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4G vs. 3G vs. WiFi Throughput For Samsung's Epic 4G
MojoKid writes "Some of the most popular Android smartphones currently available are members of Samsung's Galaxy S line. Powered by Samsung's own 1GHz ARM Cortex A8-based Hummingbird processor with a four-inch Super-AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, it's no wonder Samsung has sold over 5 million Galaxy S phones. The Epic 4G variant of this phone, available through Sprint, is also one of the scant few 4G capable devices on the market currently. Sprint's 4G network utilizes WiMAX mobile broadband, with a theoretical maximum throughput of 40Mbps. Sprint claims that the average download speed on its 4G network is between 3 to 6Mbps, with peak download speeds above 10Mbps. The performance figures seen here actually show solid throughput for the Epic, besting competitive 3G devices and even versus some with a Wi-Fi connection. 4G WiMAX service is still rather limited geographically, but hopefully devices like these will help to kick the roll-out into gear a bit."
and the tests don't include the iPhone 4 and no reason/mention why. It'd make sense, since ya know, the Epic and iPhone 4 share the same Intrinsity chip design... and the iPhone 4 supports UMTS and Wireless-N whereas the 3GS doesn't.
Living in one of the better covered 4G cities, my personal experience is that both WiMAX availability and throughput vary widely within the metro area. I would describe the WiMAX coverage as "spotty." When available it seems uniformly faster than 3G on my and my friends' phones. I have seen it get as high as 8Mbps download and as low as 1Mbps download (using speedtest.net). Coverage tends to get better as you near the city's core.
Throughput seems a difficult thing to measure, as it varies so widely in my experience.
What good does ever-increasing speed do if I just end up blowing through my data cap that much faster? I can live with lower speeds, I just want reasonable prices per GB.
Clearwire is trialling an LTE network in Phoenix right now, saying it will achieve 20-70 Mbps throughput. They have the spectrum to actually achieve this too. When WiMax 2 and LTE Advanced come out, assuming enough competition exists to prevent caps from showing up, DSL companies will be put out of business. This of course is why Verizon sold its rural landlines to Frontier. They know they can come back with 700 MHz LTE, and later LTE a, and blow the pants off of slow-poke 1.5 Mbps DSL.
They need to economically "blow the pants off" the competition first.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
This reads like an ad with just enough to make it slashdot-worthy... but the line at the end makes me think it's just necessary gadget-lust spec gushing. I can't tell if he copy-pasted bits of the article from a press release, or just chose their writing style.
I am become
"the most popular"
"it's no wonder"
"and even"
NO MORE ADS PLEASE!
First. Dont sell unlimited data if you can't handle it. I am in a 20gb pr month plan for 17$ where i come from.
Second. When i visited the US, my never-sim-locked iPhone was roaming on t-Mobile. It is not jailbroken. (if course data roaming was off).
Really I do. I'm typing this on it. Downoaded the full version of Angry Birds app for free today. Best ultraportable pc I've ever had, and the calls sound great too.
3g wireless internet is a little slow. 4g is much better but coverage is spotty and it kills your battery. Still, I would want that if I used the hotspot feature.
wifi rocks though. Watched a 2 hour hd movie on youtube last night. Not a glitch the whole time.
The times they are a-changing
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'll concur that on my Epic, wimax DOES seem to be solidly faster than wifi inside my house... but then again, my router (Linksys WRP400) utterly sucks for wi-fi, and the Epic's wi-fi is pretty mediocre, too. Mix in Comcast maxing out at 16mbit/sec down (largely theoretical) and capped at 256kbit up (on the dot), compare that to the 6-8mbit/sec down and 800-900kbit/sec up I routinely get indoors with wimax (pegged to ~9mbit down and 1.2mbit up if I go outside), and it's unsurprising that wimax looks good.
On the other hand, Sprint's 3G in my area (southwestern Broward County) absolutely, positively sucks. Like, 80-100kbit down, and 160-240kbit up -- with 5 out of 6 alleged bars of 3G signal strength. I'm pretty sure Sprint's uninspiring 3G performance in my neighborhood is backhaul-induced and has nothing to do with 1900MHz spectrum availability or signal strength, because it's pretty constant wherever I go -- 1 bar, 6 bars, same slow 3G. It's like they've only got a single T1 line leased from BellSouth/AT&T for everyone touching that tower to share...
How many 4G phones are out there right now? It has to be a tiny number compared to 3G handsets. It seems like it should be trivially easy for the phone to rip through data because there's little to no competition for the airtime at the moment. I'd be more interested in what this looks like in a couple of years when there is a million iPhones/Androids/etc... on Sprint all competing for the bandwidth.
I read the internet for the articles.
I recently switched from a 4G EVO (Wimax) to a 3G Vibrant (HSDPA) and here in Chicago the speeds are almost identical. With Sprint I got 3-6mbps with good reception on Wimax and with the Vibrant I get more like 2-5mbps with T-mobile's 3G HSDPA network. The Vibrant doesn't do HSDPA+ btw, just vanilla.
The difference is with the EVO I had to manually turn 4G on and off because its such an incredible battery drainer. I usually stayed on Sprint's 3G network which is CDMA and terrible, you'd be lucky to get 1 mbps and in my neighborhood I got around 80-100k. Not to mention switching from 3G to 4G on Sprint takes 30-60 seconds but syncing to HSDPA on Tmobile takes 2 seconds.
