My first time in a 4G market - un-freakin-believable!

[Sokar]

Not the speed.

The battery!

I wasn't happy at all with battery performance in my 3G hometown of Augusta, Georgia, but Monday, I traveled to Denver via Atlanta, and it's hard to believe just how bad the battery is now. 5-6 hours max since I finally landed in Denver. I have to keep my charger on me at all times. The phone gets hot and you can just watch the battery meter going down. And that is with very low usage since I'm at work. I don't have alot of time to play with it.

And I'm not incredibly impressed with performance either. Speedtest got 12.4 and 15.8 download and 4.5 and 3.4 upload respectedly (two tests) while in Atlanta. You guys in Denver are sucking wind. I've tested several times since I've been here and got pretty consistant resutls. About 3.3 to 3.6 download and 2.2 or 2.4 upload (tested just now).

What's up with that?

It's a far cry from some of the crazy numbers I've been seeing here. Has there been some fanboi fudging going on?

 

[fatboy97]

So, just another general gripe fest statement... color me not impressed.

 

[Chrisy]

I'm sure battery life is worse on 4G. But when I got to try it I loved the speed! I have an extended battery so I'll get around 10 hours usig device in a 4G area. That's ok with me.

 

[Mordecaidrake]

Battery life is no different for me on 3g or 4g.

 

[PJnc284]

It's a far cry from some of the crazy numbers I've been seeing here. Has there been some fanboi fudging going on?

It's more likely the areas are finally getting saturated with LTE devices. Those crazy 30-40Mbps are likely gone or will be gone in most areas in the near future. Verizon's promise of 5-12 down and 2-5 up is still a heck of a lot better than 3G but even that will probably vary based on location.

 

[VideoEngineerAJS]

Um... no... I've been shooting straight with everything that I've said. At home I don't get the crazy numbers so I keep my phone on Wifi since I have 20Mbps cable at home. At work I honestly get 25Mbps downloads almost constantly and as I've said just outside my office I got 44.79Mbps two times in a row. Upload speeds are very sporadic I've noticed. Sometimes I can get 15Mbps but most of the time uploads are between 4 and 8 Mbps.

Battery, I'm a little more uptight about my battery level than probably most people, but I could easily go 12 hours with moderate to heavy usage on LTE.

 

[wreckz]

Are you serious good to know thanks...

 

[the one and only M]

Battery life is no different for me on 3g or 4g.

Same here. With the right rom it's decent to really good on 3G/4G.

 

[mclarryjr]

Mine are real close but I think that 4G uses a little more juice then the 3G but still very close.

 

[rcpa]

5-6 hours max since I finally landed in Denver. I have to keep my charger on me at all times. The phone gets hot and you can just watch the battery meter going down. And that is with very low usage since I'm at work. I don't have alot of time to play with it.

You must have a rogue app or something, or maybe have WiFi turned on. I work in a 4G area and I average 5-6% an hour with moderate usage. And that's with my work email set for push. I usually have 45-50% left after about 10 hours at the office with about 45 minutes of display time. If I'm listening to podcasts all day with my stereo bluetooth headset, I'm usually around 30% at the end of work unless I charged it during the day.

Every once in a while I discover after a couple of hours at work that my phone is hot and has burned through 30-40% of the battery. But on every one of those occasions, I've discovered that I left the WiFi on and it was hunting for a signal. As soon as I turn off the WiFi, the battery drain settles down to it's normal usage.

 

[prakash99]

I don't care if I have to carry three spare batteries with me, I just want VZW to turn LTE on in my area... The nearest LTE is like 35 miles from me....

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[vel7wil]

I've been lucky I guess then,,,I've lived and worked in a 4g market since launch date and I get not only good batteruy usage but great 4g service. I would gladly take a litte extra battery usage over to extra slow 3g connection.

 

[FrankXS]

I live in Denver. Denver is a very mountainous region (surprise! ) and for that reason it is a very bad signal environment regarding the "line-of-sight" RF signal requirements. While flat regions can get a good signal from a tower shooting it from 5 miles away, in the Denver area you generally need to be much closer, because there are almost always hills in between.

Additionally, VZW knows that in a flat area they can really benefit from those tall-as-heII cell towers shooting signals for miles and miles, but in Denver that doesn't work. So they put smaller, lower power cell sites on top of leased-space office buildings and such.

My point? The land line maximum bandwidth available at many cell sites in Denver is no more than maybe 2-4Mbps. Therefore, that's as fast as 4G will be at that site. No matter how good your signal is.

I recently drove on a two week driving vacation totaling 5700 miles. What I noticed is that the highest speeds I ever got were on the Interstate highway. Where they have those huge mammoth cell towers shooting those long signals over relatively flat terrain. They almost certainly have mega-bandwidth piped into them via fiber along the Interstate. They are spaced about 5 miles apart for thousands and thousands of miles on the Interstate.

Here is a result of one of those tests I ran while driving...

I've never seen anything like that in Denver. For the reasons I gave (hilly terrain and antenna locations).

-Frank

 

[realitydigg]

Lets see - Land in Denver discover 4G - run speedtest, run speedtest again - near infinite loop for 4 hours. Browse every content heavy site you can think of to test 4G. Use GPS because you are in a new city. Suddenly notice the battery is draining! !!!!

In all seriousness I live in a 4G (Not Denver Area) and I do not see crazy battery drain. I was in Boston today in a convention center where i was swiching between 1X 3G and 4G depending on how much cement was between me and the towers, and i saw 40% drop in 7 hours of use. Light to moderate Email messaging and calls during that period.....

 

[FrankXS]

...depending on how much cement was between me and the towers.

Haha... exactly!

-Frank

 

[rabernet]

I'm in Atlanta, and I unplug at about 10 pm, and plug back up around 7 pm. I had worse battery life when I was in NC this past weekend in a 3G market. I also experienced my only two re-boots while in that market. I'm not rooted, and I'm on a stock battery.

 

[tcapote]

For me, in So Cal 4g, use about 10-15% battery per hour on 4g. Using LTE OnOff, switch to 3g, battery drops to 2-5% per hour. Same phone, same Apps. Wifi also provides great run time, 2-5% per hour.

4g speeds are great, but battery life blows. 3g, great battery life.

The point of the phone is to have 4g, getting old, fast.

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