Why I cancelled Sprint. Why I cancelled Android. #roidrage #sprintrage.

I bought a beautiful new Android Pro Evo 4G from Sprint last Christmas eve. The service map showed that I have 4G coverage in my neighborhood. Yay!

Sprint tells me that it costs $10 extra a month for this phone, with 4G, and I have no choice but to pay it. ‘OK’, I think it’s worth it for 4G.

Straw 1: Despite the map showing it, there’s no 4G in my neighborhood, and worse, the battery on the thing lasts for 2 hours (at best) with the 4G antenna turned on. End effect, I leave the antenna off, regardless of whether I’m in a 4G zone or not. So no 4G, despite the extra $10pcm.

Ok, sounds like I’m whining. If that’s all it was, then that’s all it would be. But it ain’t.

Straw 2: I love baseball, and I was really looking forward to something that would allow me to listen to/ watch MLB.TV games. Android has the app, so I can use it, right? Right? Not so right. Sprint put a proxy server in the network settings, which isn’t easily removable (*) which, of course, usually doesn’t have any impact, but when you try to stream audio..boom. And forget about video. Ugh.

(*) After a few hours of bingling, I found some hacks that, with a call to Sprint customer service, would give me some numbers that allow me to unlock service mode, and risk invalidating my warranty, and hack the proxy server to 0.0.0.0…that way I could finally listen to baseball. So, despite having a ‘state of the art’ phone, with a ‘state of the art’ data service, that I paid a premium for, I had to hack my phone to allow me to use data. Ugh.

Straw 3: CarrierIQ. I won’t say any more about this, lest my blood boil. After all this crap, I also have spyware on my phone that I’m paying a premium to use.

Straw 4: To get rid of CarrierIQ, I root my phone (invalidating the warranty)…guess what? The rooted OS has no proxy server built in (not even 0.0.0.0) so streamed stuff from the likes of Spotify, NHL and MLB works great, and the battery…about 3x the life of what it had been. (Not to mention I had to buy an extended battery from Sprint for $65 pre Straw 3 in order to get something that was usable!)

So, I paid the $120 ‘fine’ to cancel my phone early. Good riddance.

Bottom line…I’ll never sign up for a 2 year agreement again. Instead, I just bought an iPhone 4S, off-contract, and am using an ATT GO plan, costing me…$10 a month(*), so I get everything from them for the cost of the fine I had to pay Sprint just for the privilege of using 4G. Oh, the irony!

(*) Will cost me more in baseball season when I use more data, but, hey, I have a choice to turn it on or off without getting fined…

‎(#droidrage) To the tune of ‘These are my favorite things’.

Proxies that slow you down
Spybots to screw you
Malware that steals your stuff
Battery that bleeds you
Handsets that heat your house
Googles not Bings
These are a few of my #droidrage things

I bought my Evo and
I was so happy
Nice Christmas Pressie
For hard working Daddy
Baseball wont stream
But network’s all green
These are a few of my #droidrage things

Called up sprint and they gave me my MSL
Hacked to the bootsect and thought ‘what the hell’
Why have they given me a proxyyyy
Now I have to change HTTPD
After my hacking I finally got it
Baseball is streaming
Even if my team is not
Now I can see every pitch every ding
These are a few of my #droidrage things

Then there’s the spybot that they call CarrierIQ
In my bootsect and there’s nothing I can do
My phone to root
And then to reboot
These are few of my #droidrage things

Now there’s ruFraud
The famous droid malware
Sends text abroad
And charges your card here
It’s time to call
A day on this drawl
And say that this the last of my #droidrage things….

So I know now that this is the end…
Only one more question remains
Will it blend?