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Nexus 4 Includes Support for LTE on Band 4
- nullvoyd 14y agoGlorious news this morning. Enabled it on my Nexus 4 with Telus and I can confirm that this works absolutely fine. However, I'm quite curious about the battery life impact. So far the N4 isn't a champion in this category. Adding LTE..
- Shooti 14y agoLTE as implemented on current gen SOC's actually has improved battery life VS 3G. Its the first-gen multiple radio variants like the Thunderbolt which gave LTE a bad rep in that regard.
- neilbutner 14y agoWhat's your claim of LTE offering better battery life VS 3G based on? The battery test that Anandtech designed for the iPhone5? I personally can't put much faith in this particular Anandtech battery test: It doesn't jive with my personal experience using the iPhone5 on LTE and 3G It contradicts Apple's own battery life claims Devices with the old SOC get dramatically different results on the new test (see for example the results for the HTC OneX in Anand's initial review and compare with the results in the iPhone5 review chart).
- fpgeek 14y agoThe claim isn't that LTE has better battery life vs 3G. Instead it is: LTE battery life with today's SoCs vs 3G on today's SoCs > LTE battery life with last year's SoCs vs 3G on last year's SoCs with the suggestion is that the improvement is significant enough that LTE battery life isn't the problem it used to be. None of that claims that LTE battery life today is better than 3G battery life today.
- seabee 14y agoIIRC this is still a problem if your carrier doesn't fully support LTE, i.e. you still need your 3G radio switched on to receive calls.
- w1ntermute 14y agoThis is one reason I'm excited about the Google-Dish wireless carrier news. If they made a 4G-only carrier, you could use VoLTE for calls. By removing the need for non-4G chips, phones would become lighter, smaller, cheaper, and less hot when running. And hopefully service would be cheaper and more stable too.
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoDoesn't seem to make a noticeable impact on most recent VZ phones, and as far as I'm aware VZ doesn't run VoLTE[0] yet. [0] Anecdotally, I'm hoping that's right. I've been on (GSM/UMTS) T-Mobile for years and switched to VZ a few months ago; and I've noticed a marked drop in call quality & stability vs. every GSM phone I've owned.
- w1ntermute 14y ago> However, I'm quite curious about the battery life impact. So far the N4 isn't a champion in this category. Adding LTE.. Just get a bigger battery. I got a 3900 mAh extended battery for my Verizon LTE Galaxy Nexus from Mugen Power[0]. Now my phone can run for 2.5 days without any problems. After a week, I didn't even notice the added thickness. 0: http://www.mugen-power-batteries.com/mugen-power-3900mah-extended-battery-for-verizon-samsung-galaxy-nexus-sch-i515-with-battery-door.html http://www.mugen-power-batteries.com/mugen-power-3900mah-ext...
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoThe Nexus 4 has a sealed battery. Upgrading will be a bit tougher.
- w1ntermute 14y agoWow, why is everyone jumping to copy Apple? I just bought a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon, and the battery, RAM, and SSD are all non-removable. I had to pay a huge premium to increase the RAM to the maximum of 8 GB, whereas in the past I would've bought it with the minimum amount and then upgraded it myself with aftermarket RAM purchased from Newegg or Amazon at a discount. I left the storage at 128 GB, so I'm going to have to carry around an external HDD. It's a really ugly trend in the industry.
- soupboy 14y agoI think you just answered the question yourself.
- aes256 14y agoThe extra profit from pre-emptive upgrades is probably cancelled out by the increased cost of warranty repairs. Repairs get more complicated, more costly, and more consumers end up having their devices swapped out where previously individual parts could have been replaced. I think it's more so a side-effect of the relentless push for smaller, thinner devices. That aligns with the priorities of most consumers. The average consumer is not going to upgrade their hardware — at least, not themselves — but they do want a sleek, slim design.
- SaulOfTheJungle 14y agoDid you just have to change the setting via ##4636##? I'm with Bell Canada and not having LTE is a deal-breaker for me.
- isaacwaller 14y agoSomeone on the XDA forums confirmed that it works with Bell, but if LTE is that important to you, I don't know if it's a good idea to rely on what is essentially a 'hack' unless Google decides to officially support it.
- nullvoyd 14y agoYes. I simply followed the procedure as shown in the OP. You also need a LTE compatible Micro SIM card. Most phones sold by the canadian carriers nowadays do have them, even if they are not 4G.
