Sprint is one of the major networks and is as among the Big Four carriers in the United States. The company is constantly trying to find new ways to make its consumers happy. In a bid to do so, Sprint has now rolled out a firmware update which is said to increase the download speeds on two flagship devices in its network, namely the Samsung Galaxy S8 and HTC U11.
Sprint introduces firmware update for faster downloads
With the latest update both the Galaxy S8 and HTC U11 will be able to get much better download speeds on Sprint’s network. In fact, the company says that speeds will be increased by as much as 20 percent on the two smartphones.
The company reveals that it has managed to do so by fixing an issue with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset, which did not let users get the highest download speed available for Sprint.
Both the Galaxy S8 and HTC U11 sport the Snapdragon 835 SoC, which affected the download speeds on these devices. Sprint explained that due to a constraint, the chipset only allowed these handsets to use the fastest spectrum band, Band 41, for a limited period of time. Following this period, the connection was transferred to the slower Band 25 and Band 26, severely restricting the download speeds.
However, with the new firmware update, the carrier has now removed this limitation, which means that the phones can access the highest tier speeds without any limit.
Average download speeds in the Galaxy S8 has improved from 21.6 Mbps to 28.9 Mbps. For the HTC U11, the download speeds were around 19.2 Mbps prior to the update but have now been increased to 27.9 Mbps.
Sprint claims it provides third fastest internet speeds in the U.S.
PC Magazine published its list of the fastest internet speeds provided by a carrier in the United States.
In it, Sprint came in at the fourth position, behind Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T. However, the carrier claims that if the testing had been done after this update was applied to the Galaxy S8, the results would have been different.
The carrier believes that with this update, the speeds have increased considerably enough for it to rank third on the list, ahead of AT&T.
As it is, the company managed to tally a 59 percent increase in its data speeds even without the update having been applied for the Galaxy S8.
Sprint revealed that around 85 percent of the Galaxy S8 users on its network had already received the update and the others would also be getting it soon. The company also revealed that theoretically, the HTC U11 was poised to receive higher download speeds from the Band 41 spectrum than the Samsung flagship.
