4G vs. 3G vs. WiFi Throughput For Samsung's Epic 4G

MojoKid writes "Some of the most popular Android smartphones currently available are members of Samsung's Galaxy S line. Powered by Samsung's own 1GHz ARM Cortex A8-based Hummingbird processor with a four-inch Super-AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, it's no wonder Samsung has sold over 5 million Galaxy S phones. The Epic 4G variant of this phone, available through Sprint, is also one of the scant few 4G capable devices on the market currently. Sprint's 4G network utilizes WiMAX mobile broadband, with a theoretical maximum throughput of 40Mbps. Sprint claims that the average download speed on its 4G network is between 3 to 6Mbps, with peak download speeds above 10Mbps. The performance figures seen here actually show solid throughput for the Epic, besting competitive 3G devices and even versus some with a Wi-Fi connection. 4G WiMAX service is still rather limited geographically, but hopefully devices like these will help to kick the roll-out into gear a bit."

Re:iPhone 4

[Anonymous Coward]

The iphone doesn't have 4g

Re:iPhone 4

[tayhimself]

This is a Samsung Epic review, not a comparison with other phones, as far as I can tell.

Err is that why other phones are in the graphs? For a more detailed and IMO better review this page on Anandtech [anandtech.com]has wifi only comparison including the iphone 3gs and 4.

LTE

[sonicmerlin]

Clearwire is trialling an LTE network in Phoenix right now, saying it will achieve 20-70 Mbps throughput. They have the spectrum to actually achieve this too. When WiMax 2 and LTE Advanced come out, assuming enough competition exists to prevent caps from showing up, DSL companies will be put out of business. This of course is why Verizon sold its rural landlines to Frontier. They know they can come back with 700 MHz LTE, and later LTE a, and blow the pants off of slow-poke 1.5 Mbps DSL.

Re:iPhone 4

[MBCook]

Yes, but between a faster CPU and HSPUA radio, the iPhone 4 is noticeably faster 3G in supported areas. I don't know about on WiFi.

Example test [obamapacman.com]

LTE-Vented pants.

[Ostracus]

They need to economically "blow the pants off" the competition first.

Re:LTE

[Paradise Pete]

It's the Latency, Stupid [stanford.edu] was written way back in the dark ages (1996), but Stuart Cheshire's essay on latency vs. bandwidth is still a good read.

MicroCell

[The Asmodeus]

Thought I'd point out that I have an Epic and in tests I've run against iPhone's (3g, 3gs, 4g), it's been faster than them all at internet access. This went against the tests though showing the iPhone 4g was faster. Then, at the bottom of the page I saw that the iPhone's where benefiting from a 3g microcell. Talk about apples to oranges...

This article was written by people just barely technologically literate so I'll give another vote for it being written by someone's marketing department.

As for the battery life, I'm getting a solid day of usage out of mine (12-15 hours) after the last firmware update. They say they are rolling Froyo out now starting overseas so hopefully in a few weeks it'll make it here.

Re:They need a better connection for WiFi testing

[ptbarnett]

I get as high as 15 Mbits/second download from Speedtest.net on my iPhone 4

After postng, I realized that was actually the Xtreme Labs test. So, I went and downloaded the Speedtest.net application. I got nearly 20 MBits/sec download and 15 MBits/sec upload (WiFi on a 25/15 FIOS connection).