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9.7 Pro LTE Speeds....hold onto something

T

TheRealAlex

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Sep 2, 2015
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Now I watched the 9.7 Keynote last week and heard that the 9.7 had a newer LTE Radio chip than the 12.9 that really peaked my interests. I have included a screenshot from my 9.7 Pro taken today. Many here have faster WiFi speeds so no boasting on my part, simply expressing how impressed I am. That these are LTE speeds.

I am on Sprint LTE. Please note I did crop the image to obscure my Latitude and Longitude. Just sayin.

image.jpeg
 
Just be glad Sprint's towers aren't congested in your area yet.

I seem to recall seeing speeds even faster than that on earlier iPhone models, though. Pretty sure there's a thread here somewhere.
 
Getting speeds like this everywhere in your area would be very nice. On att LTE I see a few spots where I am at 40-50 Mbps. But realistically in the city and congested areas outside of Philly 12-20 Mbps is more the average day to day. Enjoy your iPad!
 
rui no onna said:
Just be glad Sprint's towers aren't congested in your area yet.

I seem to recall seeing speeds even faster than that on earlier iPhone models, though. Pretty sure there's a thread here somewhere.
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Even faster really ? I know maybe uploads sure.
 
I just got a 6s which uses the same Qualcomm LTE chip and I pulled down 115mbps and 50 on the up. Very impressive! That was on ATT in Boise.
 
I tried T-Mobile a few months ago on my iPhone 5s and hit almost 90 down multiple times. I probably would have gotten even faster speeds with a newer phone. I think my iPhone was the bottleneck. I'm not sure if it could get any faster.
 
Channan said:
I tried T-Mobile a few months ago on my iPhone 5s and hit almost 90 down multiple times. I probably would have gotten even faster speeds with a newer phone. I think my iPhone was the bottleneck. I'm not sure if it could get any faster.
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iPhone was likely a bottleneck, it depends on the type of network in your area. Carrier Aggregation isn't enabled everywhere, even if multiple bands are being broadcasted in the same area. the iPhone 6S and 6S plus support band 12 and 3x Carrier Aggregation (LTE Advanced), so it can use band 2, 4, and 12 at the same time for much better speeds on T-Mobile. I believe iPhone 6S supports LTE Advanced up to 300mbps while the 5S has no LTE Advanced.
 
XTheLancerX said:
iPhone was likely a bottleneck, it depends on the type of network in your area. Carrier Aggregation isn't enabled everywhere, even if multiple bands are being broadcasted in the same area. the iPhone 6S and 6S plus support band 12 and 3x Carrier Aggregation (LTE Advanced), so it can use band 2, 4, and 12 at the same time for much better speeds on T-Mobile. I believe iPhone 6S supports LTE Advanced up to 300mbps while the 5S has no LTE Advanced.
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Yeah I'm sure it was. I want to say the iPhone 5s tops out at 100Mbps, which you'd never see that exact amount, but I wasn't sure so I said I think it was the bottleneck.
 
Channan said:
Yeah I'm sure it was. I want to say the iPhone 5s tops out at 100Mbps, which you'd never see that exact amount, but I wasn't sure so I said I think it was the bottleneck.
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I believe it tops out at 150Mbps. A single band 4 LTE network with a 20x20mhz bandwidth has a theoretical max of around 150Mbps I believe, though one will rarely if ever see the theoretical max like you said.

The iPhone 5S can only use one LTE band at a time because of the lack of LTE Advanced (carrier aggregation). The best *single* LTE band would be band 2 or 4 with a 20x20Mhz bandwidth, 20x20Mhz is the maximum bandwidth being used for LTE, not sure if more is even possible on a single band anyway. So yeah, that's where the 150Mbps limit comes in. The only time more bandwidth is possible is when multiple bands are being used at once by the phone (carrier aggregation), allowing for higher throughput. So like a 2/4/12 carrier aggregation setup would have a 35x35Mhz bandwidth. Lets say it was a 10x10Mhz config of band 2, 20x20Mhz config of band 4, and band 12 is always 5x5Mhz. It would be 10+20+5 so total capacity 35x35Mhz.

I don't know why I'm going into the details but yeah lol. I think this stuff is pretty neat, in Staten Island, someone broke 200mbps on AT&T with an iPhone 6S because of carrier aggregation! Best offer for home internet for me is 50mbps down and 5 up, but I only get the package with 15/1 speeds... Cellular technology is really getting nuts. I live in a tiny town of 900 and I get 40mbps down and 10mbps up via LTE, only 15 down and 1 up with home internet on the other hand. One can argue that deploying cell sites is cheaper per customer than running lines directly into tons of people's homes but still. Sorry I'm rambling.
 
Nhwhazup said:
In NH there are Kant times when my ATT is faster than my wifi.
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Verizon is ALWAYS faster than my wifi as well. Almost triple the download speeds and ten times faster upload speeds. 15/1 for Internet, 40/10 for LTE and I live way out in the sticks so.. Impressive on Verizon's part.
 
TheRealAlex said:
Now I watched the 9.7 Keynote last week and heard that the 9.7 had a newer LTE Radio chip than the 12.9 that really peaked my interests. I have included a screenshot from my 9.7 Pro taken today. Many here have faster WiFi speeds so no boasting on my part, simply expressing how impressed I am. That these are LTE speeds.

I am on Sprint LTE. Please note I did crop the image to obscure my Latitude and Longitude. Just sayin.

View attachment 625281
Click to expand...
Wow, that's slow.
 
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