Sprint to be exclusive carrier of Essential phone | Hacker News Reader

Sprint to be exclusive carrier of Essential phone

usatoday.com

38 pointsartsandsci37 comments

This whole idea of "exclusive carrier" just wears me out. My first smartphone was an HTC Dream with T-Mobile, then a Moto Droid with Verizon, then a CDMA Galaxy Nexus again with Verizon. I finally got sick of it and bought a Motorola X Pure last Christmas. It's so-called "universal" so it works on whatever carrier I want. Right now I'm using it on Cricket pre-paid and if they do something janky I'll just pick up and go somewhere else. No more of that carrier exclusive crap and no more contracts.

Regarding the Essential phone, even for people that don't mind being locked to a major carrier, they chose Sprint? I'm not positive but I'm pretty sure they have the least favorable reputation of the 4 major carriers. Hitching your wagon to that seems like a bad idea. I'm all for more competition though so I hope Rubin knows what he's doing.

It makes sense from a marketing standpoint, IMO.

If the phone is as good as it's supposed to be, they've given Sprint a reason to promote it for them. Sprint gets an angle to look forward thinking/innovative and probably pick up some new customers. Sprint already heavily advertises and now this phone will be featured as part of that advertising. Sprint needs ways to differentiate itself in the marketplace and this could be a solid way to do it.

For Essential, it's a way to create demand an a bit of an exclusivity feel and get a truckload of free advertising on the back of a giant. Essential isn't Apple or Google. They won't have the out of the gate manufacturing or marketing channels available that either of those two giants have so this will also provide a means of somewhat controlling demand.

For people using Sprint, they get to feel a little smug if they whip this phone out and it IS awesome. If it's as good as it could be, you create a means of having that drool-inducing effect that makes people seriously consider switching to get one.

I'll go ahead and tell you...I want one. I think it looks like a great design, but I'm on an iPhone right now along with my entire family. The parental control features basically lock me into an iPhone until the kids get older. It's a small network effect....but whether essential was on AT&T, Verizon or Sprint...I still couldn't get one because I'm stuck on Apple and not AT&T.

> For people using Sprint, they get to feel a little smug if they whip this phone out and it IS awesome

Except it's Sprint, so many people will whip out their phone and have no functional data service. (Yes, even in 2017). There are lots of really good reasons why Sprint has the worst reputation of all major carriers. And people don't always pick up on the distinction -- a broken network makes a great phone look like a broken phone.

I think Essential is letting their business/personal ties to SoftBank cloud their decisions on what's best for their users and what's best for Essential as a product.

Works good for me on the East Coast. People say things like that but I haven't experienced them in my travels or day to day life. My older kids have gotten different carriers and they don't seem to have a magical new network experience when we travel together. They have Verizon and AT&T.

I live in Pennsylvania and travel to Connecticut and West Virginia all the time. I don't see coverage issues and in fact in the back woods of the country Sprint has better coverage due to a few acquisitions it has made in that area.

TMobile has a real problem on the East Coast. Coverage is bad in my city. Doesn't work in WV and when my son was sick with cancer CHOP (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia) in the Surgery Wait Room they tell you that they can't call you if you have TMobile, which means you can't leave the waiting area at all.

I live in Kansas City where Sprint is located. You think they would have the best service out here because of headquarters and all, and yet, every person that I talk to that has Sprint hates the cell service quality.

I live just outside Washington, DC and have Sprint. The service is fine for me here. But then last year I took a trip to Florida and couldn't get a signal to save my life.

In other words, Sprint's coverage is great right up to the moment when it's terrible. Which you can live with if you're mostly in a place where it's great, but which makes it hard to recommend to people generally since you have no idea if they happen to spend most of their time in places where it isn't.

Weird, I have coverage in and around CHOP on TMO. It's not the best, sometimes drops from weak LTE to 4G, but it functions. All the Penn facilities offer reliable (but certainly not fast) wifi, so as long as your phone supports wifi calling, it shouldn't be a problem.

> Except it's Sprint, so many people will whip out their phone and have no functional data service.

