A cell service for toy lovers
Written: Jul 28 '05
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Pros: All digital quality voice network, with extremely accessable data network. Incredibly cool mobile handsets.
Cons: A bit pricier than other providers. PCS means more limited coverage areas and conditions
The Bottom Line: Sprint has decent rates for its service, an excelent data network, and an advanced phone selection. However, if you live near any cows, chances are you won't get service.
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| kfj001's Full Review: Sprint Mobile Phone Service in New York |
This is my second review of Sprint PCS service in New York, among other places (detailed later.) The first one I wrote was in 2001, shortly after first becoming a Sprint customer.
Stuff has changed since then. Time to update!
Today, I’ve had Sprint PCS service consistently for 4 years, and I never been happier with a provider.
Kinda surprising, eh?
What you get
With ANY Sprint PCS plan, you get daytime minutes, nighttime/weekend minutes, and a phone.
Wow…
You also get a Sprint PCS mobile phone, which is essentially a part of why Sprint PCS is such an interesting mobile phone service compared with certain others.
Sprint’s plans range from about $39 and up, which compared to other providers these days, makes Sprint PCS look a tad pricey. And you’re right; Sprint’s cheapest plan is like $10 more a months than the cheapest plans of their competitors.
However, you do, sort of, get more.
As part of all Sprint plans, you get voicemail with notification, 3-way calling (in which you get to pay for making two phone calls simultaneously,) emergency 911 (E911), and oh yeah; voice service (make and receive phone calls.)
Like most modern mobile phone providers, Sprint PCS offers its customers internet data service (PCS Vision) providing mobile web content like games, ringtones, news, pictures and more recently; multimedia like music and videos.
Sprint’s service plans are indeed more expensive than its competitors, however, you will also find that Sprint PCS offers slightly more “daytime” minutes with its plans compared to other plans that don’t unify their plan minutes into “anytime” minutes.
The phones.
This is where most of Sprint’s slightly increased costs end up. Sprint PCS offers some of the most tech-toy style, cool mobile phones I’ve ever seen. Most Sprint PCS handsets are “Vision Capable” (meaning they work with the mobile-web service Sprint provides.)
They also support a feature similar to the Nextel “direct connect” walkie-talkie style communication system called “Ready Link”. This technology is brand new to Sprint PCS service, and a handful of newer mobile handsets are supporting it.
In fact, Sprint’s more base model handsets support multimedia over the mobile web, Ready Link direct connection and, of course, the mobile web. Compared to most other services who’s base model phone makes calls, and that’s about it, Sprint’s handsets really showcase being “light-years in the future” (despite the fact that all mobile providers have the same technology.)
The nitty-gritty
Sprint PCS’s service is all digital, and high frequency. In a nutshell this means that when you’ve got signal, you’re golden. Your phone works just as well when you have 1 bar as when you have 5. No changes in sound quality, no problems with data transmissions…
It just works. Until you go from 1 bar to 0, and then you have a very expensive paperweight.
Sprint PCS service is designed and mostly supported in population centers such as towns and small cities. Large cities are the bastion of Sprint PCS, and baring being under a concrete structure (large buildings basement) or in an underground tunnel, you’ll continue to get your PCS service.
Now, I live in two places; the city (not New York), and the sticks. The City has perfect service. 5 bars as long as I don’t put my phone someplace stupid, like, say, IN my person, or in a steel box (i.e. Wal Mart.)
When my mobile phone is in large steel buildings, the service drops out. The high frequency transmission coupled with the digital encoding technology just can’t effectively penetrate the steel building. Though where the mass of steel and concrete thins (such as near entrances or windows,) service can pick up again.
Sprint handsets are designed to use the high frequency digital PCS network, instead of lower frequency digital, or even analog. Sprint actually charges you for using these non-PCS towers and communication methods, calling it “roaming”, since the service itself is “nationwide” (makes no distinction from region-to-region, state-to-state.)
However, sitting in your home and making a call using an analog tower is worthy of a roaming charge and appropriate rates…
Since Sprint PCS handsets warn you when you’re about to incur a roaming charge for not being on the PCS network, this isn’t so much a hidden fee as it is an inconvenience. But I can live with it, since PCS service is usually just a careful stretch out the window with mobile phone in my hand.
