[Official] Sprint HTC EVO 4G LTE Pre-release thread - Sprint official launch is Saturday, June 2

[PyroSporker]

I'm intrigued by the possibilities of HD Voice.
My mom is upgrading in August and I'll be her guinea pig for the LTEvo.'

Any speculation on what type of hardware is needed for HD Voice? I understand that both handsets have to have the capability. What type of tower hardware is needed?

I'm not asking this right... Can we expect a lengthy rollout time for this feature, or should it be faster than Wimax or LTE rollout?

Skid

Sprint Newsroom | HTC EVO 4G LTE

"With the launch of HTC EVO 4G LTE, Sprint becomes the first U.S. carrier to announce plans for a nationwide HD Voice network beginning in late 2012 as part of Sprint’s Network Vision program. "

s4gru.com so far has pretty much the best info around regarding Network Vision/LTE network rollout.

Check out the list and maps to see if you are in the:
Network Vision/LTE Deployment Running List - Sprint 4G Rollout Updates

 

[BenChase7]

I'm intrigued by the possibilities of HD Voice.
My mom is upgrading in August and I'll be her guinea pig for the LTEvo.'

Any speculation on what type of hardware is needed for HD Voice? I understand that both handsets have to have the capability. What type of tower hardware is needed?

I'm not asking this right... Can we expect a lengthy rollout time for this feature, or should it be faster than Wimax or LTE rollout?

Skid

Most likely, a lot faster then the WiMax roll-out. This will likely occur at the same rate as the LTE roll-out, as Sprint is incorporating all their network upgrades under the umbrella of Network Vision, including LTE and 1x-Advanced.

 

[CriticalCritic]

I'm wondering if there will be some form of automatic transition built into the LTEvo between HD and SD voice when traveling between towers? Or is there a chance that this will have the old-school cell problem where the signal drops as you bounce from tower to tower?

In other words, lets say my wife is sitting at home, in HD coverage, and I am on my bluetooth driving down the interstate. I receive a call from her in HD, and as we are talking, I drive into an area with a tower that does not have the HD coverage. Will the call be dropped because the HD connection is gone? Or will my phone automatically switch the call over to SD? If it switches over to SD, will it automatically switch back to HD when I hit an HD capable tower? What about my wife's phone? My LTEvo will be the one recognizing the change to a different tower, but will her phone know to change to SD? Or will it Drop? Or will it even matter to hers?

Edit: Also, Can someone PLEASE change the title of this thread?

 

[dan330]

I'm wondering if there will be some form of automatic transition built into the LTEvo between HD and SD voice when traveling between towers? Or is there a chance that this will have the old-school cell problem where the signal drops as you bounce from tower to tower?

In other words, lets say my wife is sitting at home, in HD coverage, and I am on my bluetooth driving down the interstate. I receive a call from her in HD, and as we are talking, I drive into an area with a tower that does not have the HD coverage. Will the call be dropped because the HD connection is gone? Or will my phone automatically switch the call over to SD? If it switches over to SD, will it automatically switch back to HD when I hit an HD capable tower? What about my wife's phone? My LTEvo will be the one recognizing the change to a different tower, but will her phone know to change to SD? Or will it Drop? Or will it even matter to hers?

Edit: Also, Can someone PLEASE change the title of this thread?

excellent questions...

I bet... at first.. we be dropping a lot of calls.... with HD

 

[drexappeal]

I'm wondering if there will be some form of automatic transition built into the LTEvo between HD and SD voice when traveling between towers? Or is there a chance that this will have the old-school cell problem where the signal drops as you bounce from tower to tower?

In other words, lets say my wife is sitting at home, in HD coverage, and I am on my bluetooth driving down the interstate. I receive a call from her in HD, and as we are talking, I drive into an area with a tower that does not have the HD coverage. Will the call be dropped because the HD connection is gone? Or will my phone automatically switch the call over to SD? If it switches over to SD, will it automatically switch back to HD when I hit an HD capable tower? What about my wife's phone? My LTEvo will be the one recognizing the change to a different tower, but will her phone know to change to SD? Or will it Drop? Or will it even matter to hers?

Edit: Also, Can someone PLEASE change the title of this thread?

From what I remember hearing in one of the videos, I thought HD Voice was only viable between phones with that capability. I could be wrong, but I thought I had heard/read that.

As for the title...done.

 

[CriticalCritic]

From what I remember hearing in one of the videos, I thought HD Voice was only viable between phones with that capability. I could be wrong, but I thought I had heard/read that.

