Smartphones get smarter as companies add features that streamline, automate, and personalize the user experience of the device(s). And the process of paying for these still-expensive pieces of technology has mostly been relegated to a pay-while-you-use plan, making monthly payments along with your bill for service on the device. But something hasn’t changed much up until a while ago. The process of actually acquiring your new smartphone has, in the past few years, been that you either are mailed it and are expected (more forced, but let’s be optional here) to go into the local carrier store and get it activated and set up or you buy it in-store and set it up there.
Sprint understood that many of us either don’t have the time or the desire to deal with a retail location, and launched their Direct 2 You service, which has a city-by-city availability of Sprint experts who drive to meet you on your time, at your choice of locale. If you can’t leave work but have a new phone coming in today and want to get it set up, you can call and set up an appointment for that long lunch break. Or if you’re a parent who runs their kids to a different sport or game every few hours, with no down time to rest at home, then set up an appointment for during the game where you cleverly sat near the back, hoping not to be noticed if you doze off.
Point being, Sprint’s Direct 2 You service is great if you want a real person to help set up your new device, and even better if you can’t go in-store to get that. But, since it was launched, it has been a small and slow rollout process. Today, however, Sprint announced that the service will be expanding into four new cities, including Atlanta, GA, Boston, MA, Houston, TX, and Philadelphia, PA. As of this announcement, Sprint has Direct 2 You set up and running in sixteen metropolitan areas (specifically Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay area, Tampa, Washington, D.C., and West Palm Beach), and looks to have the service running and helping people out across thirty or more locations total by the end of 2015.
And since the service initially launched in April, the halfway fulfillment of this forecast is more than good news, especially if you’re someone eagerly waiting to give the service a try. But since we’ve still got four months of this year left, the rollout will likely not be lightning fast like the Sprint-branded Fiat 500’s that the Direct 2 You experts drive to appointments, but the forecast and current progress is reason to be hopeful the service gets widespread enough to allow for adoption in the future.