T-Mobile G1 Faster Than iPhone 3G 304
An anonymous reader writes "CNET UK have run some very simple in-house tests comparing the T-Mobile G1's 3G connection against the iPhone 3G's. Result? The G1 loaded Web pages almost twice as fast as the iPhone's. Of course, the test only applies to the CNET UK offices if you're being scientific about it, as stated, but it's still impressive nevertheless."
Re:somebody read it (Score:5, Informative)
3 and 4, per the conclusions of the author.
Don't worry, though, I'm sure some apple fan will be along shortly to debunk it.
Re:somebody read it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:somebody read it (Score:1, Informative)
TFA doesn't state, but I'd venture to guess that it's as much about RF performance than anything. CDMA technology (which 3G is based) has drastic penalties for poor RF performance, which can translate directly into data rates.
Re:How would it fare elsewhere? (Score:4, Informative)
Look in the top left-hand corner(ish). If it says "3G", you have a 3G connection. If it says "E", you have Edge. Edge is roughly dialup. It works, but it's slower'n'piss.
I have a Rogers iPhone, I live in a rural area, and get 3G on one side of my house and Edge on the other. The difference is astounding.
Re:No it's faster because: (Score:3, Informative)
Too bad the tests were done in the UK...
(It's even in the summary for crying out loud...)
I actually quite like the trackball (Score:5, Informative)
I didn't think i would, but it's a nice touch.
Still by the time it's got a keyboard, a touch screen, some buttons and a trackball... it feels like it's perhaps over doing it.
Do you think it's ugly in person? Like my last HTC device, it's much nicer in your hand than in pictures.
The integration between the phone and third party apps is wonderful.
When a call comes in that isn't in my phone book, the whitepages app does a reverse number lookup and shows that on screen.
I can use shazam to identify music and then go straight to youtube or the amazon mp3 store to buy or listen to it.
I can scan the barcode of a book, compare the prices at online stores and it'll tell me which local booksellers have it and give me driving directions to the store (although it only seems to work for b&n)
Of course that's all mostly android and not the device.
Not sure about the US... (Score:2, Informative)
But I actually called AT&T and talked to the apple rep and BEGGED for an option to turn off 3G, it's beyond a joke. I'd rather have EDGE only, the 3G is so bad it actually causes my phone to take 3 or 4 times as long as my 1st gen EDGE iPhone to load a web page. Thats because the signal is next to worthless in podunk areas like DOWNTOWN FREAKIN SF and I have to wait for the phone to decide... "ohhh... this take too long... me switch to edge and retry"
I hope someone brings about a class action against AT&T for their shitty 3G network and against Apple for deceptive advertising. It's not twice as fast, if anything, it's twice as slow.
T-Mobile in NYC (Score:4, Informative)
I've been with T-Mobile since they were Voice Stream back in 2000 when I was living in Dallas. In Dallas they were great, but I've been in NYC since early 2005 and their service sucks in this area. Most of the time my Internet access doesn't work at all.
Simply... awesome. (Score:5, Informative)
My room mate, a senior T-Mobile Engineer, did a test just last night of his new G1 on T-Mo's 3G network versus his iPhone on AT&T's network and saw a full 150kbps difference between the two, with advantage going to the G1. On a later test they ran the G1 against the iPhone with both on T-Mobile's network and saw between a 50 - 75kbps difference between the two, again, advantage G1.
So far I'm rather impressed with the device. The trackball is very functional, easy to use, and seems well made. The device is fast and responsive, and while the screen may not be quit as big or pretty as the iPhone's, it's still plenty nice enough. Ok, it doesn't have multi-touch (as far as I can ascertain), but it's fast, very functional and I really really want one now. Web-browsing was a wonderful experience (first time I can say that about a phone), and did I say it was fast? Also the native console and SSH functionality was awesome, and I was very surprised by how well it represented my SSH sessions, including irssi - I must have one.
It really does look better in the hand than it does on photos. Ok, not quite as slick as the iPhone, but I'm also not one of those people who will shell out an extra $X just to get a pretty PC case when all I want is functionality - I don't need my mobile device to be sexy in an artistic way, I want it to be sexy in a functional, useful and powerful way. The teenage emo girls on 4chan can have the iPhone, it's G1 for me.
Don't forget open standards for the phone too, and the fact that with the time and effort you can make it do anything you want to, and not have to be beholden to what Apple thinks you should be able to do, or a glorified pager that is the Blackberry.
Re:somebody read it (Score:5, Informative)
o2 has 3g coverage for 80% of the country. I find it very hard to believe that the skipped "London" when they were doing that.
T-Mobile UK is delivering a 7.2Mbps connection whereas O2 are still at 3.6Mbps - either way i find it hard to believe that download speed is a major issue.
Quite why they didn't use wifi - i dont know
Re:I actually quite like the trackball (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Chrome vs Safari (Score:2, Informative)
You do realize that they're both based on WebKit, right? The same core rendering engine? The dramatic differences between Chrome and Safari are the shell (Chrome really scores here on Windows) and the JavaScript engine. Neither are likely to be relevant on the mobile platform.
