For months, Sprint boasted that it too would be receiving Apple’s newest edition to the iPhone family, and those loyal to the service provider were ecstatic to finally have a phone that could compete with the Samsung Galaxy. However, the arrival of the phone to the service provider hasn’t been as awesome as expected. In fact, it has been a little bit of a let down.
The initial let down came with the unveiling of the iPhone 4S itself. Many had expected the unveiling of the highly anticipated iPhone 5, and were highly disappointed when the iPhone 4S was shown instead. It’s been over a year since Apple released its last iPhone, which in smart phone years might as well be a decade, and many believed that a wait that long merited a grander phone release.
However, for Sprint users, the release holds a second disappointment: poor service. That’s right. After years of waiting to finally get their hands on an iPhone, the service provider fails to do its part. In a study conducted by OpenSignalMaps, Sprint didn’t even rank amongst best service providers of the iPhone 4S.
Data was able to be collected from 37 states with AT&T claiming stake on the best service in 31 of those states, and Verizon only claiming a surprising 6. Minnesota, Kansas, Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, and New Jersey iPhone 4S users should be using Verizon, the service provider that is usually able to offer the best 4G service overall.
The research provided doesn’t mean that AT&T has the best network overall, it simply implies that the provider is able to offer the best service to the iPhone 4S exclusively. AT&T is supposedly able to offer this better service because it has recently upgraded its HSPA network to a HSPA+ network allowing for higher uploading and downloading speeds.
For Sprint, this inability to provide adequate service to the iPhone may result in the service provider being skipped over when the iPhone 5 actually arrives. While the company did receive plenty of attention for finally acquiring iPhones, losing the contract could cause an even bigger stir – and it wouldn’t necessarily be positive either.
So for Sprint loyalists, all they can do is simply hope that the company – which hasn’t exactly been known in the past for providing the best of service – finally decides to upgrade their network. A move like that could not only put Sprint on the same plane at Verizon and AT&T, but it could change the market for smart phone users indefinitely.
