Sprint working with Apple to deal with slow data speeds with iPhone 4S

Sprint has acknowledged that some iPhone 4S owners are having issues with data speeds on the carrier’s network, and says that it is working with Apple to address the problems.

The carrier also says that while it’s working on the issue, it has nothing significant to report just yet.

CNET has the story, which states that Sprint’s official forums dealing with the issue has more than a thousand responses and more than 200,000 views.

Sprint is the third of the major U.S. carriers to get Apple’s iPhone, and the addition of the super-popular device to its lineup has been a pretty big deal with for the provider. Both AT&T and Verizon also offer the device, with Verizon getting the iPhone 4 earlier this. Already, Sprint says it has seen record sales for the iPhone 4S since its release earlier in October, but the data issues could be seen as marring Sprint’s move to compete directly with the U.S.’ two larger carriers.

Sprint says the number of customers reporting iPhone 4S issues with the network is less than 10 percent, but wouldn’t say just how many it thinks are experiencing problems. But the company has said while it’s not dismissing customers’ concerns, it’s having trouble replicating their problems in order to diagnose them. That makes solving the troubles pretty difficult, especially because it doesn’t seem as though they’re universal. Even CNET couldn’t independently verify the data speed problems in its tests. Sprint continues to see lots of sales of the iPhone 4S, however, reporting more than 1 million during its first weekend available.

These aren’t the only troubles Apple seems to be having with the iPhone 4S. The company has also acknowledged that some customers are having problems with the phone’s battery life. Apple said this week that bugs in iOS 5 are causing the reduction in battery life, but that would mean the trouble could span all iOS devices, not just the iPhone 4S. Apple also mentioned that it is currently working on fixing the issue with software patches.

As for the network trouble at Sprint, it remains to be seen just what that might be, or why only some users are experiencing it. We’ll have to wait and see if these affect Sprint’s share of the iPhone market.

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