Cutting Through the 4G Hype

crimeandpunishment writes "Cell phone companies are about to bombard us with advertising for the next big thing — 4G access. The first 4G phone, Sprint Nextel's EVO, comes out this week. But just how big a deal is 4G? Is it fast enough to warrant the hype, or are consumers better off waiting a while? AP technology writer Peter Svensson looks at the differences between 4G and 3G technologies."

Comments

Difference between 3G and 4G

[Anonymous Coward]

It's 9.80665 newtons of force per kilogram of mass.

Oh c'mon

[morgan_greywolf]

You guys are just posting this story because...Apple doesn't have a 4G and you're jealous.

Sorry.

Had to be said.

for optimum data speed use, look for the 4G-spot

[youn]

difficult to find at first, but when you find it, reactivity is good, data flow takes off

G definitions

[bhaktha]

Technically speaking. The various G definitions are based on the underlying technology that is used for hauling the bits over the air interface 1G - Analog technology (AMPS et al) 2G - Digital transmission (GSM, TDMA, CDMA et al) 3G - WCDMA (UMTS (aka the orginal 3G), HSPA, EVDO et al) 4G - OFDM (LTE, WiMax et al)

Re:On paper it looks like a good phone.

[karnal]

No need to worry about HTC (who, with your worry about speed, will probably only ever update your device once. Or twice) - just jump on the XDA-Developers bandwagon!

http://forum.xda-developers.com/

More than likely not

[EdIII]

So far my experience with 4G has been Clear Wireless. What I can tell you is that initially, the latencies were not something to write home about (110), but the bandwidth was fairly decent. I could easily hit 3mb/s during testing throughout the city.

Based on my experiences I deployed a large number of them as wireless backups at Kiosks and smaller branch offices.

8 months later now we are considering canceling all the accounts and going with something else as a redundancy solution. 9/10 the modems are not available when going over to fail over and need constant re-provisioning by Clear. Bandwidth is now very high latency (300ms+) and in short supply.

I have heard nothing but extremely negative feedback about 4G (for the last 3 months) in the mobile units as well as the standalone units designed to compete with non-mobile offerings like cablemodem and DSL.

I fear that 4G is really just a bunch of hype because the networks are not ready for the load and they are overselling their infrastructures to meet demand at the cost of actually being able to service the customer.

Just my two cents. If your an area where hardly anybody is using the 4G stuff you are going to have a fantastic experience... for awhile. Dense usage areas? Save your money.

Imaginary G

[tepples]

I hope Apple takes a shot at 'simplifying' the terminology.

I really want an 'iG' capable iPhone.

iG? An imaginary connection will just make things more complex.

Re:Imaginary G

[Santzes]

Imaginary connection is pretty much what you get with AT&T