Sprint’s early 5G smartphones will be left out of T-Mobile’s 5G network

Thanks to the T-Mobile and Sprint merger, it looks like T-Mobile is hard at work at bringing more 5G coverage to customers across the US. This sounds like great news for customers, and also excellent news if you’re using the new Samsung Galaxy S20 smartphones, but if you own a Sprint 5G handset from 2019, this deal might actually be bad for you.

According to a report from CNET, it sounds as though save for the Samsung Galaxy S20 and all newer 5G smartphones launching in 2020, early adopters from 2019 are getting screwed over. Basically the report claims that Sprint’s 5G phones from 2019 will not be getting updates necessary for them to hook onto T-Mobile’s 5G network.

While these devices will retain access to 5G, it will only be able to do so in markets that already offer Sprint’s 5G network, which we imagine will eventually be taken over and converted to T-Mobile’s network, whenever that may be. For now, nothing will change, but it’s definitely something that customers will want to take note of.

When that does happen, customers will lose access to 5G and will instead connect to 4G LTE, which is still pretty fast, but obviously not the reason why they might have spent that extra money on a 5G handset to begin with. The reason for this seems to be due to modem incompatibility. This includes devices from Sprint like the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G, and the LG V50 ThinQ 5G.

The (semi) good news is that T-Mobile is offering customers a potential solution if they want to take them up on it. According to CNET:

• Those who currently own, lease or make payments on a 7 Pro 5G (256GB), S10 5G (256GB), V50 ThinQ (128GB) and are paying less than $10/mo. will get a Samsung Galaxy S20 5G for $0/mo. after $41.67/mo. credit with a new 18-month lease.
• Those who currently lease or make payments on a 7 Pro 5G (256GB), S10 5G (256GB), V50 ThinQ (128GB) and are paying more than $10/mo. will get a Samsung Galaxy S20 5G for $10/mo. after $31.67/mo. credit with a new 18-month lease.
• Those who purchased an HTC 5G Hub on an installment plan will get a credit of $12.50/mo. for the remainder of the term. If they purchased the hotspot outright, T-Mobile will give them a one-time credit of $300 applied to their bill.

Source: CNET

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