New sprint commercials with the "we will half your bill", but you have to buy their phones.....wonder if they sell the moto X?

Next thought is about the Android optimizations that have taken place in the last two years which have pretty much obliviated the need for using super powerful phone chips.

Qualcomm came out with new chipsets to meet the lowered requirements of the new Android Kit Kat and Lollipop OS systems -- and they use quad core A-53 chipsets and the weaker of them that are quite popular right now is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400's which are all old quad core A-7s die shrunk to 20nm.

Hey, Price rules if performance is good -- and right now the totally integrated Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 is the chip to beat for use in a mid range cell phone.

There is leakage upstream from all this OS optimization -- this is a Utilite2 desktop Linux PC built using a Qualcomm 600 chipset.

Take notice, Intel, within a year I will show you Windows PCs running on these sorts of chipsets in form factors that look a lot like this.   The Tegra K1 laptop stuff that is upsetting you so much right now is only the first of many to come roost on  your doorstep ......

(Apple is next, old boy)

I think the monitor is separate for most PCs .....   this one would require an HDMI monitor as do most totally modern things any more.

I guess the point was that ARM phone chips are now powerful enough to run a PC .... so Intel can expect to see a lot more of that happening when MS finishes their "do everything all the same" Win 10 operating system.

And when Intel has to compete against ARM on price up inside PC space (do PC price supports) they will not have a PC cash cow to milk to support all those contra revenue efforts ..... not unless they want to milk the server chip business to support the PC business that is.



     eventually Intel will not have anything to "rob Peter to pay Paul".

Wife pointed out something to me about the Wi-Fi aspect of calling.... using "just any" Wi-Fi could cause serious software concerns.
What are they doing about phone software safety when using a "guest" Wi-Fi at a local restaurant, hotel, ect... for a phone call?
Are they going to use anti-virus software for phones now too?
I'm going to have to read up on all this, before I jump in the pool.

I'll throw in my 2-cents about all this. I had Sprint for the past ~4 years. Had my wife and I on the family plan, 2 lines, eventually ended up with 5, a friend, half-brother, and half-brother's mom, then back down to 3 lines. Finally got bored with Sprint as their 4G is horrendously slow. In fact, I had a custom Rom running on my Galaxy S4 (great phone by the way) and I could switch back and forth manually between 3G and 4G. At times, I would jump over to 3G if 4G seemed slow and BOOM! Facebook would start loading way faster.

My theory...Sprint has "Truly Unlimited" 4G service, sooo everybody uses excessively and because of this, Sprint doesn't bother upgrading towers or anything because if they're not making any more profit off of it, why should they? Which would be all fine and dandy except...T-Mobile rolls out their "We'll pay your ETF's so you can break-up with your carrier" and to guys like me who really don't have a reason to stick around, we switch over.

I've been with T-Mobile now for a little over a month. I'm having mixed feelings, I don't know whether to begin with pros or cons, so I'll start with the bad, and hope the good will sweeten the deal again. (Not recruiting, just don't wanna think I made a bad decision by switching.)

Cons:
-The "Pay your ETFs" is a reimbursement, meaning if you're like me, living paycheck to paycheck, that $450 might be more than you can afford at the time. It can take up to 2 months to receive the reimbursement.

-I got the Sony Xperia Z3 (it's full waterproof [submergible] to 5 feet for 30 minutes). I am a huge Sony fan, always wanted a Sony phone, but Sprint did not, and still does not offer one. Got the phone, T-Mobile forces you to trade in your old phone and buy a new one either cash, or finance it out over 24 months. 0% interest though. Anyways, my phone's screen crapped out probably 15 or 16 days after I got it, went back, they told me they'd replace it because it was still under warranty. They didn't mention it would be with a Refurbished phone. I don't trust refurbished phones, never have, never will. Fact of the matter is, I paid for a NEW, free-of-defects, phone. What I got was a new, defective phone. Replaced with a once defective, but fixed used phone. In my honest opinion, better customer service could have been given by allowing a month to return defective phones and still receive a new phone. This "con" is debatable on whether or not it's T-Mobile's fault, it could have been Sony's fault for making a defective device. I had seen it's not uncommon to have screen problems with Sony phones.

Constant issues with making calls. Like 50% of the time it doesn't go through the first time, I have to hang up, try again, usually it works on the 2nd try, if not I have to try again then it usually works fine. Haven't had any issues receiving any calls though. That's only over the cell network. We can set our phones up to do Wifi calling where it defaults to calling over wifi networks, when I do it that way, making a call isn't a problem, however, maintaining the call is usually a problem, since if there is any little hesitation in wifi connection, it drops. And say you leave your wifi in the middle of a call, you have to hang up and wait for it to connect over the cell network. (That feature can be disabled or set to prefer cell network over wifi.)



