9 ms·

Apple's iPhones Trail Samsung, Google Devices in Internet Speeds

55 points by maltalex 8y ago

joecool1029 8y ago
So are we putting Qualcomm ads on HN now?
- mrmondo 8y ago
  Yeah I’m seeing Qualcomm ad spam / competitor FUS pop up everywhere, google, RSS feeds off a few blogs I follow, twitter and any android fan / toolchain site.
mh8h 8y ago
I wonder how that translates into day-to-day experience. I can download stuff at that speed for like 30 seconds before I hit my monthly data cap.
0x0 8y ago
Seems disingenious to only talk about bandwidth (mbps) and not latency (ping in ms) when discussing "faster internet". I believe it is the latency that is the biggest cause for sluggishness when browsing or watching videos over 4G, not the raw throughput (anything over 10mbps should be more than enough even for HD video)
- j45 8y ago
  Definitely need bandwidth and latency, not just one of them. Add into it being forced to use Google's DNS servers on android and there's probably some performance being lost there. It would be nice to be able to set custom DNS servers on all mobile platforms without having to use a VPN.
  - detaro 8y ago
    > Add into it being forced to use Google's DNS servers on android Source? My phone runs a current Android (and not some custom ROM, but something standard from it's manufacturer) and doesn't appear to use Google DNS, at least not for normal functions.
    - j45 8y ago
      After disabling WiFi, I invite you to try and change your DNS servers on your data connection. The default DNS on mobile data on Android devices is 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.8.4. https://www.google.com/search?q=android+change+DNS+on+data+plan https://www.google.com/search?q=android+change+DNS+on+data+p... "DNS changer" apps often spin up a local VPN to tunnel the traffic through. Folks usually end up rooting their devices to ultimately make this change, or using a VPN. As well, I believe Chrome can tend to use Google's DNS servers directly in some cases.
      - detaro 8y ago
        My phone uses my providers DNS servers I'm fairly certain. I can't change them, that's true and regrettable.
- bbatha 8y ago
  Also jitter is super important on wireless devices!
- dingaling 8y ago
  Mbps is not bandwidth, it is throughput or data-rate. Bandwidth of 4G is 1.4 to 20 MHz
  - kalleboo 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth Bandwidth has several related meanings: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or analog bandwidth, frequency bandwidth or radio bandwidth, a measure of the width of a range of frequencies, measured in hertz * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or throughput, measured in bits per second (bit/s)
LyndsySimon 8y ago
At some point, does it really matter? Maybe I'm still in the honeymoon phase with my iPhone X, but I've had it for a few months now. The last iPhone I owned was a 4S, and I've been on Android ever since. I was very happy with Samsung's Galaxy line from the S4 Active to the S7 Edge, but the Edge simultaneously slowed to a crawl and lost at least half its battery life after 18 months. It was to the point that I had to charge it every time I was sitting down. The iPhone X has been great. The interface is fast and gets out of the way, and Siri is actually starting to become useful for more than a parlor trick. FWIW, I'm writing this from a bluffline overlooking a lake. My MBP is tethered to my iPhone, and I'm getting a consistent 50Mbps. I don't know that additional download speed would be useful to me at the moment.
- kylec 8y ago
  In my opinion, no. I'm on the AT&T "Unlimited Choice" plan, which is artificially capped at 3mbps and it's been totally fine for me. I can do everything I want to - check email, browse the web, check Twitter, use maps, stream music and podcasts, etc. Also, the bandwidth cap helps me avoid hitting the 22GB monthly transfer cap and getting throttled to the very noticeably terrible 128Kbps. In an ideal world I wouldn't have to worry about bandwidth or transfer caps, but I mention this to provide my experience that for me 3mbps is plenty. Some people might need more, but I think that once you get up above 20-30mbps, most people wouldn't notice or care about the difference.
  - phobosdeimos 8y ago
    I'm on a T-mobile unlimited plan and I can use 5Gb per day after which I have to start spamming the T-mobile app if I want to use more. Its kind of a trap, once you get unlimited data and high speeds you start to take it for granted. Nothing is good enough anymore. But when you get abroad on holiday you learn how the rest of the world lives and know that you should be grateful.
    - oarsinsync 8y ago
      It might just be that roaming is being actively throttled. I get great speeds in the UK, I get mediocre speeds in the EU, I get terrible speeds in the USA. All with the same handset and (SIM) carrier.
detaro 8y ago
