25 Jul
Not so fast, 3G
You can’t miss the slogan—it’s plastered everywhere. “Twice as fast. Half the price.” Just this daybreak, in fact, Apple posted a bunch of new ads that repeatedly drive the point pointedly about the 3G wireless speeds of the iPhone 3G as surely as grant that we were all strapped to that chair from A Clockwork Orange.
Related Phones Articles Not so fast, 3G New iPhone 3G ads tout ‘twice as fast’ AT&T income growth spurred by iPhone, mobile revenue Traveling through the iPhone 3G Securing your iPhone 2.0 Recent iPhone Central Posts Review: OmniFocus for iPhone Not so fast, 3G Torque made of game engine developed for iPhone iPhone Central home View entirely Macworld blogs
While in that place’s been no end to the dispute over the true cost of the iPhone 3G when you factor in the monthly service charges you’ll be handing over to AT&T (along with your firstborn child), less attention has been given to actual wireless data speeds of the iPhone 3Gs versus the original iPhone. Our fearless choregus, Jason Snell, did run some speed tests in the course of reviewing the iPhone 3G, we wanted to look a little further into the matter and find out if the iPhone 3G verily two times is as fast as its predecessor.
The answer? I’ll regard to say definitely maybe, if you be possible to excuse the reference to the recent Ryan Reynolds weeper. We were spurred to action by an e-mail from reader Jeff F. of the great Metro-Boston realm, who before-mentioned the speeds he was getting on his iPhone 3G were a mere shadow of those that AT&T and Apple were touting; he likewise pointed us to a MacRumors forum thread of people having similar problems. So, we decided to do a little informal testing of our own.
Since I too reside in the Bay State, I fired up my black 16GB iPhone 3G and embarrass to work running speed tests. The results were…intriguing, and also, to more length, vindicative. Those of you who listened to our recent Macworld Podcast roundtable on the iPhone 3G may recall that I was the lone defender of the EDGE netting, as well as the one who was smallest impressed by the 3G’s much-ballyhooed speed increase.
Turns abroad there’s a reason for that: while AT&T’s 3G network has very good coverage in the Metro-Boston area, according to the company’s coverage delineate, the network itself appears to suffer from what you might call “indefinite listlessness.” In fact, at times, it’s (unbelievably) downright slower than the EDGE network, if my test results are close.
After reporting my tools and materials to the Justice League that is Macworld’s crack editorial team, my colleague Jon Seff was gracious enough to spend the time to perform the same tests from Macworld’s offices in San Francisco.
This is at what place the results get even more bizarro. While San Francisco’s 3G network is apparently about 1.6 times faster than Boston’s 3G network, Boston’s EDGE speeds are about twice as fast as San Francisco’s. So while the difference between Boston’s 3G and EDGE networks does seem pretty close to the 2x include that Apple is touting (on average, anyway), San Francisco sees much better results, to the tune of 6.5 times faster.
It’s also interesting to note from our tests is that in one as well as the other Boston and San Francisco, EDGE speeds were fairly consistent, while 3G speeds seemed to show more fluctuation between individual tests.
Of course, there are any compute of caveats here: despite the fact that I ran three tests per network from i.dslr.pure, iNetworkTest, and TestMyiPhone.com, as well as using iNetwork Test’s native iPhone turning upon particulars, my phone is bound a single data point, being of the class who is Jon’s (and we each tested singly at one time and one establishing). Geo-location will clearly manifest you that we’re not even in the same neighborhood as real scientific results.
So we appeal to you, dear readers, and solicit you to share by us your own results and experiences using the 3G network. Is it really two times as fast? Faster? Slower? Let us known in the comments below.