Pros:

I will say one of the big reasons I do not regret switching, the 4G is lightning fast! (Compared to Sprint at least) I mean, it's like just a step down from Wifi speeds. And the bill will come out to be hopefully less than Sprint's was. (It's hard to gauge since I have only 2 lines with T-Mobile, and for a while with Sprint it was at least 3 or more lines).

No contract. For the cell phone service that is. If you buy the phones cash, no contract. If you finance, you have a contract til the phones are paid off. For some people this ain't such a bad deal. I can throw any extra cash I get at paying it off, and once I do I can leave anytime I want. Plus and Plus in my opinion. With Sprint, I was stuck waiting it out or having to come up with extra money for the ETF.

$100 for 2 lines, unlimited 4G. (Limited time offer) We signed on with 3gig of 4G each for $100, a couple weeks later they came out with the unlimited offer. I went in, the T-Mobile rep did his little thing and BAM! we got unlimited 4G and were paying no more. After you go over your initial 4G limit, T-Mobile then would throttle you back to 2G. In this case I was just relying more heavily on my Wifi usage. Now that it's unlimited though, I don't worry too much about it. When I'm at home I stick to wifi, when I'm at work or anywhere else, I don't pay too much attention to it.

You can use any "unlocked" phone you want. Meaning, if it has a spot for a sim-card and isn't a Sprint, Verizon, or AT&T, phone. You can use it with T-Mobile. I mentioned I have the Sony Xperia Z3, my coworker bought the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact direct from Sony and put it on his T-Mobile plan without a problem. (Identical to my phone in every way, just smaller).




All in all, I'm glad I switched, I use data WAAAYYY more than I used traditional calling. I still call a lot though. But having slow data vs. having to hang up and try again.

There was nothing more frustrating than trying to show a funny video to a friend on youtube and then when you go to show it you get the spinning loading image................................................................still loading........................still loading........................finally! loaded! 5 seconds later..................loading................and I'm sitting there feeling like a jack#%% and eventually would give up. Now, I NEVER have that problem.

If you use data often, want to be free of contract, and have cash to buy the phone out-right. I recommend switching to T-Mobile ASAP to catch that 2-line unlimited 4G deal. You will be grandfathered in whenever the deal goes away. In the future I plan on just buying my phones cash, from the manufacturer and just putting a T-Mobile sim card in it. That way if I have any defective phone, I can work that out with the manufacturer instead of T-Mobile. Since I'm pretty sure the way the do it is, **Someone correct me if I'm wrong**, T-Mobile tells Sony, "Hey! We want 10,000 Xperia phones for our service, all of them to be black in color. No, no thank you, we don't want to offer white, or green, or brown, all of them black. Yes, and no thank you, but we only want the full sized one, so it impales our customer's legs if they try to put it in their front jean pocket and sit on a motorcycle. We do not want the compact, decent sized one." Then Sony preps all those phones and sell the lot to T-Mobile. Then when my phone's screen breaks, it's a issue between me and T-Mobile, not Sony.

So I've already had my ups and downs with T-Mobile, but I prefer a company that makes me happy on a daily basis, and only disappoints a few days out of a year than Sprint which disappoints every day of the year and only makes me happy the day I upgrade to get a new phone.

TL;dr  Sprint sucks and overcharges, T-Mobile's pros outweigh their con's, and they're relatively cheap.


Hope I covered everything. I'll add more in another reply if I remember something.

I have kind of been ignoring the Sprint ads recently. Last one I really noticed was the "Framily" Plan they had going on where the more people you add, the cheaper it is! Everyone has their own bill so there isn't any confusion. I don't buy into it because I'm sure they have all sorts of smartphones are an additional $10 charges stuck on there like they did when I was with them. Plus, I never researched it too much, but like they have always done, they are probably gonna stick all (X amount of lines) into a big fat 2-year contract and make it impossible for anyone to leave until the contract is up. My dad kept trying to get me to join his framily plan about 6 months back...I gave him the ol' "Sure dad, well I'll check it out..." run around because he can never take "No" for an answer. Anyways...3 or 4 days ago...he's asking me about T-Mobile because he's tired of Sprint. He has been a Sprint customer for the past 15 years because back when cell phones were just wireless phones, Sprint was the only one that had decent reception at our house, (Mind you we live in Austin, so it's not like were out in the country). Now that the tables have turned, he isn't so prone to stay with them. I originally got with Sprint because my Dad had always seemed pretty happy with them. I'm disappointed to say they seem to have lost their edge on the game.

