Sprint has today announced its fourth quarter and full year financial results for 2012, and they don’t make for pleasant reading. Despite healthy smartphone sales driven by the iPhone, the carrier reported a loss of $1.3 billion for during the three-month period, which is the same figure it lost during Q4 2011. It also saw more than 1 million Nextel subscribers jumping ship.

Sprint did see an increase in revenue of $9 billion for the quarter, however, which is slightly better than the $8.92 billion forecast by Wall Street, and an increase of 3.2% from a year ago. Some of that can be attributed to the iPhone, which achieved its best ever quarter for Sprint, with 2.2 million handsets sold — 38% of which went to new customers.

In comparison, Verizon sold 6.2 million iPhones during the same period, while AT&T sold 8.6 million.

Sprint’s Nextel service, which the company is killing off later this year, lost 1.3 million customers during the fourth quarter. However, its core branded service recaptured 51% of those customers and added 683,000 new customers, 401,000 of which signed a long-term contract.

Sprint’s focus is now on its long-term turnaround, which will be aided by a 70% acquisition from Japanese carrier SoftBank worth $20.1 billion. That’s expected to go through this summer, and it’ll provide Sprint with some much-needed capital.

• SourceSprint