That seems pretty irrelevant as such standalone numbers. The "average" speeds are more than fast enough for useful services, don't delay video preload or pages unnecessarily, ... The interesting aspects aren't captured in such averages: how do they handle bad connectivity? latency? CPU + GPU + OS + apps turning the incoming data into user interaction.
yalogin 8y ago
I am sure this is not something you can notice but it doesn’t matter. Samsung is going to do an ad push using it.
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  https://youtu.be/7trMPJNBV20 https://youtu.be/7trMPJNBV20 They do.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
bunderbunder 8y ago
Is it even worth living a life where it takes more than 10 minutes to stuff your phone full of ISOs for every major version of Ubuntu that has ever been released?
oneplane 8y ago
It's a rather insignificant fact. Sure, if those numbers meant some real-world thing, then it would be good to know, but in this case, it's going to be hard to find a normal user that actually cares. On top of that, location, networking and movement matter, so you could easily simply uncover living habits of users instead of the actual device's speeds. If (and this is unlikely, but bear with) all iPhone users would live outside of extremely well covered areas then they would get different LTE speeds. Doesn't say much about the phone, chipset or provider, just about location. While the article touts Ookla as a good idea because it's real-world speeds, they should also have mentioned that it has no real-world meaning either, as well as having real-world numbers not meaning much in comparison between providers, phones, and locations. At the same time, if the manufacturers of phones use different modems and one is slightly faster than the other, good on them, but who cares?
mjm1138 8y ago
So Android manufacturers, led by Samsung, have decided to harp on modem speed because they know they are years behind Apple on processor speed with little they can do about it, and the tech press has decided to carry their water for them. In my lifetime I have never heard anyone complain about, or even discuss, download speeds on their phone. What's next? "The new Galaxy S12 can reach ignition temperature within 5 seconds of power on. Beat that, Apple!"
- reaperducer 8y ago
  What's next? "The new Galaxy S12 can reach ignition temperature within 5 seconds of power on. Beat that, Apple!" I saw on Facetagram that Samsung phones plummet out of airplanes almost twice as fast as iPhones. If I drop a grand on a mobile phone, it has better be the first one to the ground!
- stiGGG 8y ago
  They should call it Blast Networking.
- bena 8y ago
  It's that and "customization" that gets harped on the most. However, the biggest "customizations" I've see were changing the font to a nigh unreadable one and to install apps they didn't pay for.
  - mulletbum 8y ago
    This might go under your "didn't pay for," but it does annoy me that apple doesn't allow emulators. I bought some SNES games, the console went under, I would still like to play them on my iPhone. I know it probably is a gray area for most people, but none the less, Apple could let it be done, but they don't.
    - bena 8y ago
      They probably want to avoid the issue all together. I used to hang around the Dreamcast homebrew scene and the stance on emulators were that they were mostly a proof of concept/educational thing so you could talk about the emulators, how well they performed, bugs, etc, but you couldn't talk about where to get ROMs or distribute emulators with ROMs on the site. I don't know how that'd work with iOS apps. In order to keep the emulator app separate from the ROM, you'd need to be able to download the ROM to some sort of general storage. Then the app would need to be able to access that storage. I guess you could do it off of dropbox. Point the emulator to some URL where the ROM is stored. Downloads the ROM on demand, etc. The major point is that the app can't really have somewhere official that says "ROMs be here".
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
When you're browser is making 500 requests to load a bloated web page, overall download speed doesn't matter. You know what does? Single core performance for processing all that javascript.
reaperducer 8y ago
So... the iPhones that Apple released eight and nine months ago are slower than the Samsung phone that came out four months ago. Shocking!
draw_down 8y ago
Feeds and speeds, feeds and speeds.
wufufufu 8y ago
Since this is obviously a fanboy war post: I prefer Apple because I feel like their products are more user focused. Android and Google's mobile environment feel like a platform on which they can collect data and sell you ads (not that Apple doesn't collect data, but it isn't their primary business model). It also seems like Google will write new apps whenever they don't want to deal with technical debt of the older ones, or they want to use whatever fancy new platform level service they have that lets you sync 50,000 nodes cross datacenter instantly using autonomous submarines or whatever.
