35 in 2 more shrinkage payments). I can’t complain at all. Service is decent and speed is the same as Sprint lol…
(I got from 0.15 to 1.5 Mbps depending on the Atlanta Area I am testing… 0.7Mbps average at home and 0.30Mbps at work).
Since I got Wi-Fi in both places, I don’t feel the need to change my provider. Even on some road trips we took, GPS and everything else worked just fine.
However, despite my happiness, the wife was complaining about her poor and slow Boost phone/signal/service, especially when shopping at the mall (she’s a weekend shopping enthusiast). That’s why we decided to give it another try with Sprint, but after that experience… No way. :(
And it got worse: in the same shopping plaza, there is a Verizon store as well and just for the heck of it we went in and tested their Galaxy S3… What a difference: 6Mbps download effortless, just like that (I know it’s not the fastest big red has, but it was amazing). I have to admit I am not a VZW fan because of its expensive plans, but at least you get the quality service you pay for.
We left that store with a bittersweet feeling, but after some sense talking with my wife, she agreed that is not worth it to spend that much money every month and gave in to keeping her Boost service.
Bottom line for us:
1) Unless you make good money out of your phone or have a sweet deal with your minutes/data plan or got plenty money to spend and you don’t care, there is no reason to pay that much for phone services these days.
2) You can have the ultimate and most wonderful smart phone, but your carrier’s features play the most important part in that game so make sure what they advertise is actually true or at least good enough to meet your needs so you won’t mind to pay them.
Thank you for taking the time to read my comment.
I just wanted to express my opinion after that experience on Sunday… :)
God bless you all.
C.
CREDITS: I want to thank my daughter, María Fernanda S.R. for helping me with my spelling and grammar. Since English is not my first language, her advice was really useful.