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AT&T has started marketing iPhone 4s as 4g device

M

milkmankilla

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 31, 2009
27
0
Ok guys so from another source I use as well as AT&T's website I can confirm that they will be calling the iPhone 4s a 4g device. I know there were rumors about this happening but I guess Apple must have ok'd it.

I think its crazy that they are allowed to call this 4g, as I have not seen any great increase in network speed.

What do you guys think about this?
 
Sprint has 4S posters on basically all their stores and markets it as a fast network with the 4S. We all know the results of that crap. So I don't see why AT&T can't market the 4S as 4G speeds. AT&T has been calling HSPA+ a 4G network for the longest. Nothing new here.
 
milkmankilla said:
I have not seen any great increase in network speed.
Click to expand...

I ran a speedtest.net test against my friends two regular iPhone 4's, one on Verizon (work) and his personal (AT&T) - Yes, he carries both...and the 4s was 2x as fast as the AT&T model and 55% faster than the Verizon 3G. 3x the upload speed vs AT&T which was surprising.

I notice the speed bump vs my old 3Gs for sure.
 
Yea I may be in an area with not so great speeds i guess. I just think its funny how they are now marketing it as a "4g" device when 4g is supposed to be way faster than 3g and the iPhone is not that much faster.
 
milkmankilla said:
Yea I may be in an area with not so great speeds i guess. I just think its funny how they are now marketing it as a "4g" device when 4g is supposed to be way faster than 3g and the iPhone is not that much faster.
Click to expand...
Keep in mind, AT&T has not deployed their HSPA+ network everywhere yet. Give this page a read and check out the covered areas. Maybe your area is not yet covered? I've seen some varying speeds with my 4S ranging from about 2-9.5mbps down depending on the area.
 
milkmankilla said:
Yea I may be in an area with not so great speeds i guess. I just think its funny how they are now marketing it as a "4g" device when 4g is supposed to be way faster than 3g and the iPhone is not that much faster.
Click to expand...


I was in ATT today and played with their 4s, speed wise not on wifi it wasn't nearly as fast as my SII. Wifi didn't help it much either. The good thing is most people don't know what speed they should be getting with 4G (3.5G on ATT), but the 4G moniker should catch peoples eyes.
 
Last edited:
milkmankilla said:
Yea I may be in an area with not so great speeds i guess. I just think its funny how they are now marketing it as a "4g" device when 4g is supposed to be way faster than 3g and the iPhone is not that much faster.
Click to expand...

Do you have AT&T's 4G service in your area? 90% of the people out there probably don't...
 
no i don't. But I don't think that would matter if I did. I thought HSPA + was different than 4g...
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

milkmankilla said:
no i don't. But I don't think that would matter if I did. I thought HSPA + was different than 4g...
Click to expand...

Umm wat
 
Yep, it's on their site as 4G.

Screen Shot 2011-10-22 at 7.15.55 PM.png
 
milkmankilla said:
no i don't. But I don't think that would matter if I did. I thought HSPA + was different than 4g...
Click to expand...

4G doesn't refer to any one type of network. Nor does 3G. It refers to the generation of network technology. While HSPA+ is technically is 3.5G, so it's older then other 3G standard, but not quite 4G. LTE and WiMax are more universally agreed upon as 4G technology, while according to international standards, current LTE and WiMax don't quite meet 4G speed requirements, but they're both marketed a 4G.

HSPA+ was market as 3G by AT&T until T Mobile started marketing their HSPA+ network as 4G because they invested into HSPA+, and because of it, won't be able to get their LTE network out nearly as quick. This way in ads T mobile can advertise 4G just like those companies with LTE network. So AT&T didn't want to be behind Sprint, Verizon and T Mobile, so they started marketing HSPA+ as 4G as well.

And in all honesty, the term 4G isn't that off for it, as the speeds in theory can be quite close to LTE/WiMax speeds, although most times LTE/WiMax will be faster in practice.

Nokia phones have 3.5G markets on them for HSPA+ network usage, which is more accurate.
 
ZBoater said:
I live in an area that is supposed to be 4G and all I get is 4Mbps down on both my iPhone and iPad.
Click to expand...


Everything is "theoretical". If the stars are aligned just right and traffic is at a minimum. I'm in Chicago and get between 4-9Mbps down on a pretty consistent basis.
 