- greggman 8y ago
  And Apple's seems like it is where they baby you by not allowing you to install other browser engines, set the system defaults for email, maps, camera, nor let you install non approved software like anything adult.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    Everything you listed is a feature to me. To each their own, I guess.
    - greggman 8y ago
      if you weren't allowed to install your own browser engine on other platforms we'd all be stuck with IE. There's a reason internet standards progress so slow on iOS. It's because Apple disallows any competition. If they allowed real Chrome and Firefox they'd be forced to keep up. Users would have a choice. Chrome has proven to to be around 10x as secure as Safari on macOS based on exploit report. There's every reason to believe it would be the same on iOS. I'd prefer to be able to choose the more secure browser with more modern features. that's would be a pro user feature to me.
      - toasterlovin 8y ago
        I pay Apple to use iOS, so I want them to maintain 100% control over iOS as a platform. If I wanted a balkanized platform, I would buy an Android. I don’t say that to disparage Android, btw. I think the desire you expressed is completely valid. It is just very much not what I want.
ballenf 8y ago
The article is based on measurement of data speeds but makes bold claims like: > Faster internet data means that users can load websites and start watching movies more quickly, make crisper video calls and get higher-quality video. But that's not what their data measured -- it measured bandwidth not page or video loads. Not to mention it goes against the experience everyone's had of a device getting slower with most OS updates that are optimized for a newer device. The bandwidth didn't go down with OS upgrade, so a measurement thereof is pretty meaningless. All else being equal that statement is true, but by definition (comparing disparate devices and manufacturers) everything else is different in this data set. They do qualify it a few paragraphs later: > To be sure, it can be difficult for users to tell the differences between how fast pages load on a phone. I thought that's what you were claiming to be noticeably faster here? Only to water down the qualification with: > But it’s easier to sense the quality of video, how long it takes to pull up a song and how long it takes to send an email. Yes this statement is true in the barest sense, but in the context of the article it's very misleading since none of the data even attempted to measure these things. And sending an email? Who regularly sends huge files that reside on the phone? And what phone doesn't do that in the background anyway? Then there's this sentence that gets an award for obtuse phrasing of the week: > Apple’s main processors that control the speed of launching apps, swiping through PDFs and loading games are often recognized as some of the fastest in the industry. In an article about measuring speeds differences down to two or three decimals points, it's incongruous to talk about "often recognized as" versus just looking at any of the thousands of benchmarks (also from "real world" users that are out there). And even weirder that the metrics above of page loads and video loads are seemingly unaffected by processor speed. Bloomberg tech reporting is very clickbaity of late. Or it's a conspiracy to encourage bigger ad-buys from Apple and for them to retreat from ad blocking and tracking protections. Probably not that, but it's more exciting to imagine than the alternative of simple incompetence.
IBM 8y ago
This story is part of the ongoing Qualcomm PR effort to get people to care about what modem is in their phones [1]. Of course no one actually makes a purchasing decision based on what modem is in their smartphone. [1] https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2018/07/23/over-million-user-initiated-tests-confirm-superior-cellular-performance-android https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2018/07/23/over-million-us...
- tooltalk 8y ago
  Not sure why so many are pooh pooh'ng this. I consider the quality of display and the speed of modem two most important aspects of modern smartphones. Not everyone lives next to cell towers or in high density areas like NYC. I actually do live in NYC, but in less desirable area where avg download speed is ~2mps (Oneplus 5T on TMobile), but it was much slower and frustrating on my older phone (Note 4 on AT&T).
  - what-the-grump 8y ago
    My service is regularly shit on America’s best network in NYC. iPhones used to be very good at this. Now I can’t make phone calls/drop in the same location, on the same cellphone.
    - joecool1029 8y ago
      Honestly phones supporting LAA[1] for places like penn station goes a long way toward having usable service during rush hour in a sea of people. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_in_unlicensed_spectrum#License_Assisted_Access_(LAA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_in_unlicensed_spectrum#Lic...