- mladenkovacevic 14y agoI just read somewhere that to condition the battery of a phone you should do the usual full discharge/charge cycle every once in a while but also try charging the device via a computer's USB port (the slow way) instead of using the wall plug adapter.
- cbsmith 14y agoYeah... you'll want to ignore some of that. http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_li... There really isn't any memory in them. There is value to slow charging, but even more important is temperature and avoiding keeping them near full charge for an extended period of time.
- polshaw 14y ago>There is value to slow charging Only to a point. The provided charger tends to be well within this limit (no benefit to using USB).
- cbsmith 14y agoAgreed. The real trick is to not keep the charge up at full.
- bri3d 14y agoThere isn't any "memory" in a lithium polymer battery's chemistry like was found in NiCd and early NiMh batteries, but on some devices, a full charge/discharge cycle functions to program a true digital memory in the battery management controller about the actual properties of the battery. From the same source: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/battery_calibration http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/battery_calibrati...
- Evbn 14y agoDown voters please explain. He not reply so far is a link that substantiates the above advice. An Apple.com recommends a occasional full discharge, mainly to calibrate the percentage estimator.
- hayksaakian 14y agoPresumably, since the n4 has no a antenna for late, your reception is going to be bad, so it may end up pinging towers all day and killing your battery.
- danudey 14y agoThe Nexus 4 and the iPhone 5 have similar battery life if you disable LTE on the iPhone. The faster you can finish loading your data, the sooner you can turn off the LTE chip and start saving power again.
- taligent 14y agoWell this is just rubbish. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6440/google-nexus-4-review/2 http://www.anandtech.com/show/6440/google-nexus-4-review/2 The iPhone 5 has nearly DOUBLE the battery life of the Nexus 4 for typical usage. If you disable LTE it will be even better.
- yohui 14y agoDoesn't that review affirm the core of danudey's statement? > "As always we test across multiple air interfaces (3G, 4G LTE, WiFi), but due to the increased network load we actually find that on a given process technology we see an increase in battery life on faster network connections. The why is quite simple to understand: the faster a page is able to fully render, the quicker all components can drive down to their idle power states." AnandTech's 3G benchmark scores for the iPhone 5 and Nexus 4 are 4.55 and 4.15, respectively. It's only when the iPhone 5 runs on 4G LTE that it scores 8.19. And while I appreciate AnandTech's quantitative reports, I'm not sure you can call this "typical usage", unless you typically spend all day refreshing web pages.
- pook1e 14y agoNo. THIS is rubbish. Did you even read the article you linked, or did you just scroll through the pretty pictures? > typical usage Are you serious? This pretty much affirms my point that you didn't read the article, unless you consider constantly refreshing web pages at a fixed interval with fixed brightness 'typical usage'. > If you disable LTE it will be even better. Apparently you didn't look too closely at the pictures, either. The article contains an entire paragraph (that I'm not going to repeat) that explains why LTE provides better battery life in this particular benchmark. In fact, if you look at the exact same chart you're referencing the iPhone 5 is at 4.55 with LTE disabled, a mere 0.40 more than the Nexus 4. Your blatant Apple propaganda is getting pretty old.
- untog 14y agoCool. Now just let me buy one, please.
- mahesh_rm 14y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4822559 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4822559
- trimbo 14y agoI blogged about this yesterday. If that's their plan, it helps to occasionally have them in stock. But they've had none in stock, no preorders, nothing, for 10 days now. In fact, it's only been in stock for 30 minutes ever. False scarcity is a great marketing technique. Ask Apple and Nintendo. Key word is "false".
- mahesh_rm 14y agoWho [or what] decides whether scarcity is true or false?
- timeshifter 14y agoIf they actually can provide, but claim they can't, it's false.
- Groxx 14y agoI was about to say the same thing, but timeshifter (whose account appears to be hellbanned) beat me to it: >If they actually can provide, but claim they can't, it's false.
- trimbo 14y agoThe way I've looked at it is "everyone who wants one seems to be able to get one in a reasonable timeframe." Apple is a master of this. You might not get one on day one, but you'll get yours on day five. That's enough time to inspire people to line up to get theirs on day one. The Wii was the same way. It was "hard to get" for two Christmases. How is that at all possible? A company misjudges their demand that badly for two years in a row? But really what happened was they just kept a decent pace of manufacturing that satisfied all demand just in time. I never heard of anyone not getting their Wii when they wanted it for either Christmas. And you really need exactly that: stories of people "getting theirs". So the delays should be somewhat minimal, enough that people can show off getting theirs and tell the story in time for the next person to do the same thing. The Best Buy on Main Street gets deliveries on Tuesday. Come back then!
