Android phone battery lifetimes suck, but you knew that already.  A few weeks ago, I was visiting the heart of downtown Tampa, FL.  I stayed in a beautiful hotel across from the Convention Center, and had no Sprint coverage.  ”But Greg,” you say, “one of Sprint’s first WiMAX 4G towers is there!  Their coverage map shows ‘in-building 4G’ coverage!”  Yes, my Internet friend, I do see that, but alas, I also saw the prohibitory icon on my phone, the Samsung Galaxy S Epic 4G, for an entire week.

The point of my trip was to addend a conference held inside the beautiful Tampa Convention Center.  By the end of the first day, the combination of roaming and no service had proven itself fatal to my battery.  I didn’t see a Sprint signal all day.  By the conclusion of Day One at 5 PM, my phone wouldn’t turn on.  Makes it kind of hard to talk to your coworkers and arrange to find dinner in a foreign town.  Thankfully I ran into a coworker with AT&T service who was able to help me out getting in touch with others.

On Day Two, I wised up.  I placed the phone in airplane mode at all times when I would normally put it on silent…a good 80-90% of the time between 8 AM and 5 PM of the conference day while in sessions.  I know that one of the biggest losses of battery power is the search of the Sprint signal when roaming.  As I found out, airplane mode didn’t make a difference.  Without me even activating the display almost the entire day, the phone had completely drained its battery.  Again, I had to link up with AT&T and Verizon friends to find places for dinner.

To answer your question, no I don’t have excessive background apps running at any given time.  In fact, despite being a techie, I’m very app-stingy.  I don’t need an app to do everything.  A browser, e-mail, SMS, and occasionally navigation are all I typically use in a day, and they’re all built in.  Sure, I have one or two convenience apps installed, but none that should be eating battery in the background constantly.

Completely fed up at this point, on Day Three I brought my charger with me to the conference.  I had to sit next to the wall for every presentation to keep the phone plugged in.  I suppose it didn’t matter, because I didn’t have service anyway to receive calls or texts, but boy could I use that Memo app!  Ridiculous.

Shortly after I returned home, I e-mailed Sprint to let them know about my experience.  Surely they’d want to know.  They’re the only cell provider I’ve ever had.  I enjoy their pricing and (previously) their service.

This morning I got a call from the “displeased customer” department of Sprint and spoke to William (who evidently gave me a special customer support number where you never wait on hold).  I explained my situation to him in greater depth.  He was very understanding and patient.  William brought up the service maps for my hotel in Tampa and my home address, and assured me that the Sprint network was very powerful in both areas, so my phone must be a lemon.  He opened a case and asked me to please bring my phone to my nearest Sprint store for a diagnosis.  ”If there’s nothing wrong with the phone,” he says, “just give me a call back and we’ll go from there to see what we can do for you.  Thanks for choosing Sprint.”  He even sent me an e-mail to make sure I had written down his phone number and extension.  I was impressed.

That’s where the positive customer service experience stopped.  I made an appointment during my lunch break and explained the situation in the appointment details.  Upon arrival at the store, I announced to the employee that greeted me that I had an appointment.  Without any further consultation, or even asking my name to review my appointment details, I was ushered back and given a form asking me to:

• Authorize a factory reset of my phone
• Reveal any passwords that lock my phone
• Authorize Sprint to store a local archive of the contents of my phone

Needless to say, I refused to sign.  First of all, I’m there for a diagnosis, which certainly wouldnt require a factory reset.  They should be guiding me to disable any passwords, not reveal them to me.  And I certainly do not want some person haphazardly copying my personal data, including the names, pictures, and phone numbers of my friends, onto a questionable local Sprint server.  Does Sprint not realize the amount of people’s lives that are on a phone?  Sure, I understand that you need to access my phone to work on my device, but a huge number of people use one password for everything, so disabling the password and logging out of apps like Facebook and Twitter should be standard operating procedure before every cell phone service appointment.

Unfortunately, the Sprint representative at the store refused to look up my Sprint eCare number in the store so I had to replay my entire scenario to him (he was born and raised in Florida, so this provided some friendly banter).  He understood that I didn’t want a hard reset, so I could just pay my $35 and come back in 3 hours to pick up…

What?  $35?  What for?  ”Oh, that’s the standard repair fee,” he said.  ”Well, I’m not here for repair, I’m here for a diagnosis.  Besides, Sprint asked me to come here for you to run it.  If you’d just look at my eCare number…”  ”I mean, we always charge a repair fee.”  ”But this isn’t a repair…”

No matter how many times I said, I’m not here for a repair, I’m here for a Sprint-Authorized Diagnosis, I was met with the same $35 repair fee comment (“we’ll figure out what’s wrong and that $35 covers the repair”).  Naturally, I asked for the manager, who wouldn’t budge, or even have the courtesy to look up the Sprint eCare number.  If there’s nothing wrong with the phone that they can diagnosis, then I would have paid $35 for the privilege of calling William back and saying, “okay, now what?”  ”Well, we don’t have to take your credit card, we can just add it to your monthly statement…”

I left and immediately called back my buddy William, though one of his co-workers answered.  ”I’m sorry William didn’t tell you, but we always charge a $35 fee.”  He tells me that this fee covers any repair costs, or a replacement if they cannot fix the phone.  …but we’re trying to troubleshoot a signal availability and/or battery life issue.  The phone itself is not malfunctioning in any way right now.  You should just be measuring the ability for the antenna to pick up a signal, verify that PRLs are getting installed correctly, etc.  That can’t take more than a few minutes.

The new agent also stated that if I still had problems once they “fix” my phone for $35 that I’d have to pay an additional $35 every time I go back to the store for additional “service.”  Their “service” is not warranted.  ”…not unless you upgrade to our Total Equipment Protection Plan.  I can sell that to you for….”  No.  ”Well, if you want to go ahead and add another line to your plan, you can add the Protection Plan…”

Why would I want to buy another phone line with you when the first one you sold me does not work?  He apologized and let me know that, “if you ever have signal coverage problems again, call while you’re having the problem so we can try to diagnose over the phone.”  I explained to him that if I find myself not having signal, that because I don’t have signal, I will be unable to call.  ”Oh.  Yeah.”  Indeed, Sprint. Indeed.

So, I find myself even more furious with Sprint and receiving no compensation for the week without service (at least $20 with my “everything” plan), or the waste of a few hours of the work day talking with them and going to their store to be harassed.

In recent weeks, Sprint has removed their Sprint Premier program (of which I was a member) and announced that they will be switching from WiMAX to LTE 4G connectivity.  I currently pay and extra $10/month for “premium data” (aka WiMAX 4G — not that my hometown has coverage).  This recent announcement, while I support since the rest of the world is LTE, renders my phone useless by 2013 when they repurpose the WiMAX towers for LTE.  The Epic 4G has made it to the Sprint EOL list, in favor of the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch (note to Samsung, get a new PR department), less than one year after its release.  I should know, I activated my phone on launch day.  The phone is stuck on Android 2.2, which was released well before the Epic even shipped with 2.1, with no hope for any updates now.  Recent updates of Google-branded apps, like Google+, have features that will only work on Android 2.3.

Where does that leave me?  I’m stuck with a battery-hogging, obsolete smartphone that I must replace before 2013, questionable coverage (whether this is Sprint’s or Samsungs fault, we won’t know), and an open eCare ticket (20111007211058034, KMM91601233V65506L0KM).

Don’t worry Sprint, it will be closed soon, just as soon as I send you my ETF.

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Posted in: Life - Technology | Tags: android, customer service, epic 4g, galaxy s, samsung, sprint