A peculiar download speed situation

[ReuvenNY]

Last weekend while visiting a Radio Shack store, I compared my Inspire 4G to the clerk's AT&T Samsung Captivate. When comparing download speeds with speedtest.net app, her speed was about 1.6 Mbps and my Inspire's 0.8Mbps - virtually half her Samsung's phone.

We were at the same location, testing at the same time. Needless to say, I was puzzled and very unhappy...

Is it the HTC Inspire 4G?

Is it something to do with my phone?

Was it just some anomaly?

Does any one have any thoughts?

 

[Silas0220]

I vote it's the speedtest.net app. People use it to compare things all the time, but I say it's inaccurate and inconsistent. I've run a tests with my brother standing right next to me, on his Inspire 4g, and gotten wildly different results. Heck, you can run the test 4 times and get 4 different results. I don't even bother with the thing anymore. If speeds during my normal usage seem to be what I want them to be, I'm happy. If not, I'm not.

 

[pazzo02]

I somewhat agree. If you want to do a side by side comparison, you should run speetest 3 times in a row on each device. If you get similar results, it's a pretty good indicator. Also make sure the servers are the same. I've seen wildly different results from the same place on different servers within one minute.

 

[ReuvenNY]

I somewhat agree. If you want to do a side by side comparison, you should run speetest 3 times in a row on each device. If you get similar results, it's a pretty good indicator. Also make sure the servers are the same. I've seen wildly different results from the same place on different servers within one minute.

Well, indeed we did several test, all from the same server in the NY area (less than 50 miles away). There was a consistent difference in download speed.

 

[pazzo02]

There was a consistent difference in download speed.

That is disheartening, then. I regularly use the speedtest app form different locations and usually see between 1.5 and 3 megs. I suggest you keep trying in different areas and if you continue to see speeds below 1 meg, question AT&T about it.

 

[ReuvenNY]

I was not so much concerned with the speed - it's the difference in download speed between the Inspire and the Captivate at the same time and location!