Those who have either a Samsung Galaxy S8 or an HTC U11 on Sprint might have just experienced a speed bump thanks to a recent update.
Sprint Bumps Galaxy S8, HTC U11 Download Speeds
Sprint has confirmed that it gave both devices on its network faster download speeds via the update, which should be good news for many who have complained about the slower speeds from previous.
Sprint's product engineering and development VP Ryan Sullivan confirmed that there was a miscalculation in the software that was reading the Galaxy S8, causing the device to turn away from band 41 sooner than it should. This issue with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 radio code resulted in slower 25 and 26 bands for Galaxy S8 users.
"Working back with Qualcomm and Samsung, we quickly found it, diagnosed it, and launched the update on June 5," said Sullivan. Both Sprint and unlocked Galaxy S8 variants should receive the speed bump. About 85 percent of Sprint's Galaxy S8 user base have already jumped into the new update.
After the update, Galaxy S8 users should see download speeds jump from 21.9 Mbps to 26.4 Mbps, as PCMag discovered in its testing. In the case of the HTC U11, users should see a speed bump from 19.2 Mbps to 27.9 Mbps.
Cleaning Up Sprint's Poor Reputation
Boasting fast mobile speed performance is a crucial marketing move for Sprint, especially since coming under fire for its reputation for having poor network performance.
As per Speedtest Intelligence, Sprint still sits in the fourth place among the major carriers in terms of download speeds, although it's been steadily moving upward over the past year. Before, there was a 5 Mbps difference between Sprint and the network sitting on the third place — it's down to 3 Mbps as of June 2017.
It's good that Sprint is making efforts to please its Galaxy S8 and HTC U11 owners, and in turn, working to course-correct its reputation as a network with underwhelming speeds and performance. Whether this will push Sprint up the ranks is still pretty much uncertain, though the company has to hope that it's an important first step in that direction.
So for those of you who still haven't updated your Sprint Galaxy S8 or HTC U11, you might want to do so now.
Are you a Galaxy S8 or HTC U11 owner on Sprint? Have you downloaded the most recent update yet? How's the download speed so far? Feel free to sound off in the comments section below!
