HPSA+ vs. iPhone 4S in San Francisco

**netarc** · 10-16-2011, 05:48 AM

Have had my Galaxy S2 (ATT variant) for a couple of days now, and so far have been mighty impressed w/both the phone and the Droid OS (I've been using an iPhone 3GS until now).

If I understand correctly, this phone is an HSPA+ device while the recently released iPhone 4S is an HSDPA (slower?) device? Well my wife picked up a 4S (also on ATT) today, so I was eager to compare the network speeds head-to-head.

I ran a series of tests using both phones' native speedtest app (w/both in similar config: unplugged, wifi OFF, and app set to run test off the same server, in this case SF).

I was stunned & dismayed to find that the 4S *trounced* my S2!?! Over a series of 5 trials, the 4S averaged 4MB/s down, 1MB up; my S2 came up with 2.5MB/s down, 1MB up.

I retried the tests pointing to different servers (Palo Alto, Auburn), but in each case the 4S continued to outpace the S2 on download speeds.

Would appreciate any thoughts re: what's going on with this - I can't reason why the phone w/the supposedly faster cell data connection has ~60% of the 'slower' phone's download speed!

2nd part of my question is - I'm told that AT&T will be releasing their version of LTE in the SF Bay Area come Nov 2011 ... when this happens, will the HSPA+ S2 be able to take full advantage of the new network's speed, and what kind of real-world down/up speeds can one expect on the net network?

**dwaynewilliams#WN** · 10-16-2011, 07:12 AM

The iPhone has better radios than Samsung phones. The iPhone 4S is also capable of 14 mbs download speeds.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

**Dramer77** · 10-16-2011, 07:45 AM

I think there is something up with the speedtest.net app for android.. try using the web browser and go to speakeasy.net i get much more consistant speed with that..

**dayzrulz** · 10-16-2011, 08:10 AM

Originally Posted by Dramer77

I think there is something up with the speedtest.net app for android.. try using the web browser and go to speakeasy.net i get much more consistant speed with that..

I agree just used the speak easy test for 5 separate cities and got 5.5mb down consistently while I could not get over 3.4mb with the speestest apparently. So it does seem like something is not right.

**BugDad25** · 10-16-2011, 08:24 AM

Using speedtest.net in Orlando and hitting various servers I have had hits as high as 6.75 and a few below 1 Mbps down. Average is about 4Mbps down. Up is almost always VERY close to 1Mbps.

The radio in my phone appears capable of very respectable down speeds, difference is external signal over time.I can get very fast and very slow within minutes and even seconds of each other.

I also tried speakeasy and it did generally get higher speed than speedtest but I still got a lot of variation between tests.

**shansmi** · 10-16-2011, 08:46 AM

i have topped 14mbps down with this device. it is capable of 21/7...

**netarc** · 10-16-2011, 10:33 AM

Thanks I'll give speak easy a try; won't be able trip do an apples 2 soles comparison with the iPhone though, but worth comparing the results to the Speedtest app.

**bish0p34** · 10-16-2011, 12:55 PM

Originally Posted by dwaynewilliams

The iPhone has better radios than Samsung phones. The iPhone 4S is also capable of 14 mbs download speeds.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Having an iPhone 4 and a SGS Captivate, I can say this is not true in my experience. While I love both phones, the iPhone drops more calls and loses service far more than the Samsung. Also on speedtest, the iPhone gets beaten by the Captivate 9 out of 10 times I run it.

I'm not quoting for the newest models, only the last ones.

**dmnall** · 10-16-2011, 06:35 PM

Originally Posted by bish0p34

Having an iPhone 4 and a SGS Captivate, I can say this is not true in my experience. While I love both phones, the iPhone drops more calls and loses service far more than the Samsung. Also on speedtest, the iPhone gets beaten by the Captivate 9 out of 10 times I run it.

I'm not quoting for the newest models, only the last ones.

That is pretty sad the captivate in stock form was non hsupa *1 MB upload speeds* while the iPhone should hit faster upload speeds but the download speeds are not surprising I did hit 6 mbps on the captivate one night. I will agree the speedtest.net App shows the sgs2 at equal as the captivate running i9000 radios for both download and upload speeds but the speakeasy speed test I have hit close to 7 mbps speeds and 1 mbps upload speeds

Hth,
Charlie

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using Tapatalk

**Droid800** · 10-16-2011, 07:04 PM

Originally Posted by bish0p34

Having an iPhone 4 and a SGS Captivate, I can say this is not true in my experience. While I love both phones, the iPhone drops more calls and loses service far more than the Samsung. Also on speedtest, the iPhone gets beaten by the Captivate 9 out of 10 times I run it.

I'm not quoting for the newest models, only the last ones.

That's not the radios, that's the 4s antenna. (which was fixed in the 4S) The 4S also has a Qualcomm chipset, which is better than anything Samsung can put out.

**netarc** · 10-16-2011, 08:38 PM

So I ran several iterations of the Speedtest.net test on the galaxy s 2 in cell only mode; unfortunately I continue to see speeds in the range of 3MB/s, max I saw was 3.25MB.

Is anyone on this thread seeing faster speeds in SF, specifically?

