Only if you live in an area covered by LTE. In my area, city of ~250,000, there is no LTE or plans to implement but I usually have four to five bars on 3G. Seemingly the 3G connection strength would be a good thing but I get 3G data speeds comparable to dial up. If I am not connected to wifi, the data features (Siri, dictation, pic/vid texts etc. etc.) are virtually useless. Trying to browse the internet is also a pointless task about 75% of the time. The unlimited data offered by Sprint is moot point if you can't use LTE.
The biggest drawback for Sprint is their abysmal LTE coverage. They bet too early on with WiMAX and lost out on the LTE train. It's going to be a good long while before they're caught up there.
That's not necessarily true. There is little difference between WiMAX and LTE on all of the hard parts: antenna configuration, transceivers, and amplifiers. Even the modulation scheme is the same: OFDM. Sprint started installing firmware-upgradable base stations a little while ago and I strongly suspect that the process for converting from WiMAX to LTE is governed by staff time limitations than outright technical debt.
Unfortunately LTE-based devices on Sprint still won't be backwards compatible with the converted WiMAX towers as they only output in 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz and 3.5 GHz bands. The iPhone 5 specifically maxes out at a 2.1GHz band.
Oh ya, the user terminals out there are going to have to be replaced wholesale. My only point was that Sprint is going to be able to convert to LTE a lot quicker than people expect. Building up a user base is another issue entirely.
How are you using one of their "premium" phones in a SERO plan? I had a friend holding out with some crappy WinMo 6.5 phone because switching to Android or iPhone meant leaving SERO.
They changed things up a year or two ago. SERO +$10 gets you any iPhone/Android/Blackberry/etc., and then an additional +$10 for any phone with 4g/LTE.