Sitting in my home office, my work-provided Sprint iPhone 6S just managed 0.47/0.27 Mb/s in the Speedtest.net app. Highest I've ever seen is 13.11/8.85 in Highlands, NC of all places. Data dead zones are everywhere around Atlanta.

Sprint is so bad that several times a month I can't even get it to make a phone call... over WiFi.

My Verizon iPhone 7+ got 38.25/9.25 with a best of 172.92/29.85.

> It makes sense from a marketing standpoint, IMO.

Yeah, the marketing makes a ton of sense:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2016/10/30/goo...

Pixel: "only on Verizon"!

But the Pixel is an unlocked phone by default. I use mine on TMO.

You can still buy the phone unlocked direct from essential. This is "exclusive" to sprint in that sprint will be the only carrier to have this phone in their stores.

The supported bands are:

  -UMTS/HSPA+: 1, 2, 4, 5 6, 8
  -GSM: 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz
  -CDMA EV-DO Rev. A: 0, 1, 10
  -FDD-LTE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 17, 20, 21, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 66
  -TDD-LTE: 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43
  -TD-SCDMA: 34, 39

I think the Pixel had a similar "exclusivity" with Verizon when it launched.

So Essentially, they're guaranteeing that this phone is DOA.

“We like to bet with where we think the market is going as opposed to where the market was”

Translation

"Sprint was the only carrier that was in a place to take a bet on us and promote and pay us what we were asking for, or even allow us to put our phone in their stores and have access to the brick and mortar market"

Yea good luck. The least desired carrier in the US. That'll work well.

thinks about his old palm pre cries

Why do you have to bring up webOS? What a beaut. If HP didn't shut the app store down or I had backups of most apps, I'd switch to my Pre 2/3 right now for a week or two. God I miss it!

What was so good about webOS?

Mathias Duarte, and a hackable system UI due to pervasive use of web technologies.

I loved the OS(even if it did still feel beta quality at times), but that original Pre hardware was just terrible. It felt so fragile and that jelly keyboard was awful.

Well that's a mistake I think. Sprint network is terrible in comparison to ATT & Verizon. Shouldn't this thing be unlocked and not tied to any carrier as a matter of principal?

I have missed the boat here, what makes this phone special? Why would I choose this over existing Android or Apple phones? At the price point it would need to have some serious compelling features.

Oddly this is the first time I have heard of this phone.

It was announced not that long ago. For all I know you need dongle for almost everything(if not everything). Android founder is somehow involved and I assume this is why most of HN folks like it (the ones that do)

It has a weird magnetic accessory connector on it. And it's made of Titanium! And a weird camera cutout in the screen so it doesn't have a top bezel! It still has a bottom bezel for no reason. Could have moved the screen to the bottom and not needed a camera cutout. And Andy Rubin started the company that makes it! And it's not waterproof. Titanium! And no SD card slot. But Andy Rubin! No headphone jack, you can buy an MP3 player for that, right??? But Titanium! Did I mention you get all that for the low low price of $700? With Essential Products, this lack of essential features can be yours today!

TL;DR: It's a piece of shit IMO. My personal list of essential features for a phone: IPx8 rating, preferably 68. SD card slot. Headphone jack. NFC. I'd prefer it if the manufacturer updated the OS in a timely fashion, but I can live with Lineage and other ROMs.

"You’ll be able to get the device unlocked on Essential’s website for $699"

So, which is it? Is it exclusive to Sprint, or available unlocked?

Exclusive as in the only carrier to sell it in their stores.

You can still buy it unlocked from their website.

Everybody in these comments seems to understand "exclusive" as "it's locked to this carrier," including me. Bad wording.

So, if my girlfriend and I are being exclusive. That means we can both get sim cards from any carrier and put it in our phones? What is she going to say when I tell her I misunderstood exclusive.

Come on. Context matters. The title says "exclusive carrier."

So is there a discount or something with Sprint?

Was really interested, but 1) I'm not switching to sprint and 2) Who buys phones in stores?

That worked so well for the Palm Pre.

s/carrier/marketing rights

Innovative new phone. Archaic anti-consumer contracts.

Ouch!

Good luck

:-/

BOO

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