Why I’m returning my Sprint Evo 4G LTE

Written by

On the left: My two year old Nexus One on AT&T’s throttled unlimited plan. 3120kbps download speed.

On the right: My brand-spanking-new HTC EVO LTE 4G. 59kbps download speed.

That is ridiculous, infuriating, and completely unusable. These tests were done in my home at about 6:30pm last night. On my drive home I decided to download EverNote, and 25 minutes later the ~7mb file was still downloading. That prompted me to do this test. I ran it several times, and the highest speed the EVO got was 80kbps, while the lowest speed the Nexus One got was the one you see there. At 5:30 this morning, I was able to get about 400kbps with the EVO (and 3900kbps with the N1), but by 7am it was back down to about 70kbps. Unlimited data does me no good if I can’t theoretically hit the 5gb cap other providers have.

I’m starting to strongly consider the advice commenter a leap at the wheel gave me last month. Since the great AT&T throttling, I’ve gone from ~5gb/month average (8gb peak) to ~2gb/month (2.4gb peak) so getting a 5gb or even 3gb prepaid data plan is starting to make a whole lot of sense.

Comments

8 responses to “Why I’m returning my Sprint Evo 4G LTE”

June 6, 2012

oddball

For the record, my HTC One X on ATT (GSM version of the Sprint Evo LTE 4G) just got scores of 88ms ping, 5349kbps down, and 1090kbps up using the same testing software and the same site.

Reply
June 6, 2012

HSR47

If they’re going to be such dicks about strong-arming people to tiered data plans, then they should introduce rollover data.

Reply
June 6, 2012

Jake

Weird. Either you have bad data reception there, or Sprint is having issues with your local network (or you got a defective phone, somehow). I get 2165kbps on my old Optimus S, on the 3G network here. If you got it at a retailer, you may want to take it in and see about a replacement, or if you didn’t then call Sprint’s customer service before giving up. This smacks of something unusual, specific, and fixable, rather than a systemic or recurring problem. Not having to worry about data limits is worth the extra effort, IMHO (YMMV, etc., etc.).

Caveat: I have been very satisfied with Sprint for many years, and never had a good experience with Verizon (the other big company around here), so I may be biased. Verizon dropping unlimited data was just the icing in the cake.
I can’t speak for AT&T – they didn’t have decent coverage in my area until the last couple of years, and then they started dumping their unlimited data plans, so I never bothered.

Reply
June 6, 2012

Kat

I’d have to agree with Jake, seems like a bad phone maybe. I just had to return a Galaxy Nexus for connection/overheating issues. The new one is doing great. I’ve always been satisfied with my 3G speeds. Just downloaded and tested with the same app, got 27ms ping, 4022kbps d/l and 4131kbps u/l. Brand new Galaxy Nexus on Sprint, obviously, 3G in Jacksonville, FL.

Reply
June 8, 2012

wizardpc

We actually bought two: One for me, and one for my wife. Same results on her phone. I have a hard time thinking that we happened to get TWO bad phones.

She uses hers more as a phone than I do, so the unlimited voice and text messages is more important than data speed. She’s generally connected to wifi when she uses her phone. I’m not sure she’s ever noticed that 3g data is slow–she had nothing to compare it to.

Reply
June 8, 2012

Jake

Then it sounds like either Sprint is having data network issues in you area, or you have reception issues at your house. In the first case, it’s been long enough since you posted that it should have been resolved by now (though it may be worth calling customer service to check). If it’s the second, then you probably are better off going back to AT&T.

One trick you may want to try (if you haven’t already) is to put it the phone in “airplane mode” for a minute, then switch back to normal. That forces it to refresh the network information and connection, and I’ve found it will usually fix slow data issues for me, on the rare occasions that they happen. If there was a network issue that has been fixed, the phone might not have picked up on it and that “reset” might do it.

Reply
June 11, 2012

Jamie

Every EVO and EVO owner I’ve known has had this issue for the first few days. My last EVO took almost two weeks to start working in my house. After that it was faster than any of my previous phones. I’m not sure if it’s something when assembling the antenna or what, but I’ve seen at least 9 people with this issue with every EVO ever made.

Reply
June 24, 2012

AT&T 4G LTE Speeds in Nashville | Guns, Cars, and Tech

[…] I said in my post about returning the EVO, some people might say it’s not fair to compare AT&T’s 4G network to […]

Reply