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As an iPhone user (4S) that all sounds pretty standard! On a more serious note, I don't understand all the fuss about LTE. IIRC it's something like 20Mbps in p
by gridaphobe 14y ago
As an iPhone user (4S) that all sounds pretty standard!
On a more serious note, I don't understand all the fuss about LTE. IIRC it's something like 20Mbps in practice, which is faster than most Internet connections in the US.
What is the use case for such bandwidth on a phone? YouTube already plays just fine with HSPA+.
- CrazedGeek 14y agoI have been wondering this exact same thing myself. I get 16Mbps on HSPA+, and that's more than plenty for everything I do. I could sort of see LTE making sense in tablets (streaming 1080p on HSPA+ is definitely doable, but doesn't leave a lot of extra bandwidth), but I genuinely have no idea why it's (currently) important in phones.
- Nursie 14y agoPotentially there's less latency on an LTE connection, so far as I can tell from a quick search. This could be useful for a bunch of stuff - playing TF2 via a tethered phone perhaps?
- danialtz 14y agoThe best part is that they give you high speed LTE but with only 3 GB/month cap, and after that it caps to GPRS; at least here for vodafone.de
- wbrendel 14y agoI went from HSPA+ on a Galaxy Nexus (AT&T) to LTE on an iPhone 5 (Verizon), and the difference is very noticeable, at least in my area of the US. HSPA+ was alright but still felt like a cellular data connection. LTE feels just like I'm on a fast wifi connection. It's probably the lower latency that makes it seem like wifi, not just the faster data transfer speeds.
- nuclear_eclipse 14y agoOn a counter anecdote, as I've mentioned in the past, my Nexus S on T-Mobile with "regular" HSPA gets faster "4G" internet speeds than my Galaxy Nexus on Verizon using LTE, and latency seems roughly the same.
- endemic 14y agoTethering. If you're travelling a lot, tethering to your LTE phone would give you a relatively consistent, fast internet connection. Aside from that, it's just another way for carriers to charge you $$$ for a feature that is only marginally useful.
- jnsaff2 14y agoThe real fuss about LTE is that the total bandwidth of your serving cell is much higher and more people get "fast enough" speeds and response times. No doubt that very few of the reviewers actually understand that and complain about getting not getting 50Mbps now.
- philsnow 14y agoWow 6 replies here and nobody has specifically called out latency. I have a verizon LTE device that I tether with from time to time, and the ping times I get to my home server are insane, usually around 20ms. When I tether on my HSPA galaxy nexus, ping times are usually around 100+ms. Now this could be verizon vs t-mobile and not LTE vs HSPA (or some mix). Verizon is the only/main LTE-supporting provider right now, so LTE and Verizon are conflated in my mind, for better or for worse.
- harshreality 14y agoDo you have a more convincing measurement than ping times to some other location? Do you have real-looking latency data for the first few hops from your phone? (...keeping in mind that latency information for intermediate hops is not always accurate.) 100ms vs 20ms could be t-mobile peering with your home ISP in some far away city, while Verizon peers locally. Based on only pings, you'd never know.
- gridaphobe 14y agoAhh, a quick bit of googling does seem to suggest that LTE should provide lower latency than HSPA. That certainly is a benefit, much more so IMHO than the bandwidth numbers we see carriers boasting about!
- S_A_P 14y agoI achieved a 56mbps lte download on AT&T in Houston. Average has ranged from 10-30 though
- hnriot 14y agoLTE is seriously fast, seriously low latency and makes the experience of using the internet (which is pretty much everything a phone does) much better. A slow connection is frustrating, a high latency connection makes me just not bother, but try LTE and you'll see what all the fuss is about. Use case is everything you currently do, but faster.