      - londons_explore 8y ago
        LAA simply seems like the cell providers way to charge me for use of frequencies I could otherwise use for free. A key reason I'm happy to pay cell providers so much money is because they have licenses to use lots of spectrum at high transmission powers to give me service nearly anywhere. WiFi, it's free cousin, has lower transmission power, but in most cities one is always within range of free WiFi (even if roaming between hotspots is painful!). When cell providers are allowed onto the free spectrum, they will use up all the available bandwidth, degrading free service and forcing users to pay for their (normally free) bandwidth.
r00fus 8y ago
Does it seem weird that LTE speeds have dropped significantly over the past several years and I was posting speeds 2x this with an iPhone 5 in 2013? I remember getting 10MB/s in 2014 as I watched my Audible download complete while moving in a car. At what point does this become another discrimination point for the carriers to push their favored (i.e. co-branded) marks?
- ksec 8y ago
  That is what happen when many more users are now on LTE, vs your iPhone 5 era when their LTE network had fewer users and many were still on 3G.
00deadbeef 8y ago
I'm struggling to see how these speeds are a direct consequence of certain phones being slower than others. My iPhone 6 happily consumes data at a rate of 100Mbps over 4G according to the Speedtest app. This phone must surely have an inferior modem and antennas compared to the much more modern devices mentioned in this article, yet on average they apparently perform much worse. Is the device itself really the only variable that could account for the difference? For example, I only get these speeds on my network, EE, because I pay for a "Max" plan which allows me to download data at the fastest speed possible. However, they sell cheaper plans with capped data rates. Perhaps in this scenario, iPhone users are choosing worse (cheaper) plans so they can afford an expensive phone?
oceanghost 8y ago
Seeing as my iPhone X can kill my entire month's data plan in 10 minutes. I'm not sure if I care.
scarface74 8y ago
Faster internet data means that users can load websites and start watching movies more quickly, make crisper video calls and get higher-quality video. This is why you don't go to mainstream media for tech news. 4K video streams at the maximum of 7Mbps on Netflix. "Faster internet speeds" won't help with any streaming video once you get past that speed.
ksec 8y ago
1. All the phone that had the Qualcomm 845 ( X20 Modem ), as tested in those data, were available later then the iPhone X / 8 / 8 launch. So a 6 months old phone had better spec then a 12 months old phone, is that suppose to be news? 2. Your Network speed is fundamentally determined by your Carriers quality, capacity, etc, much more so then your phone. 3. Latency, Latency, Latency! I don't care if I get 20Mbps or 200Mbps speed. I do care if I get 20ms or 2ms latency. Of course that is for those of us who got decent network, I read in many parts of US you get get sub 10Mbps speed. ( How is that even possible? if you ask most developed Western Europe or East Asia countries citizen they would have decent network by now ) 4. We actually need to push the bottom half of the market to support better Modem spec. The more phones support Massive MIMO, LAA or features in later of of 3GPP Rel spec, the faster the overall network is. Which is something I wish Apple had done better. And Finally, any mid range to high end Smartphone, can consume 10GB + of Data in their theoretical top speed in a matter of few minutes, and that is likely over their data cap / allowance, would a user care more about their Data speed or Data Cap?
- doctorsher 8y ago
  Great points. You hit the nail on the head. Once you get 'enough' throughput, getting more doesn't really improve one's mobile experience. Latency is king. CPU / power usage is another big one. It's hard to justify a gain in throughput if it (i) reduces the application's CPU time, making it render the received data more slowly; or (ii) causes the phone battery to die faster because the network threads are constantly doing heavy lifting. While I appreciate the size of the Ookla dataset, they need to be more thorough with their metrics. Phone performance is a multi-faceted problem, and throughput alone does not reflect the whole reality. Side note: dslreports has added bufferbloat testing a while ago, I can't believe Ookla still tests latency in isolation.
thermodynthrway 8y ago
Probably a good time to mention that apples processors have such better single-core performance that real world internet speeds are usually much faster. For example, my buddy has fiber and my Android CPU maxes out at 400mpbs. He gets close to 600 on speedtest on an old iPhone 5

