Users continue to report below average data speeds

Oct 25, 2011 17:01 GMT  ·  By

Sprint's iPhone 4S smartphone has set new opening days sales and activations records, but it seems customers are not that happy with their purchase.

More and more iPhone 4S users reported slow speeds on Sprint's network, which greatly throttles the phone's functionality.

According to the latest hearsay, Sprint was aware of the issues and approach Apple in an attempt to fix these problems that caused slow data speeds.

However, the carrier came forward with a short statement denying that its network is slower than its competitors.

Although, the carrier states that its iPhone 4S was benchmarked against other carriers' iPhones and results showed little performance difference, the issue seems to be widely spread among Sprint iPhone 4S users.

The folks over at TheNextWeb reached out to Apple for an official statement, but received word from Sprint:

Overall, iPhone performance on the Sprint network is consistent with our expectations and the rest of our high-end portfolio. Sprint also did bench-marking of Sprint’s iPhone against competitor’s iPhones and the testing showed little to no performance difference. We are seeing a very low return rate for this device but we are watching the reports of speed issues very closely,” Sprint claims.

Sources close to the matter also revealed that an internal email has been sent to Sprint reps, confirming that the carrier and Apple are working together to fix the issue.

At least it's reassuring that Sprint is aware of the problem and is trying to fix it, with or without Apple's help.

We do see opportunities to optimize performance, specifically in high network capacity areas. We see this as typical optimization work and do not have any specific area of concern. Sprint is committed to providing the best possible experience for our customers. We are listening to our customers and working closely with our partners at Apple to ensure optimal performance of iPhone devices on our network,” concluded Sprint.

Hopefully, a fix will be delivered OTA if it's a software problem, but if it turns out to be a hardware issue Apple might be in trouble.