- mrcrassic 14y agoIt should be noted that the INFO code does not work on most OEM customised builds (HTC, Samsung, LG et. al.)
- mritun 14y agoWorks on my stock Samsung Galaxy Note I. YMMV, but afaik, all stock Samsung builds have retained this feature.
- jevinskie 14y agoI was a bit confused as to why this was remarkable. I found out that the Nexus 4 isn't billed as supporting LTE, so this unofficial support is essentially "for free".
- meaty 14y agoOh good. Anyone know if that will work with EE in the UK?
- barredo 14y agoBand 4 is 1700Mhz EE UK uses LTE on the 1800Mhz Here's a list of the LTE networking bands http://niviuk.free.fr/lte_band.php http://niviuk.free.fr/lte_band.php (nice graphics below)
- meaty 14y agoThanks - appreciated :)
- ksadeghi 14y agoYup, unfortunately EE is Band 3.
- Cor 14y agoPersonally, I don't find the lack of LTE to be a problem at all. Three's DC-HSDPA network has been excellent with my Nexus 4. I've done a few speed tests and I regularly get between 10-18Mbps down and 2-3Mbps up. It feels really snappy and, at £9.60 a month for a rolling 30 day sim only contract with unlimited data, it's cheap as hell.
- polshaw 14y ago>£9.60 a month for a rolling 30 day sim only contract with unlimited data how? link/info please? AFAIK the best they offered was £6.90/mo base + £3/mo for unlimited data. And that was 12month contract where you had to call up to add on the data. ?
- Cor 14y agoAh, apologies. For some reason my brain isn't working too well tonight. I had it in my head that my contract was costing me £9.60 per month while it's actually costing me £12.90 per month. Doh.
- thechut 14y agoDoes that mean I could use the Nexus 4 on Verizon?
- mingramjr 14y agoNo, the bands aren't the same
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoEven if it mystically had band 13 LTE and CDMA support hiding somewhere, good luck getting Verizon to activate it.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoThe LTE radio is a ~~7-band radio~~. Edit: I'm finding a bit of contradicting info here, let me look harder. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6474/nexus-4-includes-support-for-lte-on-band-4-aws http://www.anandtech.com/show/6474/nexus-4-includes-support-...
- eventualEntropy 14y agoAnyone know whether that applies to rogers in canada?
- nickpresta 14y agoYes. Confirmed working on Rogers in Canada. :D http://imgur.com/bkyWL http://imgur.com/bkyWL It's not only faster than the HSPA speeds I was getting, but it's faster than my home internet connection from Telus. This is awesome. I had to add an apn with these settings: Name - Rogers LTE APN- ltemobile.apn Port- 80 MMSC- http://mms.gprs.rogers.com http://mms.gprs.rogers.com MMS Proxy- 10.128.1.69 MCC- 302 MNC- 720 Apn type 1- (default,supl,mms) 2- (*) Taken from: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/13nr12/this_video_shows_the_nexus_4_working_on_a_lte/c75jws5 http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/13nr12/this_video_s...
- prayag 14y agoI adjusted the settings on my Nexus 4 (T-Mobile in the SF Bay Area). I saw a marginal increase in my bandwidth (going from preferred WCDMA to LTE/GSM/CDMA/(PRE) in the menu entries. It is no way a scientific test but the results are a consistent 2 MBps increase which is not enough to claim that LTE works but is a nice to have. I will do more research and post it here.
- SafeSituation 14y agoSo, the takeaway for US AT&T customers is that they may potentially roll out LTE on a band that the Nexus 4 supports, but it hasn't yet?
- untog 14y agoI'd be surprised if they did- why use more bands when you're doing OK with the ones you use now? The possible win is when T-Mobile eventually rolls out LTE. They are likely to use Band 4... but AFAIK haven't announced when they're ever going to roll it out.
- wmf 14y agoT-Mobile is turning on LTE in 2013. It looks like the Nexus 4 was designed to be ready for it.
- vittore 14y agoWhat I wondering know if samsung sgs3 i9300 and new note2 international also has LTE chips on board, which can be activated that simple.