Moral of the story: I'd stay away from a lot of these gimmicky deals sprint is offering. T-Mobile is somewhat gimmicky themselves, but as always, no contract on the service. So you can leave anytime you want.

Now, I have a pre-CES show prediction on phones to make.

GSM phones (T-Mobile and AT&T type phones, T-Mobile most specifically) are going to drop in cost and take a big leap forward in feature/performance.   The CDMA based Sprint/Verizon phones will take a big drop back (relatively speaking) in terms of feature/performance and will not make the low cost leap that the GSM phones from T-Mobile will make.

Why?   Chinese standard Android phones are all unlocked and they all run advanced forms of GSM and only T-Mobile is currently set up to use these modern forms of GSM as their new 4-G LTE (advanced) service.

"Bring your own phones" for the new no-contract T-Mobile service will come oriental stock from BLU and from Xiaomi, both of which are going to start selling killer type phones for less than $200 here in the USA starting later this year.  

And they will only run as BYOP on T-Mobile at first  as only T-Mobile was far sighted enough (cheap enough) to debut their new tower systems at a pretty much bone stock unlocked Chinese standards level.

CDMA type folks who want to build up some same-same sorts of competitive products are going up against volumes of scale issues that are Oriental sized when they try to put forward USA phones built only at "smaller" USA volumes.   GSM is 80%+ of the world market now and CDMA is 20% and dropping ......   so Verizon and Sprint are on the wrong end of this equation at this point in time.

Look to see T-Mobile grow and grow and grow, especially since you can sometimes get AT&T to unlock certain types of AT&T phones and then you can BYOP your unlocked AT&T phone over to T-Mobile and save the cost of that new phone to get at the cheaper T-Mobile Un-carrier data plan rates.

Sprint has already cracked on their pricing structure (being the low man on the totem pole helped them "get real" early on) but Verizon and AT&T are still "too big" to see the handwriting just yet.   Sprint's issue now is they are too small for getting the very best phone pricing and their native service type isn't in line with the oriental base standard at all ......  so Sprint is jest plain SOL in other words.

BTW, the orientals do believe in Wifi Calling so AT&T and Verizon and Sprint have something else they need to incorporate into their worlds pretty durn quickly as well.    

T-Mobile is already there on wifi calling, and could offer some even lower cost plans accordingly if they wanted to.



==================================



I now count 25 USA app based providers of pure wifi based calling and fully expect two dozen more to come into being this upcoming year.   Some of the newest little new guys are going with a slightly modified Google Hangouts base on their stuff and that is practically FREE right now and by the time they and Google mature their separate pieces of their joint system it may indeed wind up being very useful and very low cost.

Believe it or not Apple is now becoming a leader in the wifi calling realm.   Their app store is plumb lousy with the things.

Right now Republic Wireless is the only one mature enough to offer a seamless hybrid  wifi/cell system on a relatively low cost cell phone, and they will charge you $10 a month for their lowest level of hardware based conjoined wifi/cell hybrid system.    

My wife will require the $10 a month Republic Wireless system so she can be happy making phone calls from the car (with me driving of course) and I could be content with the $5 a month pure wifi calling plan since I stay close to a router just about all the time.   Or perhaps I could be happy with one of the crowd of brand new freebie Android apps that just sprang up overnight running on my old cell phone.

T-Mobile does have an oriental standards based wi-fi calling system in place, but it only runs as part of their full cost $25 a month plans.   Republic does have $5, $10 and $25 true wifi/cell hybrid plans.   T-Mobile will let you BYOP a cheaper stock oriental android phone though.

I suspect this will all change drastically inside the next year, with Google and an international partner or two will be actually touching their tongues to the flag pole intentionally (but only doing it overseas in some the warmer climates where flag pole tongue touching is still kinky, but completely legal and above board).  

Once all the USA players are doing it, Google will bring theirs to the USA for free.    

Apple is embracing wifi calling now with their latest most expensive $600 really big dollar iPhones, so expect wifi calling to be considered "cool" by all the "in" kids going forward.    

Apple may be the one that plows the "acceptance" trail in the USA, since they can "app it away" for free on their uber expensive phones just to tweek 'ol Google's nose a bit.  

(Apple likes doing that, they do)     Google can't go out and piss off all their Android cell phone providers/customers all that directly, but Apple most certainly can.

All phone plans are going to eventually get a good bit cheaper though, soon enough.   Sprint will start to fade away and they and AT&T will be forced to change over to GSM phones when it gets bad enough.



    ..... dem blustery winds of change, she blows right hard against dem fat 'ol phone companies, she does .....