55 points by maltalex 8y ago

joecool1029 8y ago

So are we putting Qualcomm ads on HN now?

mrmondo 8y ago
Yeah I’m seeing Qualcomm ad spam / competitor FUS pop up everywhere, google, RSS feeds off a few blogs I follow, twitter and any android fan / toolchain site.

mh8h 8y ago

I wonder how that translates into day-to-day experience. I can download stuff at that speed for like 30 seconds before I hit my monthly data cap.

0x0 8y ago

Seems disingenious to only talk about bandwidth (mbps) and not latency (ping in ms) when discussing "faster internet". I believe it is the latency that is the biggest cause for sluggishness when browsing or watching videos over 4G, not the raw throughput (anything over 10mbps should be more than enough even for HD video)

j45 8y ago
Definitely need bandwidth and latency, not just one of them. Add into it being forced to use Google's DNS servers on android and there's probably some performance being lost there. It would be nice to be able to set custom DNS servers on all mobile platforms without having to use a VPN.
- detaro 8y ago
  > Add into it being forced to use Google's DNS servers on android Source? My phone runs a current Android (and not some custom ROM, but something standard from it's manufacturer) and doesn't appear to use Google DNS, at least not for normal functions.
  - j45 8y ago
    After disabling WiFi, I invite you to try and change your DNS servers on your data connection. The default DNS on mobile data on Android devices is 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.8.4. https://www.google.com/search?q=android+change+DNS+on+data+plan https://www.google.com/search?q=android+change+DNS+on+data+p... "DNS changer" apps often spin up a local VPN to tunnel the traffic through. Folks usually end up rooting their devices to ultimately make this change, or using a VPN. As well, I believe Chrome can tend to use Google's DNS servers directly in some cases.
    - detaro 8y ago
      My phone uses my providers DNS servers I'm fairly certain. I can't change them, that's true and regrettable.
bbatha 8y ago
Also jitter is super important on wireless devices!
dingaling 8y ago
Mbps is not bandwidth, it is throughput or data-rate. Bandwidth of 4G is 1.4 to 20 MHz
- kalleboo 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth Bandwidth has several related meanings: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or analog bandwidth, frequency bandwidth or radio bandwidth, a measure of the width of a range of frequencies, measured in hertz * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or throughput, measured in bits per second (bit/s)

LyndsySimon 8y ago

At some point, does it really matter? Maybe I'm still in the honeymoon phase with my iPhone X, but I've had it for a few months now. The last iPhone I owned was a 4S, and I've been on Android ever since. I was very happy with Samsung's Galaxy line from the S4 Active to the S7 Edge, but the Edge simultaneously slowed to a crawl and lost at least half its battery life after 18 months. It was to the point that I had to charge it every time I was sitting down. The iPhone X has been great. The interface is fast and gets out of the way, and Siri is actually starting to become useful for more than a parlor trick. FWIW, I'm writing this from a bluffline overlooking a lake. My MBP is tethered to my iPhone, and I'm getting a consistent 50Mbps. I don't know that additional download speed would be useful to me at the moment.

kylec 8y ago
In my opinion, no. I'm on the AT&T "Unlimited Choice" plan, which is artificially capped at 3mbps and it's been totally fine for me. I can do everything I want to - check email, browse the web, check Twitter, use maps, stream music and podcasts, etc. Also, the bandwidth cap helps me avoid hitting the 22GB monthly transfer cap and getting throttled to the very noticeably terrible 128Kbps. In an ideal world I wouldn't have to worry about bandwidth or transfer caps, but I mention this to provide my experience that for me 3mbps is plenty. Some people might need more, but I think that once you get up above 20-30mbps, most people wouldn't notice or care about the difference.
- phobosdeimos 8y ago
  I'm on a T-mobile unlimited plan and I can use 5Gb per day after which I have to start spamming the T-mobile app if I want to use more. Its kind of a trap, once you get unlimited data and high speeds you start to take it for granted. Nothing is good enough anymore. But when you get abroad on holiday you learn how the rest of the world lives and know that you should be grateful.
  - oarsinsync 8y ago
    It might just be that roaming is being actively throttled. I get great speeds in the UK, I get mediocre speeds in the EU, I get terrible speeds in the USA. All with the same handset and (SIM) carrier.