As for the title...done.

Thanks for fixing the title.

Yeah, I heard the same about the two phones both being HD. That's true. However, it seems that in order for HD audio to work there must be three things. (1) HD Caller Phone, (2) HD Receiver Phone, (3) HD Tower connecting them (PyroSporker linked the HD coverage roll-out plan above).
My question involves the towers, and whether we will be dropping calls as a result?

 

[drexappeal]

Thanks for fixing the title.

Yeah, I heard the same about the two phones both being HD. That's true. However, it seems that in order for HD audio to work there must be three things. (1) HD Caller Phone, (2) HD Receiver Phone, (3) HD Tower connecting them (PyroSporker linked the HD coverage roll-out plan above).
My question involves the towers, and whether we will be dropping calls as a result?

Definitely a valid question. I'm curious about that as well.

 

[PyroSporker]

Thanks for fixing the title.

Yeah, I heard the same about the two phones both being HD. That's true. However, it seems that in order for HD audio to work there must be three things. (1) HD Caller Phone, (2) HD Receiver Phone, (3) HD Tower connecting them (PyroSporker linked the HD coverage roll-out plan above).
My question involves the towers, and whether we will be dropping calls as a result?

Agreed on the title thing, thanks. I was afraid to request it in case the title change un-linked the One-X forum redirect. - looks like it updates across all boards

Here is Sprint's official fine print one liner from the Evo 4G LTE product page:
"HD Voice requires a call between two HD Voice capable handsets on an HD Voice capable Sprint network. Sprint expects to deploy HD Voice capable networks in the future as part of its Network Vision upgrades."

So you do for sure need both handsets to be HD Voice compatible. You also need the compatible network - which is not specified. Which basically means a data connection that is fast enough to transmit and receive wideband frequency audio. I don't think we know yet specifically what the speed threshold or other requirements are tower side.

Should we connect those dots yet? I mean is 4G LTE FOR SURE needed to use HD voice? Or can a tower location that has been updated through Network Vision rollout that has fast enough/dependable 3G be able to handle wideband frequencies? Or is there some other addition to tower locations that allows HD Voice?

More or less, do we know conclusively yet that 4G LTE is required for HD Voice? Network Vision is not just adding LTE to existing locations, there is also a bit of overhaul happening in conjunction with the LTE addition.

Lastly, It appears in the major markets, Sprint is trying to cover the main highways with Network Vision Coverage. Hopefully they have the locations planned to allow for a nice hand off between towers without dropping calls or data.
Here is North Carolina's preliminary plan for example:

Cary is buried under there somewhere. And hopefully any highway you are on will be blanketed unless you are out in the sticks.

 

[Citizen Coyote]

Lastly, It appears in the major markets, Sprint is trying to cover the main highways with Network Vision Coverage. Hopefully they have the locations planned to allow for a nice hand off between towers without dropping calls or data.

It seems to me that seamless hand-off is going to be a requirement for this to actually work. No one's going to want to make HD calls if you're going to drop the signal with too much movement. That would be a PR nightmare.

 

[EarlyMon]

It seems to me that seamless hand-off is going to be a requirement for this to actually work. No one's going to want to make HD calls if you're going to drop the signal with too much movement. That would be a PR nightmare.

Seamless handoff is already common to CDMA+LTE technologies on Verizon, so there's good reason to believe that they can right from the start.

We'll have to see.

On the phone, it's simply a vocoder setting switch to go from HD to not. (And btw - changing the vocoder setting on the 3vo worked wonders on the muddy voice calls. )

 

[drexappeal]

Anybody know if you can zoom in and out while taking video? This is one function I thought was really cool on the MoPho, so was curious if it would be the same on the LTEvo.

 

[330D]

Seamless handoff is already common to CDMA+LTE technologies on Verizon, so there's good reason to believe that they can right from the start.

As the owner of a Verizon LTE device... The handoff most times is fine, but occasionally has issues requiring a reboot to fix. Not always, but it seems to happen in clusters. If it does it once, chances are good it will do it again. Other times it is completely and totally seamless and perfect.

Of course, YMMV.

 

[CriticalCritic]

Seamless handoff is already common to CDMA+LTE technologies on Verizon, so there's good reason to believe that they can right from the start.

We'll have to see.

On the phone, it's simply a vocoder setting switch to go from HD to not. (And btw - changing the vocoder setting on the 3vo worked wonders on the muddy voice calls. )

Let me rephrase and take this more clearly back to my earlier concern...