AT&T is making a huge mistake. They are inviting a "4G" advertising war with Verizon and they will lose it compared to 4G LTE. Even though my AT&T speeds are on par with some 4G Android phones on Verizon
 
BoxerGT2.5 said:
Everything is "theoretical". If the stars are aligned just right and traffic is at a minimum. I'm in Chicago and get between 4-9Mbps down on a pretty consistent basis.
Click to expand...

4Mbps is nothing to sneeze at. I couldn't get that with Verizon 3G. With Verizon LTE I'd get over 15 Mbps. Sometimes. When the stars aligned. Rarely.

So between sporadic 15Mbps and consistent 4Mbps, I'll take consistent 4Mbps any day. And you can call it 4G. I really don't care. :rolleyes:
 
Peace said:
AT&T is making a huge mistake. They are inviting a "4G" advertising war with Verizon and they will lose it compared to 4G LTE. Even though my AT&T speeds are on par with some 4G Android phones on Verizon
Click to expand...

I'm not so sure that's true. Verizon LTE is often a lot faster than AT&T HSPA+ in the same area... but... AT&T can (and is) advertising that they have a 4G iPhone, and Verizon can't counter that. Considering it's the #1 selling phone model in the world, that's perhaps worth the possible counter of Verizon saying "Well, our Android phones are faster than theirs..."
 
ZBoater said:
I live in an area that is supposed to be 4G and all I get is 4Mbps down on both my iPhone and iPad.
Click to expand...

"All I get" he says. I'm lucky if I break 2mbps most of the time. Which I find to be total BS as its pretty much the same thing as my ip4 was. The only noticeable difference is the ping.
 
milkmankilla said:
no i don't. But I don't think that would matter if I did. I thought HSPA + was different than 4g...
Click to expand...

Well, you shouldn't be starting threads saying that you haven't seen a change in speeds then, as if the new iPhone is exactly the same as the old one and that's the problem.

Verizon offers actual LTE 4G, but if you live in an area without it would you start a thread complaining that your Android phone can't pick up the LTE?
 
I have no issue with this..... I don't care what they call it as long as my speeds are good. If it technically falls in the speed that can be called 4g, I have no problem with them marketing it as 4g speeds.
 
milkmankilla said:
I guess Apple must have ok'd it.
Click to expand...

Apple did not OK this, in fact, Apple said they are not going to debate what 4G is and what 4G is not.

AT&T wanted to add the 4G symbol on the iPhone itself next to the signal strength, just like the 3G.

I don't know if Apple denied this but I thought I read a post that said they did.
 
BoxerGT2.5 said:
Everything is "theoretical". If the stars are aligned just right and traffic is at a minimum. I'm in Chicago and get between 4-9Mbps down on a pretty consistent basis.
Click to expand...

How are you guys getting 4-9 mbps when the iPhone is able to handle a maximum of 14.4 mbit/s?

If you got 4 mbps that would be like 32 mbit/s.



And I don't understand this 4G thing, 4G is like 100 mbit/s at least in countries with actual 4G

Certain countries even provide 42 mbit/s for 3G (HSPA+) and companies are allowed to call their 14.4 or whatever 4G?
 
Smoother said:
How are you guys getting 4-9 mbps when the iPhone is able to handle a maximum of 14.4 mbit/s?

If you got 4 mbps that would be like 32 mbit/s.
Click to expand...

No. You're thinking of the difference between Mbps and MBps.

Mbps and Mbit/s is the same thing.
 
Launch weekend and Monday, my 4S was hitting 5 to 6 Mbps on downloads many times. Since then, it has trended down a bit. Ive gotten no higher than 3.65 Mbps on downloads.

Apple replaced my original 4S due to some unusual locking up. They said that happens from time to time, but I never had it happen with all the other iPhones. So I got a new one. Download speeds were slower once I did a speedtest with the replacement 4S. I thought there was a problem with the 3G speed so I went to ATT. They provided me with a new SIM and confirmed I am on the correct data plan (which I knew from checking on the app). I went to Apple today and got ANOTHER 4S, however the 3G speed seems the same. So apparently it's not the device. ATT must have done something with the network or there is just lots of new data traffic on their network.

I guess I just have to live with the speed as it is. It's not too bad I suppose.
 
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