Do fast data speeds on a smartphone matter to you?

[jigwashere]

I'm curious about smartphones and data speeds. I supposed we've talked about this before, but thought I'd start a thread about it.

I just don't see the need for fast data connections on a handheld device. I'm on Sprint in Minneapolis, usually getting about 1.2MB download at 3G and 5 or 6MB download at 4G (although today I'm only getting 2MB on 4G). Yet, I have no complaints about speed. Most of my user experience relates to device performance.

The month hasn't closed out, and I've already used 2,475,146KB at 3G and 6,959,071KB at 4G. That's around 10GB! Some of that is probably from streaming Netflix and the occasional podcast or YouTube video, but I suspect the majority is background downloads from DroidTV. Most of my day-to-day data use is through email, Tapatalk, Google Voice messages (I think even text messages use data rather than the typical SMS route), Google Reader, and Pocket. I hardly use my browsers.

So, back to my original question: do you really notice fast data connections in your day-to-day smartphone usage? Has it been worth paying extra for it?

[headcronie]

Hey Jig!

I do notice a difference, and I hate to say it, but I'd like a speed of 5-6mb on my device most times. 1.2 works... but there are too many places in Rochester, where I'm hard pressed to get 3x dialup! At least at my house, I can pull good speed, but then again, I have my phone on my Wifi, where my network speed surpasses my phone's ability to chew through the speed it has access to. I do enjoy when I'm in the Twin Cities area, and can hop onto Wi-Max. No lag, no buffering, things work within seconds of my requesting them.

However, I've just found that Sprint turned on LTE in Rochester, tho they won't tell you that they did. It's only in a few neighborhoods so far. I happened upon this by turing on LTE on my sister's SG S III when we were up at the MOA a few weeks back, and forgot to turn it off. She noticed the other day, that she had 4G while at home. Needless to say, that got my envy level to a new height. *sigh* I sent her an apk (11mb in size) to replace one app she updated, and now crashes on the updated version. Took me a few minutes running full throttle to upload it. It took her seconds to download it. *sigh again*

I know I shouldn't complain. I have access, and things generally do work. But seeing that it works better, and faster... leaves me wanting more. Heck, just give me a Wi-Max tower, and I'd be happy. I know.. That will never happen...

[RickAgresta]

I rely on my phone for connectivity* exclusively when not at home, and thats 4 ½ days a week. Fortunately I have a very solid 3G signal…the thing is, the hardware is my bottleneck (true on wifi, too). bottomline: freshly booted-up gives good performance on most sites (especially for email or BH), but once its been on a few hours, I see a lot of lag. I expect to get an SIII later this year, so at least the hardware issue should be factored out -- VZW doesn't have LTE at work according to their coverage map.

*I sometimes USB tether my laptop and see decent performance; just got these numbers from speedtest: DL2.47Mbps, 0.92Mbps UL -- on the phone, no PC involved

[scjjtt]

Most of the time I am on WiFi at home and at the church campus. Like I've said, I don't even get to 1 g of data download through Sprint in a month's time. But it is VERY frustrating to be wanting to listen to a song either through Rhapsody or YouTube and it sitting there buffering. Where my 17 year old son goes to school the Sprint service is at 1 to 2 bars. The school is 1 mile off a major highway. It is Mesa where we have over 450,000 population. He says other kids can open up a YouTube video and watch it immediately. I asked him - "Do you turn off the HD?" He says, "Dad, I don't even TRY the HD and it still buffers."

When we first got the phones, Sprint was saying that the extra $10 was for the 4g - then they changed their tune saying it was for data access. Either way, I feel like I'm not getting my money's worth.

A couple weeks after getting the phone I was at a youth camp in Prescott, AZ. We took the teens to the YMCA. I stayed in the lobby with our youth pastor who had the same phone. Guess what? In a city of less than 40,000 there was a Sprint tower with 4g. That gave me hope that it would be in my area. But Sprint abandoned their older Wi-Max to go LTE and 2 years later I have the speed of data that I had with Verizon with my Palm Centro (the good old days - lol).

I'm coming up to the end of my contract. I still like my phone - it does what I need it to do and since LTE isn't in this area I don't need to upgrade. But I resent paying the same price with Sprint as I did when the monthly cost was paying off the phone and now with the phone paid off I'm still at the same monthly cost and no better with data.

I like what my son said as we were traveling on the 202 around Mesa and Tempe and his phone was buffering - "Well Dad, with unlimited data we can do this as much as we like!"

-- Sent from my TouchPad using Communities

[scjjtt]

Ok - I'm not the best in remembering details - that's why I use Note Everything after using Palm Memos for 15 years. Anyway, my Centro wasn't as fast as I thought but my results below will demonstrate my frustrations:


Thu Jun 09 2011 @ 2:34pm with PALM CENTRO
- DOWNLOAD: 128 Kbps
- UPLOAD: 108 Kbps

ALL BELOW WITH SAMSUNG GALAXY EPIC 4G SPH-D700

Mon Jun 13 2011 @ 12:01pm
- DOWNLOAD: 637 Kbps
- UPLOAD: 579 kbps

Tue Jun 14 2011 @ 2:41:33 pm @ Prescott, AZ
- DOWNLOAD: 4.79 Mbps
- UPLOAD: 613 Kbps


3/5/2013 6:57 AM @ HOME
- DOWNLOAD: 595 Kbps
- UPLOAD: 467 Kbps

Retest and Sprint went to 1g
- DOWNLOAD: 171 Kbps
- UPLOAD: 80 Kbps



Sent from my Samsung Epic 4g using Tapatalk

[scjjtt]

P.S. I'm not using an app to find speed - I'm using my browser at www.testmy.net which I find to be much more accurate than others. At least I'm comparing apples with apples (oh no, I can't say that can I when using an Android device!)

-- Sent from my TouchPad using Communities

[headcronie]

scjjtt,

FWIW, I find testmy.net to be an absolutely terrible measure of speed. I'm connected to my home wi-fi and this test reports 7mb downstream. What? Sorry, but I've got 35mb downstream. Try the speedtest.net App in the Play Store. It gives far better results and more accurate than this website does.

At least with the app, it shows my phone pulling 25mb, which is about all my device can handle before it seizes and coughs up a lung.

[jigwashere]

As long as I'm getting speeds around 1Mbs or greater, I'm pretty satisfied. Yes, when downloading large files I appreciate even faster speeds, but for the majority of my activities, ~1Mbps is acceptable. Note that my home internet connection is <3Mbps, so I don't have a high bar to attain.

One nice thing about the E4GT is that I can leave 4G, BT, and GPS on all the time without battery issues. When 4G is active, it shows a up and down arrows underneath the 4G icon in the notification bar. When my 4G is not in use, it goes to sleep and saves battery. The arrows change to Zzz. From this state, 4G will activate automatically when needed. My complaint, however, is that 4G will sometimes shut itself down, and the arrows change to an X (as I recall). When this happens, I have to open the notification panel, tick 4G to shut it off, then tick it again to turn it back on. This is really annoying. Ideally, it should just turn itself on, but barring that, at least turn completely off so I can turn it on with one step instead of two.

[headcronie]

This is what my relic is doing as of this morning.

Sent from my EVO Shift 4G using Tapatalk 2

[scjjtt]

Headcronnie: I just used the app - everything is about the same:

Download: 759 kbps
Upload: 481 kbps

I'm going to try again right now where I'm at that has all the bars.

Sent from my Samsung Epic 4g using Tapatalk