Which brings me to service in the sticks. PCS service is finicky about being either far from a tower, or suffering from peripheral signal interference (mountains, trees, both…) which the sticks are ripe with.
In fact, I live on a mountaintop. There are certain 3-foot in diameter “circles” around my home where I can get PCS service, but otherwise; it’s a dead zone, despite the fact that two miles down the hill I can get perfect PCS service.
A lot of country and more rural areas suffer from this total lack of mobile phone coverage, but Sprint is especially bad because of the technology they use. A PCS tower just has far less coverage area than a non-PCS tower.
So, when I’m not in a fallout shelter (steel & concrete structures,) or passing the cows by, my Sprint PCS service follows me wherever I go, faithfully, and reliably.
Vision
Sprint PCS’s nicest feature is how wonderfully they’ve adopted mobile internet. Sprint offers unlimited data transfer and unlimited text messaging with your phone when you subscribe to PCS vision.
Otherwise, there’s a per-kilobyte charge.
Vision’s unlimited service is about $15 a month, and considering most other service providers don’t offer you an unlimited transfer plan, (instead limiting you to a few megabytes, then charging you afterward…) Sprint earns incredibly high marks here.
Vision is not just for downloading ringtones and games. It’s a fantastic way to get data, information, news and directions through your mobile phone. I personally use the Yahoo mobile service and the directions feature all the time (since I have a horrid sense of direction.)
That’s right; computer generated driving directions from your mobile phone, no extra hardware needed…
Vision is essentially the data side of the PCS network. Text messages, mobile web, programs that use the Internet, etc. all transfer data through your mobile phone, and subsequently, the Vision service. This includes Sprint’s line of PCS camera phones. The pictures you take are transferred via. E-mail using the Vision service.
So are Mp3’s, which as of this article, only one PCS mobile phone supports (and it’s like $500…)
Ready Link
This is a new feature for Sprint. It’s like Nextel’s direct-connect, only for Sprint phones. You dial a number (or a series of numbers) and hit the “push-to-talk” button (just like Nextel.
Your phone notifies the recipients you’ve specified that someone wants to talk to them via. Ready Link. They either accept, or decline.
Once they’ve accepted (after all, why are you calling people who don’t want to talk to you?) you speak into your handset while holding down the button, and release the button to send your message to all your happy friends.
Your voice message is digitized and transmitted over the Vision network to the people you specified as a sort of “voice message”. Some service providers have a similar feature they call Voice SMS, audio SMS, etc.
Your friends can then respond using their ready-link Push-to-talk button, or just ignore you, or even listen to you, but not respond.
Ready link allows you to have a “dialog” with up to 10 people at once, and using Ready Link does NOT use any plan minutes (since it’s a data driven service, not a voice one.)
Ready Link requires compatible handsets, which most new PCS handsets are, however, people with older handsets are not only still on the network, but can’t support Ready Link. As a result, you and your 10 friends better have new PCS handsets; otherwise, this is a useless service.
Summary
All digital means if you don’t have a PCS tower nearby, you’re either without service, or “roaming” which can get expensive unless you subscribe to a “roaming option” and then Sprint won’t gouge you for using someone else’s tower.
Sprint’s phones are really nifty. They’re all color, even the most basic handset supports Vision, and now the newer ones support Ready Link as well.
The coverage is a bit bias toward people who live in populated areas. The fewer houses you see, the less likely Sprint PCS is to be found around there. Even still, the PCS bias also means that steel buildings or fat people mean potential missed calls because you have no service.
However, since most of you don’t live in the sticks means PCS will follow you to the ends of time, faithfully, and reliably.
PCS is mostly about the non-voice features you get out-of-the-box as it were, rather than the mundane voice service. After all, everyone provides voice mobile phone service, not everyone provides a complete data service with it for only a few bucks extra.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 29
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Epinions.com ID:
kfj001
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Member: Kyle
Location: Buffalo, NY, USA
Reviews written: 138
Trusted by: 30 members
About Me:
"Testing", "Destroying", it's all just one big, gray line to me.
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