detaro 8y ago

That seems pretty irrelevant as such standalone numbers. The "average" speeds are more than fast enough for useful services, don't delay video preload or pages unnecessarily, ... The interesting aspects aren't captured in such averages: how do they handle bad connectivity? latency? CPU + GPU + OS + apps turning the incoming data into user interaction.

yalogin 8y ago

I am sure this is not something you can notice but it doesn’t matter. Samsung is going to do an ad push using it.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago
https://youtu.be/7trMPJNBV20 https://youtu.be/7trMPJNBV20 They do.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

bunderbunder 8y ago

Is it even worth living a life where it takes more than 10 minutes to stuff your phone full of ISOs for every major version of Ubuntu that has ever been released?

oneplane 8y ago

It's a rather insignificant fact. Sure, if those numbers meant some real-world thing, then it would be good to know, but in this case, it's going to be hard to find a normal user that actually cares. On top of that, location, networking and movement matter, so you could easily simply uncover living habits of users instead of the actual device's speeds. If (and this is unlikely, but bear with) all iPhone users would live outside of extremely well covered areas then they would get different LTE speeds. Doesn't say much about the phone, chipset or provider, just about location. While the article touts Ookla as a good idea because it's real-world speeds, they should also have mentioned that it has no real-world meaning either, as well as having real-world numbers not meaning much in comparison between providers, phones, and locations. At the same time, if the manufacturers of phones use different modems and one is slightly faster than the other, good on them, but who cares?

mjm1138 8y ago

So Android manufacturers, led by Samsung, have decided to harp on modem speed because they know they are years behind Apple on processor speed with little they can do about it, and the tech press has decided to carry their water for them. In my lifetime I have never heard anyone complain about, or even discuss, download speeds on their phone. What's next? "The new Galaxy S12 can reach ignition temperature within 5 seconds of power on. Beat that, Apple!"

reaperducer 8y ago
What's next? "The new Galaxy S12 can reach ignition temperature within 5 seconds of power on. Beat that, Apple!" I saw on Facetagram that Samsung phones plummet out of airplanes almost twice as fast as iPhones. If I drop a grand on a mobile phone, it has better be the first one to the ground!
stiGGG 8y ago
They should call it Blast Networking.
bena 8y ago
It's that and "customization" that gets harped on the most. However, the biggest "customizations" I've see were changing the font to a nigh unreadable one and to install apps they didn't pay for.
- mulletbum 8y ago
  This might go under your "didn't pay for," but it does annoy me that apple doesn't allow emulators. I bought some SNES games, the console went under, I would still like to play them on my iPhone. I know it probably is a gray area for most people, but none the less, Apple could let it be done, but they don't.
  - bena 8y ago
    They probably want to avoid the issue all together. I used to hang around the Dreamcast homebrew scene and the stance on emulators were that they were mostly a proof of concept/educational thing so you could talk about the emulators, how well they performed, bugs, etc, but you couldn't talk about where to get ROMs or distribute emulators with ROMs on the site. I don't know how that'd work with iOS apps. In order to keep the emulator app separate from the ROM, you'd need to be able to download the ROM to some sort of general storage. Then the app would need to be able to access that storage. I guess you could do it off of dropbox. Point the emulator to some URL where the ROM is stored. Downloads the ROM on demand, etc. The major point is that the app can't really have somewhere official that says "ROMs be here".

