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Compared my 1st Gen to my friend's new 3g and...

S

Slip Jigs

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 18, 2008
698
2
...it's a tie!

First, it wasn't a comprehensive comparison - I only looked at two important features.

1. We both typed in a website URL, and hit GO at the same time. Mine loaded faster two out of three times, the third time it was pretty much a tie. He was on the 3G network with 3 bars, me on Edge with all bars. Can the signal strength affect it that much?

2. Compared various screens and photos, both phones were set at the next-to-highest brightness level. The 3G had a sharper and crisper look on all tests and the colors were more accurate. My phone pushed the magenta a little too much, that I never noticed until the comparison.

What are others' experiences with these two aspects of the phones?
 
im sorry... but i held my original one up against a 3G.

the 3G loaded wayyyyyyyyy faster every time.

now I have a 3G. yay for me :)
 
d wade said:
im sorry... but i held my original one up against a 3G.

the 3G loaded wayyyyyyyyy faster every time.

now I have a 3G. yay for me :)
Click to expand...

I wonder what was up with that phone - do you think it was the signal or perhaps just a slow time on the network?
 
no idea. i'm sure there are plenty of reasons. i just know that i wasnt sure i was gonna get the 3G until i did the speed test. thats what finally sold me.
 
I compared mine to my friends 3g and his only loaded a little bit quicker. so I am perfectly content with my first gen until the new 3rd gen? gets released.
 
The 3G speed is only useful for complex sites. You won't see a substantial difference loading Google.

Also, Safari's (admittedly poor) caching may be responsible for irking the test results.
 
How are you comparing an iPhone 3G and old iPhone based on a load time of 1 website and screen.....
 
3G is such a disappointment so far on the iPhone in the US. I'm glad the two times I went to pick one up they were sold out for the day.

I really hope AT&T can fix their network. It's embarrassingly slow.
 
nickspohn said:
How are you comparing an iPhone 3G and old iPhone based on a load time of 1 website and screen.....
Click to expand...

Sorry if I wasn't entirely clear - we used three seperate sites, fairly complex and ones that neither of us had visited so they woulnd't be cached.

One thing I did notice, was that his loading bar was always ahead of mine, bit I was watching when the page actually loaded. So to be fair, even in the cases where my page loaded first, his probably still finished loaded sooner - hope that makes sense.
 
It really depend on how many phones are using the particular tower, so all of them share the bandwidth. That was why his 3G was slow, where others are faster
 
Slip Jigs said:
...it's a tie!

First, it wasn't a comprehensive comparison - I only looked at two important features.

1. We both typed in a website URL, and hit GO at the same time. Mine loaded faster two out of three times, the third time it was pretty much a tie. He was on the 3G network with 3 bars, me on Edge with all bars. Can the signal strength affect it that much?

2. Compared various screens and photos, both phones were set at the next-to-highest brightness level. The 3G had a sharper and crisper look on all tests and the colors were more accurate. My phone pushed the magenta a little too much, that I never noticed until the comparison.

What are others' experiences with these two aspects of the phones?
Click to expand...

I had a comparable experience using my old iPhone and testing it against 10 or so 3G phones at the Apple Store in Boston. Sometimes 3G was faster, sometimes the same, sometimes actually slower. It was all over the place.
I think it may have to do with how many are banging away at each particular network. In any case it was hardly a slam dunk for the 3G phone apart from the screen, which is demonstrably superior and just plain gorgeous. I'm actually surprised more reviewers haven't talked about how much brighter clearer and all-around better the new 3G screen is.

But not enough to get me to switch -- yet! I think I'm holding out for a higher capacity 3G phone -- say 32gigs. Maybe that will be on the docket for September??
 
To be completely honest, the fact that your phone was faster 2 out of the 3 times means absolutely nothing.

If you look at it from a statistical point of view, you cannot say much at all. What you should do is perform a statistical analysis... visit something like 100 websites of all different sorts, lots of pics, texts etc. Gather it all up, then crunch the numbers using some sort of statistical test.

Its equivalent to flipping a coin 3 times and two out of the three times its heads and the other time its tails. Does that mean the coin is biased towards heads? Obviously not, we cannot say much about the coin until we perform alot of tests and crunch the numbers.

Here is a fact: 3G is quicker than EDGE on average.
 
I compared my 3G iPhone to someone's edge iPhone in the movie theater on sunday when we were waiting for "the dark knight" to start.

We both went to youtube, and selected the same video at the same time.

My phone was playing the video while his was still doing the initial buffering. His load progress bar had gone a bit more than the length of the "Done" button and at that point mine was already fully loaded through to the end of the video.

From my testing, the 3G iPhone is much faster.
 
profetto said:
To be completely honest, the fact that your phone was faster 2 out of the 3 times means absolutely nothing.

Here is a fact: 3G is quicker than EDGE on average.
Click to expand...

I was believing all the 3G hype about it being twice as fast, but after reading this post, i see that the truth is that most of the time the speed of the two will be fairly close. Probably not enough difference to warrant an upgrade on speed alone. Well, that's marketing for you. It's all hype 99% of the time. Now is that an exageration? Luckily the 3G is my first i-phone, but probably not my last. This thing is awesome.:D
 
Slip Jigs said:
...it's a tie!

First, it wasn't a comprehensive comparison - I only looked at two important features.

1. We both typed in a website URL, and hit GO at the same time. Mine loaded faster two out of three times, the third time it was pretty much a tie. He was on the 3G network with 3 bars, me on Edge with all bars. Can the signal strength affect it that much?

2. Compared various screens and photos, both phones were set at the next-to-highest brightness level. The 3G had a sharper and crisper look on all tests and the colors were more accurate. My phone pushed the magenta a little too much, that I never noticed until the comparison.

What are others' experiences with these two aspects of the phones?
Click to expand...

I know this may sound silly, but did you have wifi turned on?
 
well I have been using 3g network for the pandora app and it sounds crytal clear with only one bar.... But when I switch to edge with five bars the sound is choppy choppy :/ overall my 3g at five bars load as quickly as my wifi
 
ChazUK said:
http://i.dslr.net/tinyspeedtest.html

Try this speedtest on each phone. I see a massive difference when I turn 3G on or off.

Browsing with 3G off is like night and day for me, but this is on O2 UK's 3G Network.
Click to expand...

okay so with this test i got

wifi 2467 kbps

edge with five bars 158kbps

and 3g with 4 bars 973kbps and with two bars i got 822kbps and with location serivces on and 3g with two bards 987kbps..... are these test sites right
 
Ok, i've just tried the above speed test and these are the results (O2 UK);

EDGE (5 Bars) - 121kbps
3G (5 Bars) - 1468kbps
WiFi - 2112kbps

That seems pretty impressive, although i've done a few more tests wit the 3G and i'm getting roughly between 1100 and 1700kbps.

Im happy with that! :D
 
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