Got my new 4G smartphone today. Very speedy to say the least. But then again, not that many people on the network as of yet.
What is really nice is the HD (720p) sceen. Very sharp and crisp.
4G LTE Performance
By jvolstad Follow Fri, 2 Mar 2012, 8:53pm 2,282 views 15 comments
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Alexandria, VA
What phone is it?
LTE is up and running there in CA/TX? I went to sprint partly because of their what they called the fastest 4G network in the US thingy. Guess what after two years? The 4G coverage in my area is still spotty at best to be useful.
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San Antonio, TX
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seaside says
Not sure about San Antonio, TX as I'm not going back home until later this month, but the San Francisco Bay area is pretty solid from what I can tell. The phone is a HTC Rezound
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Based on a comparison between my HSPA+ galaxy nexus and my wife's verizon LTE galaxy nexus, I'd have to say that:
- LTE is definitely faster, but of limited use due to stupid data caps.
- The battery life is terrible. Motorola has tried to solve this with their extra bigass battery with more molecules for the droid max, but it's still pretty shitty.
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I was going to guess the LTE chipset, but this teardown seems to point to the processor.
Other featured elements of the teardown included a [Texas Instruments] OMAP4460 1.2GHz processor, which matches the performance of Samsung's 1.2GHz Exynos at the expense of consuming "significantly more power in computational intensive tests."
The OMAP4460 is built using a 45 nm process, while the Exynos is down to 32 nm. Next gen OMAP 5's will be at 28 nm.
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jvolstad, What kind of data rates do you get using speedtest.net.
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Oakland, CA
I have Sprint and it's by far the SLOWEST network by far.
Sprint went with Wimax instead of LTE for their 4G technology. They contracted through Clearwire to roll out their Wimax 4G network. Wimax is turning out to be the Beta of 4G. Sprint realized their mistake and halted all expansion of their 4G Wimax network and will be rolling out LTE shortly. Therefore, if you have a 4G Wimax capable phone and you don't have access to the 4G Wimax network now, you'll never have access to the 4G Wimax network. I have spotty access to Wimax 4G here in Oakland, and I can say that you aren't missing anything if you don't have access to it. Speeds are crappy even if you can hold a signal.
From what I understand Sprint now controls Clearwire? So, in theory Sprint should be able to streamline the roll out of LTE on its network.
Sprint boasted to have the "first" 4G capable network in the country. Their terribly spotty roll-out of Wimax 4G proves that being "first" isn't necessarily best.
Just so people know. They use LTE in Europe too. Wimax was chosen by Sprint. Wimax has difficulty penetrating buildings and so you kind of have to be outside or near a window (and close to a tower) in order to use Wimax on Sprint. LTE allegedly has better building penetration. And if Sprint actually gets its act together, they could roll out an LTE network with enough coverage so that customers could see consistent signal strength. I have a Motorola Photon 4G on Sprint. I love my phone. I hate the Sprint Network.
Allegedly Sprint is rolling out a huge upgrade to their 3G network because they chose to take on the cursed iPhone. Now our 3G network is even slower than it was before.
So in the next year or two, allegedly, Sprint will have a first class fast 4G/3G network and will be selling phones that are LTE compatable within a couple of months or so.
The only advantage to having Sprint at the moment is unlimited data for a very reasonable price and that you can roam on Verizon's voice network and 3G network for data.
In the East Bay, if you want the best network at the fastest speeds and price isn't a concern, then you should go with Verizon who had the sense to build a solid 3G network and a solid 4G LTE network here before creating a whole bunch of hype about 4G. Sometimes you get what you pay for.
However, unless you're grandfathered, I think you can't get unlimited data anymore on Verizon. So, if you're a data hog, like me, you'll want to account for that because you will have added expense for going over your data limit and they will most likely throttle your speeds once you pass your data limit on Verizon. So far Sprint doesn't throttle speeds after certain data thresholds. Why would they? Their network is slow enough without throttling.
That's my 2 cents...
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EBGuy says
No, it's LTE. Both the GSM and LTE galaxy nexuses use the same SoC, but the GSM version easily gets 50% more battery life.
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San Antonio, TX
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EBGuy says
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@jvolstad, Hubba, hubba. I feel like we just went through the looking glass. Something you'd always read about... and knew was coming, but holy, moly, that's faster than my wired sonic.net connection (although, costwise, you pay a mobility premium). What is the battery life like?
@Kevin, thanks for the clarification. Will be interesting to see how they deal with power requirements for LTE -- don't know if they can trade-off bandwidth for power. There does seem like some technical overshoot so they have some wiggle room, perhaps. Also, I believe, with LTE, eventually, the calls will be cut over to the IP network.
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46 male
Menlo Park, CA
Do they have a cap on the amount of data you can transmit?
Maybe they do, and don't tell you about it. Let us know if you hit that.
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Patrick says
I was grandfathered into the unlimited plan. New LTE smartphone customers have a 4GB cap.
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EBGuy says
Not good, but I have a car charger as well as the charger that came with the phone.
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EBGuy says
AFAIK there are two main issues with LTE as it stands:
- You're running too many radios. We keep adding new ones and don't get rid of the old ones because everyone is afraid of dead zones (and we're not doing voice over LTE)
- The LTE radio is a separate chipset. This will be fixed in the next generation of SoCs (the ones that will hit this christmas)
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Kent, WA
John Bailo's website
I've been with Clear Wimax since they started and I have always liked the technology. I have the home option and the mobile. Both get 6 to 9 Mbps and I have heard that the Wimax II spec goes as high as 100 Mbps!
I hope Clear will upgrade to Wimax II, but for almost all current web activities, including streaming Netflix, Wimax is more than adequate.
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Davis, CA
I'm waiting for Telco's to offer SHARED data plans for families.
Until then, our mobile devices only carry the minimum data plans and we live within them.