HPSA+ vs. iPhone 4S in San Francisco

netarc

Well-known member
Oct 13, 2011
113
2
0
Visit site
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?
 

Dramer77

Well-known member
Jul 24, 2010
407
7
0
Visit site
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

New member
Oct 6, 2011
1
0
0
Visit site
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

Active member
Jul 28, 2010
44
2
0
Visit site
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.
 
Last edited:

netarc

Well-known member
Oct 13, 2011
113
2
0
Visit site
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

Active member
Feb 7, 2011
35
0
0
Visit site
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

Well-known member
Jul 17, 2010
209
7
0
Visit site
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
 
Last edited:

Droid800

Banned
Mar 31, 2010
3,627
360
0
Visit site
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

Well-known member
Oct 13, 2011
113
2
0
Visit site
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

Member
Oct 5, 2011
14
1
0
Visit site
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

Well-known member
Mar 11, 2011
2,652
18
0
Visit site
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

Well-known member
Oct 13, 2011
113
2
0
Visit site
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

Well-known member
Oct 13, 2011
113
2
0
Visit site
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!
 

Trending Posts

Forum statistics

Threads
942,398
Messages
6,913,872
Members
3,158,394
Latest member
cyari6908