2.1 Do you really have better reception/download speeds or just more bars?

[dlewis23]

Sorry about the messed up results some of you guys are getting today. I'm having a problem with our host right now and we are not sure what is going on. But they think it may be a routing issue caused by the hurricane hitting texas right now, that is causing the screwed up results.

EDIT: To fix the messed up results that some are getting I have forward all of the tests to our secondary server temporally for all users on a iPhone. This should fix all the test problems for now.

 

[otis123]

The speed seems to correlate with the 6 bars of 3G that I have.
This was a good software update.

In reality, I am observing the exact same SPEEDS that I had before. Bars represent signal strength, not speed. You can have 5 bars of EDGE or 2 bars of 3G and the 3G is going to be faster. From my own experience, the speed is the same whether I have 2 bars of 3G or 5 bars of 3G.

how do u have 6 bars? I get a max of 5

 

[Jayden0606]

how do u have 6 bars? I get a max of 5

I believe he is counting the stub. There are 6 if you count the first tiny little stub.


In a lower level apartment. I wonder what it is like on the outside...

 

[Jayden0606]

The test site has to be jacked up then...I wanted to test your theory so I just ran the "3G Test" on my original EDGE iPhone and got 352Kbps...

I believe he is correct. If you try 3g, it will tell you that they need to run the test with a larger file. The edge tests do not use larger ones. Therefore it is untrue. For webpages (going to the same site), you would then see the difference.

 

[daihard]

My 3G performance still tops at around 1.4 to 1.5 Mbps, but the 3G reception is noticeably better where it used to suck. For instance, there is this one area on the freeway where the 3G antenna used to go down to 1 or 2 bars from 5. Whenever I hit that area, the 3G network performance became unbearably slow. With 2.1, I still got 4 bars as I passed by that area. The network performance was significantly better, too.

 

[Justinerator]

I believe he is correct. If you try 3g, it will tell you that they need to run the test with a larger file. The edge tests do not use larger ones. Therefore it is untrue. For webpages (going to the same site), you would then see the difference.

Thanks for clearing that up! I thought my statement was relatively accurate, but because I didn't have my iphone with me (do now, it's just dead), I couldn't prove it.

I knew I was always right!

 

[BergerFan]

There's more consistent bars, and definitely better 3G performance.
I live in north Central London, and was getting 2-3 bars of 3G normally before 2.1.
Now I get a solid 5, and performance is superb.
Where I work in Knightsbridge, I was consistently dropping out to Edge and getting zero bars of 3G. I thought 2.1 would have solved that, but I subsequently found out, that I'm simply in a 3G coverage gap location at work, which is a bummer, but no fault of Apple's.

Everywhere else I go where 3G coverage is good, I now get stellar performance.
I just wish there was an option in the Settings to have "Wi-Fi quality visuals" on 3G, as YouTube (albeit fast), looks crap on 3G. I'd sacrifice a little speed for top quality visuals.

 

[ishopukisfake]

Hi,
Everyone is saying they are happy with the update because they now have more bars than they did before the update....but that doesn't mean that you have better reception.

They adjusted the signal strength bars...do you actually notice faster download speeds than before/better phone reception...? or are people just thinking it is better since they see more bars.....?

I am assuming the improvement in dropped calls would be because they upped the 3G bars so it didn't get into the gray area of poor 3G switching to edge issue which caused lots of dropped calls.

Looks like a genuine signal increase in strength, my internet speed is now pretty much as fast as wifi, before 3G was fast but noticeably slower

 

[SoSII]

I have 4-5 bars of 3g where i used to have 1-2. Phone works ok on 3g but safari and 3rd party apps cannot access internet (server not responding or just times out). This works fine on wifi and did work briefly after I updated but not since.

Anyone else have this issue.