3 ms·

"Remember that 4G is like 5/1Mbps, and 3G is even worse" this is just completely untrue. 4G can do 300meg+ real world no problem, and even back in the day with

"Remember that 4G is like 5/1Mbps, and 3G is even worse" this is just completely untrue. 4G can do 300meg+ real world no problem, and even back in the day with DC-HSPDA on 3G you could get 20meg real world. HOWEVER the main problem (apart from just not having service) is congestion. There is a complete shortage of low bandwidth spectrum which can penetrate walls well in (sub)urban areas, at ~600-900MHz. Most networks have managed to add enough capacity in the mid/upper bands to avoid horrendous congestion, but (eg) 3.5GHz does not penetrate buildings well at all. This means it is very common to walk into a building and go from 100meg++ speeds on 5G to dropping down to 5G on 700MHz which is so congested that you are looking at 500kbit/sec on a good day. Annoyingly phone OSs haven't got with the times yet. And just display signal quality for the bars. Which will usually be excellent. It really needs to also have a congestion indicator (could be based on how long your device is waiting for a transmission slot for example).

jdwithit 1y ago
Yeah the signal strength indicator being BS (or, if we're being charitable, incomplete to the point it's misleading) is extremely frustrating. It's quite common for my iPhone to say I have full bars of LTE or even 5G, yet the data connection is unusable. There's seemingly no correlation between showing a great signal and content actually loading. I would love to see at a glance that there is no point in even trying versus spending a minute fiddling with my phone before giving up in frustration.
- martinald 1y ago
  Yeah on Android it's easy to show what band your are connected on via one of the many cell diagnostic apps in the 'top icon' bar. If you're on LTE800/NR700 in a pretty built up area and you have no data then 99% of the time it is congestion. If you're on higher bands which have more bandwidth (though even these days 2100/2300/2600 can get pretty full) then it's less likely to be congestion.

jdwithit 1y ago

Yeah the signal strength indicator being BS (or, if we're being charitable, incomplete to the point it's misleading) is extremely frustrating. It's quite common for my iPhone to say I have full bars of LTE or even 5G, yet the data connection is unusable. There's seemingly no correlation between showing a great signal and content actually loading. I would love to see at a glance that there is no point in even trying versus spending a minute fiddling with my phone before giving up in frustration.

martinald 1y ago
Yeah on Android it's easy to show what band your are connected on via one of the many cell diagnostic apps in the 'top icon' bar. If you're on LTE800/NR700 in a pretty built up area and you have no data then 99% of the time it is congestion. If you're on higher bands which have more bandwidth (though even these days 2100/2300/2600 can get pretty full) then it's less likely to be congestion.