Category: Sprint

Today, Sprint here in the United States has become the first carrier to sell the Blackberry KEYone.  The announcement came from TCL, the company who licenses the Blackberry name, with the price starting at $22 per month for 18 months.  Outright, the phone is $528.

The KEYone drew a lot of attention when it was announced back in January with its keyboard and after a couple of delays, it is finally available for ordering.  The GSM version of the phone is $619.99 on Amazon.

Yesterday, T-Mobile started rolling out the June Android Security update to the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge on their network.  Today, Sprint has followed suit.  The update is build G930PVPU4BQF3 for the Galaxy S7 while the S7 Edge will be getting build G935PVPU4BQF3.  The update for either device comes in at just under 300MB in size and it is recommended that it be downloaded via Wi-Fi and that you have at 50% of battery left prior to trying to install it.

The release notes for the updates are somewhat generic in describing what is addressed.  The security is improved thank to the new Android Security patch level but there are also “device stability & improvements”.  There are also performance improvements but again, not specific is called out.  This is similar to the T-Mobile release yesterday which just indicated “various system improvements”.

Good news this morning for those of you who have the HTC One M9 on the Sprint network.  HTC has confirmed that the Android Nougat 7.0 update has been released by Sprint with updates starting today.  The updated build is 4.27.651.4 and weighs in at a hefty 2.25GB.  HTC is suggesting that the update will take about 20 minutes to complete and will reboot your One M9 several times during the process.  It is recommended that you have at least 35% remaining battery or, better, having your phone plugged in to AC (but don’t unplug it during the upgrade process) to upgrade.  Given the size of the update, Wi-Fi is the best option to download.

Once you have it downloaded to your phone and installed, you will have all of the benefits of Nougat including multi-window support, improved Doze and improved notification shade amongst many other refinements.  You can read my overview of Nougat 7.0 for more details.

Good news for those of you who have the Samsung Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge on either AT&T or Sprint.  Both carriers have released the Android Nougat update for the devices on their respective networks, following up after the general release of the update by Samsung last month.  Principally, the updates for both carriers are the same.  Both bring all of the features of Nougat to the devices and both updates also bring device specific UX updates too.

The updates, as expected, are hefty.  They weigh in at over a 1GB on both carriers, regardless of variant, so you will certainly want to make sure that you are connected to Wi-Fi when you download the update.  Once it is downloaded, expect the update to take 15-20 minutes on either of the 2015 flagship devices.  After a reboot, you will be on Nougat.  If you need a refresher on what Android Nougat will bring to your phone, check out my review from last year.

Good news Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge users on Sprint, Android Nougat is rolling your way.  Joining AT&T and T-Mobile, Sprint has released their stable Nougat 7.0 build for the two Samsung flagship devices, starting with those who were in their beta program first.  Those in the program will get a small update (sub-200MB) to update to the stable version while those of you who get it outright, you are looking at a 1.2GB update from Marshmallow.  The update will take a few days to get to everyone of course as these things tend to be phased when the carriers roll out these big updates.

For those curious, a couple of key things to keep in mind on this update.  First, it is Android Nougat 7.0, just like the updates from the other carriers.  It does appear to have the February 2017 Android Security Update but that’s yet to be confirmed by Sprint (they haven’t updated their support page entirely with details).  If that is true, it would be the same as the other carriers.  Further, it is not 100% clear if Sprint has added any additional apps or services to the S7 or S7 Edge but that should become a bit more clear once the support page is updated.

Good news this morning for those of you who have the HTC One A9 on Sprint.  Android Nougat is rolling out to you starting today.  The software update from the carrier is build 2.18.651.2 and it brings Android Nougat 7.0 to your phone along with the January Android Security update.  With it, you get all the goodness that is Nougat including multi-window support, improved data saver and other features.

The OTA update should be hitting devices soon but you can always manually check for it by going to Settings>System Updates>HTC Software Updates on your phone.  As these things tend to go, it will take a few days before everyone sees the update so patience is required.