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

When you're browser is making 500 requests to load a bloated web page, overall download speed doesn't matter. You know what does? Single core performance for processing all that javascript.

reaperducer 8y ago

So... the iPhones that Apple released eight and nine months ago are slower than the Samsung phone that came out four months ago. Shocking!

draw_down 8y ago

Feeds and speeds, feeds and speeds.

wufufufu 8y ago

Since this is obviously a fanboy war post: I prefer Apple because I feel like their products are more user focused. Android and Google's mobile environment feel like a platform on which they can collect data and sell you ads (not that Apple doesn't collect data, but it isn't their primary business model). It also seems like Google will write new apps whenever they don't want to deal with technical debt of the older ones, or they want to use whatever fancy new platform level service they have that lets you sync 50,000 nodes cross datacenter instantly using autonomous submarines or whatever.

greggman 8y ago
And Apple's seems like it is where they baby you by not allowing you to install other browser engines, set the system defaults for email, maps, camera, nor let you install non approved software like anything adult.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  Everything you listed is a feature to me. To each their own, I guess.
  - greggman 8y ago
    if you weren't allowed to install your own browser engine on other platforms we'd all be stuck with IE. There's a reason internet standards progress so slow on iOS. It's because Apple disallows any competition. If they allowed real Chrome and Firefox they'd be forced to keep up. Users would have a choice. Chrome has proven to to be around 10x as secure as Safari on macOS based on exploit report. There's every reason to believe it would be the same on iOS. I'd prefer to be able to choose the more secure browser with more modern features. that's would be a pro user feature to me.
    - toasterlovin 8y ago
      I pay Apple to use iOS, so I want them to maintain 100% control over iOS as a platform. If I wanted a balkanized platform, I would buy an Android. I don’t say that to disparage Android, btw. I think the desire you expressed is completely valid. It is just very much not what I want.

ballenf 8y ago

The article is based on measurement of data speeds but makes bold claims like: > Faster internet data means that users can load websites and start watching movies more quickly, make crisper video calls and get higher-quality video. But that's not what their data measured -- it measured bandwidth not page or video loads. Not to mention it goes against the experience everyone's had of a device getting slower with most OS updates that are optimized for a newer device. The bandwidth didn't go down with OS upgrade, so a measurement thereof is pretty meaningless. All else being equal that statement is true, but by definition (comparing disparate devices and manufacturers) everything else is different in this data set. They do qualify it a few paragraphs later: > To be sure, it can be difficult for users to tell the differences between how fast pages load on a phone. I thought that's what you were claiming to be noticeably faster here? Only to water down the qualification with: > But it’s easier to sense the quality of video, how long it takes to pull up a song and how long it takes to send an email. Yes this statement is true in the barest sense, but in the context of the article it's very misleading since none of the data even attempted to measure these things. And sending an email? Who regularly sends huge files that reside on the phone? And what phone doesn't do that in the background anyway? Then there's this sentence that gets an award for obtuse phrasing of the week: > Apple’s main processors that control the speed of launching apps, swiping through PDFs and loading games are often recognized as some of the fastest in the industry. In an article about measuring speeds differences down to two or three decimals points, it's incongruous to talk about "often recognized as" versus just looking at any of the thousands of benchmarks (also from "real world" users that are out there). And even weirder that the metrics above of page loads and video loads are seemingly unaffected by processor speed. Bloomberg tech reporting is very clickbaity of late. Or it's a conspiracy to encourage bigger ad-buys from Apple and for them to retreat from ad blocking and tracking protections. Probably not that, but it's more exciting to imagine than the alternative of simple incompetence.

IBM 8y ago

This story is part of the ongoing Qualcomm PR effort to get people to care about what modem is in their phones [1]. Of course no one actually makes a purchasing decision based on what modem is in their smartphone. [1] https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2018/07/23/over-million-user-initiated-tests-confirm-superior-cellular-performance-android https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2018/07/23/over-million-us...

tooltalk 8y ago
Not sure why so many are pooh pooh'ng this. I consider the quality of display and the speed of modem two most important aspects of modern smartphones. Not everyone lives next to cell towers or in high density areas like NYC. I actually do live in NYC, but in less desirable area where avg download speed is ~2mps (Oneplus 5T on TMobile), but it was much slower and frustrating on my older phone (Note 4 on AT&T).
- what-the-grump 8y ago
  My service is regularly shit on America’s best network in NYC. iPhones used to be very good at this. Now I can’t make phone calls/drop in the same location, on the same cellphone.
  - joecool1029 8y ago
    Honestly phones supporting LAA[1] for places like penn station goes a long way toward having usable service during rush hour in a sea of people. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_in_unlicensed_spectrum#License_Assisted_Access_(LAA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_in_unlicensed_spectrum#Lic...
    - londons_explore 8y ago
      LAA simply seems like the cell providers way to charge me for use of frequencies I could otherwise use for free. A key reason I'm happy to pay cell providers so much money is because they have licenses to use lots of spectrum at high transmission powers to give me service nearly anywhere. WiFi, it's free cousin, has lower transmission power, but in most cities one is always within range of free WiFi (even if roaming between hotspots is painful!). When cell providers are allowed onto the free spectrum, they will use up all the available bandwidth, degrading free service and forcing users to pay for their (normally free) bandwidth.

