Sprint Megathread: Dead Man Sprinting

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Sprint Megathread: Dead Man Sprinting

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

ExcessBLarg! posted:

A hardware keyboard is still vastly superior to on-screen for ConnectBot/ssh, but on-screen is perfectly fine if not preferable for everything else (in my opinion). Since an ultra-portable ssh-capable device is pretty high on my priority list, I still seek out hardware keyboards. Although I suppose if the day comes where every phone that has a hardware keyboard is guaranteed to suck, I'll have to reevaluate that.

In any event, the keyboard on the Epic is actually pretty good. I prefer it to the G2's keyboard, although the Shift's inclusion of a d-pad (or whatever) makes up for most I dislike about the G2. The problem with the Epic's keyboard is that Samsung completely hosed up the driver for it, in ways that only Samsung can. Which is rather amazing, given that embedded hardware keyboards pretty much all use the same design, and there's plenty of well written embedded keyboard drivers in Linux. So they had to try fairly hard to gently caress it up.

The real answer to your question is that I bought an Epic before the Shift was announced. With Sprint carrying a well-received non-Samsung hardware keyboard alternative, the Epic is probably an unwise choice to make today.

So the Epic definitely had widespread GPS issues in DI18. ~~The official Froyo releases~~ EB13 seems to have solved the GPS woes for most Epic owners. At least, getting locks is fairly reliable and quick.

You're not alone though in having GPS issues, there is a minority of folks who report this. I don't know if it's a hardware issue that only affects a minority of units, or if there is (or was) a software bug that could effectively poison it.

Did you ever install the DK28 Froyo leak? I'm suspicious that had something to do with it.

Edit: Ugh, it looks like EC05 might have broken GPS again. I had assumed that since it seemed to be "really fixed" in EB13 it would stay that way. Of course, this is Samsung.

I'd start with SyndicateROM Frozen with the Twilight Zone Kernel. It's probably the most comprehensive in terms of bug fixes and community enhancements and developed by folks who seem to have a clue. Although I just run a slightly-modified stock ROM myself.

This guy knows what he's talking about. I also use ssh a bunch on my phone, and the hardware keyboard is vastly superior for that, especially for tab completion and symbol access.

My wife and I both have Epics, and we both love them. Neither of us has had issues with the GPS, it seems very fast to me, getting locks in about 3 seconds, and we've done stock ROMs and custom ROMs. Now we are both on SyndicateROM, and that ROM basically seems perfect.

I really don't get what all the hate is about, I can see the argument that Samsung is slow to release updates, but this is what custom ROMs are for... it's not like I want an official ROM anyway, with all the crap they bundle with it.

I find it funny how the EVO is considered the best phone, but I find the thing way too large and sharp-cornered to keep in the pocket, and it's even too big to hold (full disclosure, I'm 5'7" and wife is 5'4").

Eyecannon fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Apr 5, 2011

# ¿ Apr 5, 2011 16:29

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 22:25

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Help! My wife spilled tea with honey on her Epic, and now it works, but the keyboard has certain letters that if you type them, three letters come out. The water damage indicators both triggered, so that sucks, and we do have TEP. What is the best way to deal with this? Take it to the store, and they replace keyboard? Do I need to flash to stock and/or unroot? Or because the water sensors triggered I have to pay $100?

# ¿ Apr 30, 2011 20:17

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Duckman2008 posted:

Water damage is $100 deductable no leeway. Just go to phoneclaim.com/sprint and you can file, as long as it's before like, 8pm central you will get the phone the next day. You can bill the $100 to your account. And they don't care about it being rooted and having a custom ROM.

Awesome, thanks! Just curious, is that an official or unofficial policy about about the ROM thing?

# ¿ May 1, 2011 00:20

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Can someone please tell me the best strategy for using my Epic in Mexico? I basically want it to ONLY do wifi, if I turn off '4G' and '3G Data' then I should be good? Though I will probably still be able to get texts (which cost something fairly outrageous).

