Our T-Mobile (from Sprint) experience while not terrible is not off to a great start
Back a few days ago I did the SIM conversion from Sprint to T-Mobile and it went OK. There were some issues I outlined, but nothing particularly terrible at the time. As a note, I still don’t know why they can’t just change their records for the SIM, but they couldn’t.
What has followed has been wildly inconsistent speeds for my Note 8. I get either 110mbit, 50, or about 13mbit on speed tests. Same times of day, same location, same phone and orientation. Places where I did have signal on Sprint, I’m suddenly seeing next to none (although it’s still working.) I’m also getting told I’m on 3G occasionally with 10mbit speeds but that’s a non-tmobile app so take that as you will.
Let me be clear however, it’s generally good. It’s just odd. The speeds will cycle over and over… if it’s 13 one time, it’ll be 100/50 the next. If it’s 100, it’s probably going to not repeat and be 13/50. It feels like the phone is switching between 3 bands because the speed it reaches is remarkably consistent. Maybe my phone, but this happened the day of the conversion and has been those 3 speeds since.
My wife being spambarded by MMS messages coming through T-Mobile’s email to MMS gateway which evidently allows any email to <phonenumber>@tmomail.net to pass through without cursory spam checking. Yes, I am aware as of this writing it’s possible to block them from a web page.
I decided to go all in on T-Mobile and got the Spam Shield with a side of caller ID and visual voicemail transcribing (yes, I’m aware I could do this for free with Google Voice, but yeah.) Thus far it hasn’t picked up/blocked a couple of spam calls – one from a number that calls me so much I memorized it (it also has 50+ reports on Should I Answer’s database, not from me.) It might be working in the background as I do feel like my phone has not been ringing as much.
Filed the spam complaint with the T-Mobile spam shield app and at least at the moment I have not gotten a call back. But then again I wouldn’t expect to yet.
On a positive note, the actual phone function works better than the Sprint service did. Calling from my work to my phone it’s ringing in a second or two as opposed to dealing with Sprint’s 4-5 second mystery delay in this neighborhood.
Insurmountable? No. I’m not even entirely sure the speed and coverage is their issue (I have seen some crazy stuff the past 10 years with radios)
Oh, speaking of radios, updating Profile and PRL does not seem to be an option since I moved to T-Mobile. I’ve done it on this phone. I’ve done it in the past 2 months. It’s not there since the swap. Followed the T-Mobile directions to read the Sprint directions and yeah, no. Not there. There’s not even a System Updates any more, just Software Updates.
