That's what I mean about being happy here. Lol if you were a mod elsewhere you'd have a field day! Wiley has always been polite and cool and has come to my defense "over there."
I activated my phone on Tuesday by calling sprint, giving them the MEID number that was on the box, and the phone activated beautifully. Worked well for a few hours - then started rebooting by itself and freezing (had to take the battery out).
Overnight left it on charge, only went up to 76% and when I unplugged it, the red charge light stayed on, the screen was black, and the lights were lit up. could not power up or down, so battery out again. Rebooting frequently.
Called sprint and told them - they said it must be a defective phone, no problem, they will send me a new one. That's good. So anyway, last night at 6 pm, I made a call. Didn't use the phone again until 10 pm (was on charge) - 10 pm tried to txt someone - would not work. Could not email, internet, text, make or receive phone calls. No 3g showing up and zero bars. When I tried to call "Phone number cannot be validated". Hmmm. Called Sprint - was surprised to hear the automated voice tell me "Are you calling from 561 xxx xxxx?" which is NOT my number. I pressed no and typed in the correct number. Then the tech support person sounded puzzled, put me on hold and never came back to me. How rude. 20 minutes later I hung up and called again.
This time sprint asked me if I was calling from 561 xxx xxxx - a different wrong number - so I said no, and typed in my phone number. This time the tech support person told me hmmm, not really sure what could be wrong - so I suggested maybe doing a factory reset. She said OK. Tried to talk me through it - but when I got to the part where they have to provide the password, it said password incorrect. At this point I was constantly getting Error 67 messages and having to click on "dismiss" to get rid of those messages. Was not able to do a factory reset.
Then she said let's redo the MEID number: This time I read it off the phone itself, under the battery. She said OH WOW - that's why the phone was not working - we have the wrong MEID number on file. I said that's odd, I read it out from the box yesterday - so she said "well, maybe the box is wrong. That often happens - the wrong phone is put in the wrong box." (I was SURPRISED - this often happens???? Then that's REALLY bad). Anyway, I said but surely, if you had the incorrect MEID number on your system, then surely the phone would not have activated and would not have worked at all. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that true? If they have the wrong MEID number, they can't activate the phone? Anyway, she mumbled something but obviously didn't know.
FYI I just checked, and the MEID number on the box is the same as the one in the phone - which is the number I had given them to activate the phone. I have a feeling that the tech support person last night did not have a clue but was just randomly guessing at things to try to fix it. She was adamant though, that she could not do the factory reset because the MEID number was wrong in their system. I still don't believe it.
Anyway, after we redid the MEID number, the phone worked OK, although with only 1 bar, even with 4g enabled (I'm in Fort Lauderdale - I thought this was a 4 g area?). She just told me oh well, that happens.
So this morning I woke up, phone seemed to work great for 10 minutes - then froze again. battery out.
I AM FED UP. Sure, I understand that from time to time, defective phones will be shipped out and nobody knows they're defective until they're used - I'm just frustrated about the whole experience, of a day and a half of the phone shutting off, not charging, then my number and signal just disappearing off the face of the planet, and then getting told the MEID number they had on file was wrong - kind of like it was my fault.
I was also surprised that the sound was so poor (speaker) - when initially using the Google Navigation, I had to strain to hear it. I don't run the GPS through my bluetooth because I have some strange thing that if it is connected for phone and audio and media, if i talk to someone on the phone, whenever I hang up, suddenly, music starts blaring through the bluetooth. This happens even though I had NOT used the music to play any music at all - even though the phone is freshly rebooted - it seems to be a glitch and freaks me out - when i hit "end" on my bluetooth and I'm driving, and I expect silence, suddenly one of the songs blares out. I nearly drove into a tree the other day - so I have turned off that option so now anything other than phone will play from the phone itself. The problem of course is that the minute I go out of rangeo f the phone and the bluetooth disconnects and reconnects, it reconnects with media too - this is the motorola H17 which I love love love! best bluetooth I've ever had - but don't know where the problem lies - also had this problem with my HTC Hero. Talk on the phone with bluetooth, disconnect, and whammo, music.
Anyway, as far as the poor sound goes, my friend DonB, someone whose opinion I truly value and who knows a TON of stuff about everything, tells me there are apps out there to improve the sound quality. Naturally I will try those, but only once i've resolved all these other issues.
First impressions of the Evo 3d, in spite of everyone telling me it's the best phone they've ever had: not good. Also not that impressed with Sprint at this point. Been with them since 1996 - maybe time for a change?
I just want to add one thing for people who complain about poor battery life - we must remember, we are not dealing with a phone that has apps here - we are dealing with a mini computer that also has a phone option - and if we compare those with our laptops, where batteries only last a few hours, we are pretty lucky to have such long lasting battery life with our smartphones. Sure I wish they lasted longer too, and no doubt in the future they will, but for now I think we shouldn't forget just what kind of device we have in our hands - truly amazing mini computers. Except of course for my defective one
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