Maybe I should disable auto roaming and make it Sprint only as well?

# ¿ May 2, 2011 19:58

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

SneakyCracker posted:

I believe you can put the phone into airplane mode, and then just manually turn on wifi. My understanding is that this will allow the phone to leave the CDMA radio off but still operate on Wifi.

Fake Edit: Yup, just tried it on my Epic. Putting the phone into airplane mode disables everything, but then manually turning on wifi will leave the airplane mode icon in place, but give the wifi connection only.

Edit 2: Texting does not work in this mode, though.

Cool, thanks! I don't want texts working, if it's important the person can email.

# ¿ May 2, 2011 21:10

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

UFO posted:

How do I upgrade from sero premium to sero premium 4g?

Activate a 4G phone.

# ¿ May 7, 2011 23:53

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Why would anyone use the stock browser when Dolphin Mini is free and sooooo much better?

# ¿ May 9, 2011 23:10

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Enjoying the latest leaked Gingerbread ROM on my Epic :cool:

Netflix streaming really is awesome.

# ¿ May 19, 2011 16:23

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Zorro KingOfEngland posted:

Every time I turn my Epic's screen off, I'm amazed by gingerbread crt animation yet again. I'm equally amazed at how quickly Samsung and Sprint are working on getting gingerbread out the door. Definitely a 180 from the Froyo fiasco.

Holy poo poo, I read about that but hadn't tried it... that is :coolfish:

# ¿ May 19, 2011 20:38

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

The Entire Universe posted:

Is it really as complete and feature-ready as they're saying on XDA?

I'm using Simply AOSP (a froyo rom of course) on my Epic right now but the Gingerbread rom is really, really tempting even if it is clunky old RFS and Touchwhiz.

I would call it "nearly perfect"... I am having one slight issue with my Gmail staying in perfect sync... still looking for a solution to that.

# ¿ May 19, 2011 22:13

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Eyecannon posted:

I would call it "nearly perfect"... I am having one slight issue with my Gmail staying in perfect sync... still looking for a solution to that.

Fixed this problem with a Titanium Backup data delete... worked perfect afterwards.

# ¿ May 20, 2011 03:51

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Battery life on the Epic Gingerbread ROM is ridiculous... 7 hours off charger and I'm at 85%.

# ¿ May 25, 2011 01:57

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Vykk.Draygo posted:

Sitting at home on WiFi or out doing stuff and using the phone? I'd love to get that kind of battery life in everyday situations, but I doubt I ever will.

Fairly light usage, but compare this to my same phone on various Froyo ROMs and I would be at 50% by the evening... my phone now is at 80%. I have Wifi at home and work, so it was only on 4G during my 15 minute bike ride each way.

# ¿ May 25, 2011 02:56

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

rock2much posted:

Are you using CM7 alpha?

No, Midnight ROM v6. CM7 looks like it sucks for the Epic, no GPS, camera, 4G...

# ¿ May 25, 2011 22:53

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

a shameful boehner posted:

Anyone have any experiences with the speed at which they received their online phone order?

They overnight, so if you order before 3 or 4 pm you get it the next day.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2011 16:14

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

CharlesM posted:

I thought maybe you were but tone is difficult to tell over the internet sometimes.

Seriously, just get a free Optimus or Epic and you will be blown away. I went from a Touch Pro to an Epic and OMG there's a world of difference.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2011 16:21

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

900ftjesus posted:

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^The screen is better than the Evo 4G

This for sure, it looks too smooth somehow. This is looking at a TV at someone's house, not display models.