**lilo777** · 10-16-2011, 10:00 PM

Originally Posted by netarc

Have had my Galaxy S2 (ATT variant) for a couple of days now, and so far have been mighty impressed w/both the phone and the Droid OS (I've been using an iPhone 3GS until now).

If I understand correctly, this phone is an HSPA+ device while the recently released iPhone 4S is an HSDPA (slower?) device? Well my wife picked up a 4S (also on ATT) today, so I was eager to compare the network speeds head-to-head.

I ran a series of tests using both phones' native speedtest app (w/both in similar config: unplugged, wifi OFF, and app set to run test off the same server, in this case SF).

I was stunned & dismayed to find that the 4S *trounced* my S2!?! Over a series of 5 trials, the 4S averaged 4MB/s down, 1MB up; my S2 came up with 2.5MB/s down, 1MB up.

I retried the tests pointing to different servers (Palo Alto, Auburn), but in each case the 4S continued to outpace the S2 on download speeds.

Would appreciate any thoughts re: what's going on with this - I can't reason why the phone w/the supposedly faster cell data connection has ~60% of the 'slower' phone's download speed!

2nd part of my question is - I'm told that AT&T will be releasing their version of LTE in the SF Bay Area come Nov 2011 ... when this happens, will the HSPA+ S2 be able to take full advantage of the new network's speed, and what kind of real-world down/up speeds can one expect on the net network?

While SGS2 does support faster download speeds it's mostly irrelevant since AT&T hardware in US does not support anything close to 14Mbps. If i did SGS2 would have the advantage. As far as your specific tests are concerned - it's hard to say. Try different speed test apps or simply downloading large files from some fast servers.

SGS2 will not take advantage of LTE.

**erwaso** · 10-18-2011, 01:08 PM

The t mobile sg2 was hitting 14mbps download constantly with a spike of 20 once at a Costco here in Denver. Same as my Co workers Samsung charge and t bolt.

Is the att version not hitting the same?

**netarc** · 10-18-2011, 02:31 PM

I had thought the SG2 is an HSPA+ device, and as such should be able to support a theoretical maximum speed of ~21MB/s (translating to real-world of 7-10MB/s?), once the AT&T network supports it in one's area, natch. I believe that in SF the AT&T network has been upgraded with "enhanced backhaul", which should then allow for full HSPA+ speeds. Is either of the above not the case?

fwiw, in my phone's SETTINGS > About Phone > Status, I see that Mobile Network Type varies between HSPA and UMTS, though once I thought I saw it read HSDPA

**netarc** · 10-18-2011, 02:40 PM

some useful info hre, btw, esp the 2nd table

EDGE
236.8 kbps (Type 1 MS) to 1894 kbps (Type 2 MS)
HSPA
14400 kbps down / 5760 kbps up
HSPA+
42000 kbps down / 11500 kbps up
LTE
173000 kbps down / 58,000 kbps up

**netarc** · 10-18-2011, 02:42 PM

also check out

**netarc** · 10-23-2011, 02:20 AM

fwiw, thought I'd share some more info from my testing over the last few days.

I have confirmed that Ookla's Android-native "Speedtest" app gives consistently slower results than the speakeasy.net/speedtest website, so have been using the speakeasy website to conduct all tests. It generally reports 2-3Mbps download at least, although I've seen as high as 10Mbps. The throughput results seem very location dependent ... at my house I generally only see 2 down, but at my bud's place only a mile away I got a stunning 9-10Mbps, and in downtown SF I saw a surprising 6-7Mpbs!?!

Speeds seems like it may also be time-dependent, since once when I happened to be up working late ~3am, several trial runs gave 6Mbps down, fastest I'd seen at my place!

**shansmi** · 10-23-2011, 02:58 PM

it also depends on what servers you are hitting. I usually get the best results from the one in Atlanta.

**Kevin O'Quinn** · 10-23-2011, 03:34 PM

Just did these two tests back to back and the results were close enough to call it a wash. Ymmv

Sent from my SGS II

**netarc** · 10-23-2011, 05:37 PM

Naturally, I've been conducting ask my trials against the same server, in my case SF

**netarc** · 11-02-2011, 03:07 PM

fwiw, I found that the West Portal neighborhood of SF has some stellar speeds...

The odd thing is that I live just 1.5 miles up the hill from here, and in my neighborhood the max I've ever gottn is ~2Mbps down ... that's a heck of a lot of variance for <2 miles distance?!?

**netarc** · 11-02-2011, 03:08 PM

Didn't get any responses in the thread I started, but does anyone here know the answer to this?

I understand that ATT's 3G network in the SF Bay Area is now HSPA+, but from what I've read apparently the effect on phone speed is negligible unless the "enhanced backhaul" feature is also enabled. Does anyone know whether this has been done yet for the SF area, and if not has ATT released a roadmap of when this work will be performed?

Specifically, I'm wondering whether the 2-5Mbps range of download speeds I'm seeing on my S2 (wildly varies depending upon where in the city one is) are the max this phone will ever see, or whether it's conceivably the phone my be able to achieve 10Mbps+ once the network supports it?