Back to the desktop: sure V8 is faster than the engine used by Safari 3.1, but if you're comparing products that aren't yet complete you might want to look at a Safari nightly build. The SquirrelFish Extreme engine is even faster than the Chrome V8 engine in the Chrome beta.
Re:How would it fare elsewhere? (Score:4, Informative)
Edge is roughly dialup.
BZZZZT! Wrong.
GPRS (2G) is roughly dialup. EDGE (2.5G) is more like slow DSL, in the 128K to 230K range. GPRS can actually do better than dial-up. It maxes out at 59K.
The G1 does all three, and it distinguishes between them on the display. Perhaps your iPhone doesn't.
Re:I actually quite like the trackball (Score:4, Informative)
The music comes from wherever you are - watching TV, on a bus, sitting next to some guy in his car who is playing his stereo too loudly, whatever. Shazam identifies music in your environment that you record. Pretty neat, really.
Re:I actually quite like the trackball (Score:5, Informative)
It records it from whatever radio station, coffee shop or party that it's being played at. It then analyzes the audio and identifies the band.
However rather than leaving you with a song id, you can buy it on amazon and download straight to your phones music library or you can hop over to youtube and find the video for that song.
I get my music from a mix of sources, sorry for not towing the slashdot corporate boycott line.
Re:The thing is still ugly (Score:3, Informative)
five years ago?
Re:Chrome vs Safari (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not sure about the US... (Score:4, Informative)
Settings->General->Network
Where it says, "Enable 3G" slide the switch to "Off"
Problem solved.
Re:one key iphone advantage (Score:3, Informative)
I love generalizations.
In the first place, Android apps are not Java apps. They are compiled to a different byte-code and run on a different VM, which is Android-specific.
Yours is the typical VM FUD. If it's a VM, it MUST be slower, right guys? Please. Look what native code has gotten the iPhone: no multi-tasking for custom apps, no garbage collection, developers saddled to an antiquated language (ObjectiveC). These things can be worked around, and there are lots of great iPhone apps, but native-code is not everything it's cracked up to be.
VM's are a GOOD thing, and the Android implementation is excellent. The system-wide event model is outstanding, allowing one to write apps that stay running, and do things, say, when you change locations (your physical location), flip the phone upside down, run too fast, receive a phone call, etc. The VM has made all of this much easier to accomplish, because the code is managed.
Re:one key iphone advantage (Score:1, Informative)
Not really. Jazelle (the hardware ARM Java bytecode accelerator) is heavily restricted by license. I doubt they could use it in the open-source Dalvik VM, and furthermore it's not particularly portable since not all ARM chips support it (and definitely not non-ARM chips).
Now the Sun J2ME/CLDC family of VMs used in many phones does support JIT translation, but Google's going with Dalvik, which as 0xdeadbeef pointed out, doesn't have a JIT yet. I'd also imagine that Android apps are a lot more demanding than your typical cell phone app.
Re:somebody read it (Score:3, Informative)
The massive irony here is that both phones use WebKit to render pages, so unless there's a *major* version difference, the rendering engine is essentially the same!
Re:The thing is still ugly (Score:3, Informative)
Just for gits and shiggles, I decided to try the same tests on my Windows XP Laptop with Netscape 56k modem, and on my Commodore 64's 2400 "baud" text-only browser:
>>>Our first test, timed by the venerable Rupert Goodwins, involved visiting eHam.net
Commodore 64 == 40 seconds
Netscape ISP == 5 seconds
G1 = 13; 3G == 24 (CNET test)
>>>this time visited CNET UK's sister site silicon.com
Commodore 64 == 100 seconds
Netscape ISP == 15 seconds
G1 == 21; Omnia == 45 (CNET test)
>>>we visited barackobama.com.
Commodore 64 == 60 seconds
Netscape ISP == 200 seconds (stupid Flash)
G1 == 45; 3G = 1:38 (CNET test)
So in most cases, the Netscape with Image Compression was faster than the Internet-capable phones, except when it had to deal with annoying Flash animations. And the ancient 1982 Commodore was about the same, so long as you don't mind doing text-only web browsing.
Man I'm bored.
Re:Dubious results (Score:3, Informative)
FYI, the most common 3G frequency is 2100MHz. Neither ATT or T-Mobile uses 2100MHz in the US market. ATT uses 850/1900 and T-Mobile uses 1700.
Both the G1 and the iPhone 3G are capable of working at 2100MHz though, which means both phones can operate on the 3G network in most of the world.
Re:The thing is still ugly (Score:2, Informative)
If course you can certainly SMS out of other iPhone apps, so at least for sending them you never need to accrue a SMS charge.
Offhand, the UL data plan is pretty competitive. Certainly it's better than Verizon's continued bullshit (which was much of why I wasn't on a Treo years before), and it seems right in line with the others. (Sprint you seem to be able to do a lot better with if you know how to get the SERO plan.)
In the end, that's pretty much the point, though. It's worth it if you plan on taking advantage of what UL data and online-access-everywhere can bring you. If THAT isn't worth the money to you, then certainly the iPhone (or just about any other smartphone) isn't worth it for you. You might as well get a regular cell phone and pick up a Touch if you want to hop on the platform, rather than cart around the data charge.
CNET's Update Negates Their Findings - Phones Same (Score:3, Informative)