Don't dismiss T-mobile's HSDPA rollout, it may not technically be 4G but its just as fast and there's no $10 a month 4G fee like Sprint charges. The HSDPA+ devices are doing over 10-15mbps in real world scenarios, which is incredible. I have a feeling that Wimax is doomed on the cell side of things. Its too power thirsty and doesn't penetrate well through buildings using Clear's frequencies. The future is most likely LTE and HSDPA+ with Wimax focusing on laptop and stationary installs.
If this is supposed to be an article about 3g vs 4g vs wifi, as the title led me to believe, why does tfs begin
"Some of the most popular Android smartphones currently available are members of Samsung's Galaxy S line. Powered by Samsung's own 1GHz ARM Cortex A8-based Hummingbird processor with a four-inch Super-AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, it's no wonder Samsung has sold over 5 million Galaxy S phones."
Less blatant next time, please...
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
Both 4G and 3G suck in the US. You need 40 Mbps WiMax to get "up to" 10 Mbps real world transfer speed (more like 1-2 Mbps average)? And you get 1 Mbps with a 7.2 Mbps HSDPA connection? That sucks. In rural Canada I often get 5-6 Mbps out of a 7.2 Mbps HSDPA HTC Hero. US carriers would probably call this 5G. Stop inflating the number of Gs and Mbps and give us what we pay for.
Hey you smart geeks -- why does this matter at all if the test is done over WiFi?
This has nothing to do with 3g or 4g performance at all. It has to do with WiFi performance. And Wi
As a 12-year customer of Sprint, and as someone who's used mobile data access since before there were "smartphones", and still does with his shiny new Epic, I will tell you this:
I do not now, nor have I ever had, a data cap on my cell phone.
You, my friend, need to check the marketplace and either get a better provider or a better plan.
They tested the phone in New York City (where I assume there is always at least a few bars on the phone) and it couldn't even make it an entire day. I understand there's going to be compromises for all of that power and speed, but why are they NOT taking a previous gen phone's speed as status quo for a new, different model with improved battery life.
I own a Samsung Moment right now (many more gripes than just the battery life on this one), but I live in an area with poor reception and am lucky to make it 8 hours. I ask around to find out what's wrong and the response I get is "You expect MORE than 8 hours of battery life? Jeese, you're insane to expect that from a smart phone". Keep in mind I don't even use the phone. It self-destructs just sitting there fighting for a signal. Fine, I'll accept that poor reception forces the phone to raise the power output of the transmitter/receiver instead of just fucking roaming. That's my fault for buying a smartphone without checking my address on the coverage map.
The problem here is I don't have any new alternatives. Apparently these new phones get even worse battery life now. So I can't even find a new product that fixes my current problem. I have to accept that my current phone's battery life is the best battery life I'll ever see.
In the end, I'll wait 2 more seconds for my browser to load up just so I can have a phone that will last a few more hours a day. Am I asking for too much?
No doubt it is the 1GHz ARM Cortex A8-based Hummingbird and Super-AMOLED that have people rushing to the stores.
What good does ever-increasing speed do
Not much but LTE also has far better latency, which makes browsing or other tasks a lot more desktop-like.
Also most people would use about the same amount of bandwidth, they'd just be done with what they are doing faster. The exception would be some video feeds with variable bitrate depending on available bandwidth, where you really could use more data in the same span of time even without meaning to.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As customers we've spent billions of dollars on 3G. Can we get network reliability and availability please? If we can have that I don't care how many G's it is or much faster it is.
Get maps to download quick enough in the places where we actually need the maps and we'll really have something to get excited about.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Wimax isn't real 4G. Its just a crappy extension of Wifi. Hence the spottyness.
Here at Tampere I'm able to get 8Mbps 10km from the city with the good old 3G network using HSPA+. Beats my ADSL over POTS. And the connection degrades gracefully via WDCMA -> EDGE -> GPRS as you reach countryside. See our coverage map. Carriers here are ignoring Wimax and are building LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks already. Check out Oslo or Stockholm for city wide operational networks if you're visiting.
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Can't 4G be implemented in software? With the N900 that can also run Android, can't I just install Android and use 4g?
Thought I'd point out that I have an Epic and in tests I've run against iPhone's (3g, 3gs, 4g), it's been faster than them all at internet access. This went against the tests though showing the iPhone 4g was faster. Then, at the bottom of the page I saw that the iPhone's where benefiting from a 3g microcell. Talk about apples to oranges...
This article was written by people just barely technologically literate so I'll give another vote for it being written by someone's marketing department.
As for the battery life, I'm getting a solid day of usage out of mine (12-15 hours) after the last firmware update. They say they are rolling Froyo out now starting overseas so hopefully in a few weeks it'll make it here.
I get as high as 15 Mbits/second download from Speedtest.net on my iPhone 4, which is nearly twice the speed they reported. I got the same download speed on my iPhone 3GS.
That's on a 25 Mbit/second FIOS connection at my home.
FWIW I got about 8mbits/s down and 1.2mbits/s up on 4g when I was in Santa Fe Springs CA on my Sprint HTC EVO 4g using the Speedtest.net app.