...wondering if there will be some form of automatic transition built into the LTEvo between HD and SD voice when traveling between towers?

It's not the towers that I am worried about, yes the problem concerns the towers, but it's the phone that I'm worried about, prompted by the changing of towers.

For instance, with my Evo 4G, if I am loading a webpage, and I walk out of, or into wifi range, and my phone changes between 3G and wifi, the page will stop loading and I have to refresh due to the signal drop. I would expect this to always happen when leaving a wifi area, because the phone will not know to switch over until the signal is lost. Going into the wifi area, I would think that it could happen seamlessly, but it doesn't seem so. It seems that there is a drop during the transition.

So, when transitioning from an HD tower to an SD tower, I'm afraid that the same problem may occur. The phone will not switch to the SD until it knows that it has lost HD signal. If this is the case, then the call may be dropped due to the sudden loss of bandwidth required to support the larger data flow of the HD voice. So I'm thinking the vocoder switch may not be the way to go if I understand correctly....

Unless... this just occurred to me... maybe this tech is setup so that the HD is overlaid on top of an SD call... HD and SD are not actually separate connections requiring two separate radios to function independently like CDMA and LTE (as I have been assuming). But rather, the SD is always connected during an HD call, kind of 'in the background' of the HD call? So the SD radio is always on during a phone call, and the HD radio just kicks in to supplement? That way a call would never be dropped due to the change.... Food for thought I guess.

 

[suprmallet]

I didn't realize how much I missed the Evo community (not just here but everywhere) until the LTEvo was announced. I loved my old Evo, but for various reasons was looking to replace it. I seriously considered the 3vo, but ultimately settled on the Photon. It wasn't the 3D that turned me off, however, but the better volume and sound quality of the Photon. I actually kinda liked the 3D once I got a chance to play with it, but to me the 3vo sounded sort of muddy.

Call me crazy, but I'm one of those people who wants their smartphone to first and foremost work as a phone. For me, the Photon was a better fit in that regard than the 3vo. Now, however, with the LTEvo, I'm looking forward to potentially rejoining the Evo community. Even if I don't, this past week or so has been fun.

I also would love to rejoin the EVO community. I loved the original EVO, one of the best phones I ever had. I switched to the Nexus S 4G because of the screen (my big issue with the EVO), only to find it was a worse phone in almost every way. I ended up actually switching away from Sprint and getting an iPhone on AT&T because I could exploit a loophole to get unlimited data. The loophole worked...just in time for AT&T to start throttling unlimited data users.

Now they've announced the LTEvo and I'm really considering switching back for it once Sprint activates LTE in Los Angeles. I really like the 4S and I'm sure the iPhone 5 will be great too, but I really loved just about everything on the original EVO and this looks to be a true successor. And since I'd been using Android for a while, I still have plenty of useful apps on my account that I can pick right back up.

So I can only hope that this is as good of a phone as it seems to be and that Sprint activates LTE in Los Angeles soon.

 

[drexappeal]

I also would love to rejoin the EVO community. I loved the original EVO, one of the best phones I ever had. I switched to the Nexus S 4G because of the screen (my big issue with the EVO), only to find it was a worse phone in almost every way. I ended up actually switching away from Sprint and getting an iPhone on AT&T because I could exploit a loophole to get unlimited data. The loophole worked...just in time for AT&T to start throttling unlimited data users.

Now they've announced the LTEvo and I'm really considering switching back for it once Sprint activates LTE in Los Angeles. I really like the 4S and I'm sure the iPhone 5 will be great too, but I really loved just about everything on the original EVO and this looks to be a true successor. And since I'd been using Android for a while, I still have plenty of useful apps on my account that I can pick right back up.

So I can only hope that this is as good of a phone as it seems to be and that Sprint activates LTE in Los Angeles soon.

FYI-L.A. is in the 1st round of LTE rollouts.

 

[CriticalCritic]

I ended up actually switching away from Sprint and getting an iPhone on AT&T because I could exploit a loophole to get unlimited data. The loophole worked...just in time for AT&T to start throttling unlimited data users.

I heard that there was someone in CA that took ATT to small claims for data throttling and won damages over $800.
Man Sues AT&T For Throttling His iPhone Service -- And Wins! - The Consumerist

I'd encourage you to go for it if you weren't using an exploit.

 

[suprmallet]

FYI-L.A. is in the 1st round of LTE rollouts.

Yes it is, but all that means is that Sprint is planning to have LTE active in LA in 2012. Nothing more specific than that yet.