It is more of a problem with the 120Hz default settings... on my Samsung TV, the defaults look terrible, but if I slightly reduce the 120Hz-ness, it looks way better than 60Hz.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2011 17:23

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Every time my phones have gone wonky, I just call up Sprint and tell them to give me an advanced exchange. They send you a refurb overnight, which you normally get the next day, and then you just put your old phone in the return envelope they provide. You don't have to deal with morons at the store, in fact, you don't ever have to leave your house. And I've never been charged for it, no matter how long I've had the phone.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2011 17:52

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Yo, so I'm in Spain right now with my Epic, and even though there is no CDMA here, I thought that my GPS should still work... I get no satellites in GPS status though. Is there some trick to get it to work with no network?

# ¿ Sep 9, 2011 14:16

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Actually, I finally got it working... two things were needed:

1) airplane mode OFF (can turn back on after GPS lock)
2) wifi location OFF (ironically)

After that, 9 satellite lock :coolfish:

# ¿ Sep 9, 2011 15:19

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Hmmm that network.sprint.com site is missing a little city called Los Angeles.

In the pulldown, at least.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2011 16:47

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

ExcessBLarg! posted:

Unfortunately the GPS is still hosed up, far worse actually than Froyo. It only locks on 1-2 satellites at a time and frequently crashes after 15 minutes of use or so.

This is inexcusable too since the problem is that they shipped a very old version of the GB GPS daemon (it's been the same since the early-May leak), whereas the Mesmerize and Sprint Tab GB updates that hit a few months ago both include a much never version that works really darn well. Good news is that if you're rooted and want a working GPS, this fix (the daemon pulled from the Mesmerize) works really well.

They also didn't fix the hardware keyboard driver they hosed up in the Froyo release despite community fixes being around forever. But if you haven't had a problem with the hardware keyboard so far, it's no worse in GB.

I'm on a EI22 custom ROM and my GPS has never been better... I would recommend flashing a custom ROM with the GPS fix.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2011 17:45

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

I have an Epic 4G and 280 days left till upgrade... what can I do?

Although to be fair, I do in general like my phone with custom ROM's... I just want something with maybe a bigger screen and more memory.

Eyecannon fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Dec 11, 2011

# ¿ Dec 11, 2011 20:26

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Octavian posted:

A quick question for anyone who's dealt with Asurion - I broke the screen on my second Evo 3D, and I've got the replacement from them. I was a bit surprised when they sent me a whole new phone, accessories included. What do I stuff in the return envelope? Just the phone, or the SD card and battery too? What about the charger?

Always just the phone... keep the battery, SD card, and charger.

Oxford comma, bitches.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2011 05:50

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Upgrade time October 1st! Finally can get rid of these Epic 4G's. Is there anything random I should know about SERO Premium upgrades? My wife wants a iPhone, will she be able to get a 5? Does sprint have any android phones with physical keyboards? I have no idea what I am going to get!

# ¿ Sep 14, 2012 19:46

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Can anyone recommend a good case for the SG3? Something that doesn't add a lot of bulk would be awesome.

vvv thanks!

Eyecannon fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Oct 8, 2012

# ¿ Oct 8, 2012 22:31

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Sooo my wife and I are splitting up... can I move her SERO Premium account off my account and onto her own? How do I do that?

# ¿ Feb 26, 2013 18:34

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Duckman2008 posted:

You can, although she isn't guaranteed to keep SERO. Call employee care, at the least she can get EPRP and they will move it.

So she would have to pay $30 more per month?

# ¿ Feb 26, 2013 21:13

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

Yesss..... bumped up my upgrade 2 weeks early... SG3 --> SG5

I called the SERO sales number, the first guy denied me, I asked him to ask his manager, who agreed and transferred me to EPRP help. That guy bumped my upgrade, then I could order the phone online and pick up same day in store!

SERO 4 LYFE

# ¿ May 18, 2014 15:50

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 22:25

Eyecannon: Mar 13, 2003; you are what you excrete

I was charged $314 for the phone, activation, and tax, but there is a $50 MIR. So $264 total.

# ¿ May 19, 2014 20:59

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Sprint Megathread: Dead Man Sprinting