Some great news for those on AT&T, looking at the DROID Ultra (and possibly the DROID Maxx) and wishing they weren’t Verizon exclusives. The folks over at Droid-Life have done some digging and found out that the DROID Ultra will connect to AT&T’s HSPA+ network straight out of the box. That’s right, simply pop in your AT&T SIM card.
We all know that AT&T technically has the fastest LTE speeds right now, but the DROID Ultra won’t do LTE on AT&T. So if you’re good with HSPA+ on AT&T, then you’re good to go. The interesting thing here would be if the DROID Ultra works on T-Mobile’s HSPA+ 42mbps network. Now it’s not LTE, but it’s plenty faster than AT&T’s HSPA+ network. Keep in mind, that it should work on T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network if you are in a refarmed area. Which if you have LTE from T-Mobile in your area, then you probably have the refarmed 1900Mhz for HSPA+.
Additionally, the DROID Maxx should be able to connect to AT&T’s HSPA+ network as well since it’s essentially the same phone. But of course, it’s going to cost you a pretty penny, More like $600.00. Both the DROID Ultra and DROID Maxx support global HSPA networks on the 850/900/1900/2100 bands. AT&T of course uses 850 and 1900, like most of the rest of the world. So until Big Red locks this up, you should be able to take your DROID Ultra or Maxx outside the US and use it on other carriers or even use it on AT&T and T-Mobile. Of course you’ll need a nano SIM, which is even smaller than the micro SIM we’ve seen in many other devices as of late.
This isn’t the first phone from Verizon that worked on AT&T and T-Mobile out of the box. The Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy S4 and DROID DNA did as well. Which I can confirm that they all did, at least when I had them out for review. But isn’t it great to stick in a SIM card and have it just work, without doing APN changes?
MAXX on AT&T and/or T-Mobile? Sounds good to me.