r00fus 8y ago

Does it seem weird that LTE speeds have dropped significantly over the past several years and I was posting speeds 2x this with an iPhone 5 in 2013? I remember getting 10MB/s in 2014 as I watched my Audible download complete while moving in a car. At what point does this become another discrimination point for the carriers to push their favored (i.e. co-branded) marks?

ksec 8y ago
That is what happen when many more users are now on LTE, vs your iPhone 5 era when their LTE network had fewer users and many were still on 3G.

00deadbeef 8y ago

I'm struggling to see how these speeds are a direct consequence of certain phones being slower than others. My iPhone 6 happily consumes data at a rate of 100Mbps over 4G according to the Speedtest app. This phone must surely have an inferior modem and antennas compared to the much more modern devices mentioned in this article, yet on average they apparently perform much worse. Is the device itself really the only variable that could account for the difference? For example, I only get these speeds on my network, EE, because I pay for a "Max" plan which allows me to download data at the fastest speed possible. However, they sell cheaper plans with capped data rates. Perhaps in this scenario, iPhone users are choosing worse (cheaper) plans so they can afford an expensive phone?

oceanghost 8y ago

Seeing as my iPhone X can kill my entire month's data plan in 10 minutes. I'm not sure if I care.

scarface74 8y ago

Faster internet data means that users can load websites and start watching movies more quickly, make crisper video calls and get higher-quality video. This is why you don't go to mainstream media for tech news. 4K video streams at the maximum of 7Mbps on Netflix. "Faster internet speeds" won't help with any streaming video once you get past that speed.

ksec 8y ago

1. All the phone that had the Qualcomm 845 ( X20 Modem ), as tested in those data, were available later then the iPhone X / 8 / 8 launch. So a 6 months old phone had better spec then a 12 months old phone, is that suppose to be news? 2. Your Network speed is fundamentally determined by your Carriers quality, capacity, etc, much more so then your phone. 3. Latency, Latency, Latency! I don't care if I get 20Mbps or 200Mbps speed. I do care if I get 20ms or 2ms latency. Of course that is for those of us who got decent network, I read in many parts of US you get get sub 10Mbps speed. ( How is that even possible? if you ask most developed Western Europe or East Asia countries citizen they would have decent network by now ) 4. We actually need to push the bottom half of the market to support better Modem spec. The more phones support Massive MIMO, LAA or features in later of of 3GPP Rel spec, the faster the overall network is. Which is something I wish Apple had done better. And Finally, any mid range to high end Smartphone, can consume 10GB + of Data in their theoretical top speed in a matter of few minutes, and that is likely over their data cap / allowance, would a user care more about their Data speed or Data Cap?

doctorsher 8y ago
Great points. You hit the nail on the head. Once you get 'enough' throughput, getting more doesn't really improve one's mobile experience. Latency is king. CPU / power usage is another big one. It's hard to justify a gain in throughput if it (i) reduces the application's CPU time, making it render the received data more slowly; or (ii) causes the phone battery to die faster because the network threads are constantly doing heavy lifting. While I appreciate the size of the Ookla dataset, they need to be more thorough with their metrics. Phone performance is a multi-faceted problem, and throughput alone does not reflect the whole reality. Side note: dslreports has added bufferbloat testing a while ago, I can't believe Ookla still tests latency in isolation.

thermodynthrway 8y ago

Probably a good time to mention that apples processors have such better single-core performance that real world internet speeds are usually much faster. For example, my buddy has fiber and my Android CPU maxes out at 400mpbs. He gets close to 600 on speedtest on an old iPhone 5