BYOD for Sprint?

[abishur]

Now that Sprint is shifting away from "subsiding" their phones to leasing them or using "easy pay" I've been looking around at purchasing my own phone and activating it on their network. The problem is I'm getting a lot of conflicting and/or outdated information.

Does sprint allow an unlocked phone that isn't the iPhone or the Nexus to join their network (at full speeds)? The most I've been able to find is that Sprint 4G LTE uses frequency 1900 and 850 as their primary bands for 4G speeds with frequency 2500 as an alternative? But thrown into that mix is that it seems like Sprint achieves its 4G for the 1900 and 850 frequencies by using UMTS?

As you can tell I'm quite confused here, is it at all possible to bring a "non-sprint" phone onto the sprint network provided that it is unlocked and can handle the appropriate frequencies?

 

[kate]

As far as I know it still must be a Sprint phone except for the iPhone, Nexus (and possibly Moto X unlocked from Motorola?). You can't bring an unlocked AT&T phone to Sprint.

Sprint LTE bands:
25 (1900 MHz)
26 (800 MHz)
41 (2500 MHz)

Sprint CDMA 3G & Voice
800 MHz
1900 MHz

 

[abishur]

Hey Kate, thanks for the response. I know AT&T can't go to sprint due to the GSM vs CDMA issues, but my main hold up is when I find a phone that says it can do CDMA, FD- LTE and TDD-LTE, and UMTS, at the appropriate frequencies/bands. Those phone *seem* like they should be able to be used on the Sprint network (i.e the Huawei Ascend Mate 7), but I was curious if anyone has had any practical success on using such third party phones on sprint, or if they explicitly deny any phone that isn't on their approved list... which is what Verizon does I think?

 

[wuyiL]

iPhone 6S/6S+, Nexus 5X/6/6P, Moto XPE are supporting all main carries in the US, and I hope more and more devices do the same as them.