I heard that there was someone in CA that took ATT to small claims for data throttling and won damages over $800.
Man Sues AT&T For Throttling His iPhone Service -- And Wins! - The Consumerist

I'd encourage you to go for it if you weren't using an exploit.

I saw that, but I don't think it actually got AT&T to unthrottle him, unfortunately.

 

[RichboyJhae]

What is handoff?

 

[EarlyMon]

What is handoff?

In tech, it's very common to give simple names from things we know to complex functions.

Picture a football player running towards the goal and he sees adversity ahead knowing he won't make it. He hands the ball off to a player outside of the upcoming trouble. It perfect fantasy plays, this keeps up over and over and the team with the ball is unstoppable.

You're driving down the road on a very long phone call (using a hands free method, safety first ). A single cell tower can handle your call so long as you are within a few miles radius of that tower. As you hit the edge of coverage, an indescribably complex series of radio and computer control functions occur and your call signal is acquired by the now closest tower and dropped from the original tower. This goes on over and over and you never notice.

Like the football in the endless fantasy play, you have been handed off.

The term applies to all forms of radio handoff. 3G to wifi, wifi to 4G, tower to tower, protocol to protocol.

Maybe you've heard of electric or magnetic fields. Maxwell, the smart guy who came up with the important equations that are at the heart of electrical and radio engineering, had his big inspirational breakthrough looking at ploughed farm fields, so we use that name - Maxwell's field equations.

Many, many tech terms try to make complex ideas accessible with everyday expressions.

Hope this makes sense!

 

[PyroSporker]

What is handoff?

You're driving down the road on a very long phone call (using a hands free method, safety first ). A single cell tower can handle your call so long as you are within a few miles radius of that tower. As you hit the edge of coverage, an indescribably complex series of radio and computer control functions occur and your call signal is acquired by the now closest tower and dropped from the original tower. This goes on over and over and you never notice.

Like the football in the endless fantasy play, you have been handed off.

Many, many tech terms try to make complex ideas accessible with everyday expressions.

My brain likes fun and novel analogies and mixed metaphors (even if they are less solid, yes it is amateur) so I usually tend to think of Pitfall! Harry or Tarzan swinging vine to vine in the jungle when it comes to cell phone tower handoff.

If you were swinging from vine to vine, you would likely wait to let go of the vine you are on until after you grab the next vine and have a secure hold on it, otherwise you risk a big fall and getting eaten by the crocodiles below.

Same is true when calling on the go. The well designed networks are configured with tower coverage areas that overlap so that when possible, you can 'hold onto' the tower/s you are on and seamlessly 'grab onto' the next tower/s as you go without dropping the call. If the gap between towers is too large and you try to 'look ma' no hands!' it to cross the gap and 'grab the next vine' chances are high you will fall to your death. Or drop your call.

So, next time you drop a call from a bad tower hand off imagine yourself being eaten by a crocodile, falling into a tar pit, or plunging into water hole.

Thanks Maxwell for your field equations and your delicious Coffee.

I'll be here all week, refunds will be provided at the door

 

[EarlyMon]

You are correct. On Sprint, Tarzan always makes sure that he has the new vine before dropping the old.

AT&T tends to drop the ball.

Your mileage may vary, but I would swear to it.

 

[EarlyMon]

And with that, we have the EL TEvo battle cry!

Tarzan Oooooooh - YouTube

 

[EarlyMon]

I only know two things - Tarzan is srsly biznuz and 7:30 comes early.

 

[Citizen Coyote]

i always thought sprint has been excellent at hand-offs... although i think they have a faulty tower here in Norman because when i drive down a certain road on the phone (hands free of course), i ALWAYS drop calls at the same spot. i should probably report it but i'm much to busy to worry about it lol

never had any other faulty hand-off issues though... the occasional dropped call sure but those are always hard to put blame on because there are two people and usually two carriers involved.

There are a couple dead spots in Austin that I'm aware of, gaps between towers where you're almost guaranteed to drop a call. But overall yeah, I rarely drop a call on my cell as long as I'm not on the extreme edge of coverage/signal strength.

 

[Lorak]

Handoff should not be an issue. Of if it is, only at the begining.
Sprint isnt adding LTE to a few towers here and there to cover a city. They are upgrading every single site/tower they own. So its not going to be hitting lte and then dropping to 3G often.

This is one thing sprint needs to explain better. When they list a city market as getting LTE. Its not like att where downtown is covered. It is everytower in that market and the areas that surround it.