EDGE vs 3G Shootout Video

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A video and blog post at AppleiPhoneInfo.de (German) pits the Apple iPhone against a Nokia E61i in web page loads. The iPhone, of course, uses the EDGE (2.5g) network while the Nokia uses a faster UMTS (3g) network.

Despite the network differences, the website load times compared between the two were not that different, demonstrating that the iPhone's rendering capabilities far exceed the Nokias.

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzETYbGEqgo

Indeed, in my own experience, in moving from the Treo 700p (EVDO) to iPhone (EDGE), I found general web browsing on the iPhone to be a subjectively faster and more pleasant experience. That being said, the iPhone coupled with a 3G network would likely be far better.

Article Link
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2007/12/11/edge-vs-3g-shootout-video/
clearly the iphone is in a league of its own. unfortunately we dont have legal ones in australia .
 
They do not seem to say what type of 3G they are using, most likely the old standard that has 365Kbps, today we have 7,2Mbps (tho 3,6Mbps i most common).

Edge has 236,8Kbps. So it seems that safari is much faster then Nokias STANDARD browser, at that location at that specific time.
 
I'm happy that you posted this. Before getting the iPhone I had a Treo700p. I went into the Apple Store and tried them side by side. Yes, the Treo would load up about 3-5 seconds faster, but the browser looked like garbage.

I agree that with a better looking layout, safari in the iPhone is more useable than the Treo or other phone's browsers. Even though other phones are faster, you can get to the information you are looking for faster on a browser that looks good.

Also, I liked how the Nokia turned off twice while loading a webpage. :rolleyes:
 
I'd like to see an iPhone EDGE vs iPhone 3G comparison where we get the iPhone to use 3G by having it connect via wifi to a laptop with a 3G network card in it.
 
iphone

and people have given apple so much crud all along when they decided to go edge and not 3g on launch date. coupled with the better battery life, i think they made the right decision
 
I agree with this. EDGE on the iPhone is significantly faster that 3G browsing ever was on my Nokia N80. In my experience, EDGE is also fast enough for YouTube video streaming - what more would you want while on the go??
 
You're kidding, right?

johncallen said:
I love that the Nokia went to sleep before the page loaded. Makes for a wonderful user experience! :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

You clearly don't have a clue, what you're talking about. The Nokia doesn't go to sleep. It actually just dims the screen, while the page is not fully loaded and there is no user interaction.

My Nokia does that all the time, when initializing a https-connection or loading a Flash-movie on the webpage. This is where it doesn't make any sense to show me a non changing screen all the time.

But, oh, it's blasphemy to talk like that about a non-Apple product.
 
swagi said:
You clearly don't have a clue, what you're talking about. The Nokia doesn't go to sleep. It actually just dims the screen, while the page is not fully loaded and there is no user interaction.

My Nokia does that all the time, when initializing a https-connection or loading a Flash-movie on the webpage. This is where it doesn't make any sense to show me a non changing screen all the time.

But, oh, it's blasphemy to talk like that about a non-Apple product.
Click to expand...

I think he was being a bit tongue-in-cheek . . . easy there killer. :rolleyes:
 
This really does not surprise me.

While most companies are desperate to label their new devices as compatible with the latest stuff out there apple took their dear sweet time making something that is highly compatible with what already exists.

I am willing to put money on saying that if the Iphone was 3g or evdo out of the box then that extra .5 would just be a huge boyah of power over that nokia.

What I am saying is with apple we wait for the next big thing and often we wait for long times but they promissed us an apple product so they wait till it comes out.

An edge iphone is right along line with other 3g phones but I bet that a 3g iphone would have pwned the Nokia contender.
 
iWizzard said:
They do not seem to say what type of 3G they are using, most likely the old standard that has 365Kbps, today we have 7,2Mbps (tho 3,6Mbps i most common).

Edge has 236,8Kbps. So it seems that safari is much faster then Nokias STANDARD browser, at that location at that specific time.
Click to expand...

Speed of the "tube" (hehe) doesn't make much of a difference when the device can't render fast enough.
 
Oh. BTW

In case nobody mentioned it: While the iPhone just loads the GIF-replacements, the Nokia fully loads the Flash banners. This at least applies to the Zeit-page and the eBay-page, as they both use Flash-banners.
 
Spanky Deluxe said:
I agree with this. EDGE on the iPhone is significantly faster that 3G browsing ever was on my Nokia N80. In my experience, EDGE is also fast enough for YouTube video streaming - what more would you want while on the go??
Click to expand...

You clearly don't understand that apple has it's own special connection with YouTube when connected via edge. The images are compressed almost to the point of not being viewable. Depending on the original quality of the clip of course. When viewing via wifi, you get the actual youtube quality. Different streams for different connections.
 
swagi said:
In case nobody mentioned it: While the iPhone just loads the GIF-replacements, the Nokia fully loads the Flash banners. This at least applies to the Zeit-page and the eBay-page, as they both use Flash-banners.
Click to expand...

Good point. Oh well, at least, for the moment, iPhone users are spared annoying flash-advertisements invading the page! I think everyone is agreed, though, the Flash is a necessary upgrade for iPhone so don't think I'm singing anything against having Flash on iPhone.

To be quite honest though, and to refer to the topic in general, I think that video illustrates how much better the overall internet experience is on the iPhone. Pages load relatively quickly and are easier to read and navigate. I agree with a previous poster that making something work smoothly and efficiently on an existing network is preferable to sacrificing other parts of the user experience for download speed. At the end of the day, I know which I'd pick.

Plenty of people prefer the overall download speed to the smoothness and easy of navigation. Fortunately, the market is rich with choices, and that trend will continue. There's something for everyone. As time goes on, we will eventually have the best of both worlds. Somehow, I see that happening on iPhone first . . . but that's just me.
 
slicecom said:
Both are painfully slow. I bet a 3G iPhone would be incredibly fast.
Click to expand...
True: a 3G iPhone would probably be incredibly fast and those complaining before about how slow Generation 1 was will be complaining about how fast the battery life is drained. It boggles me that Apple can make such great stuff and many people are so glass-half-empty about it.
 
The battery argument is wrong for chips of the newest generation. I was very interested in how bad UMTS really is and looked up some data.

The best data I could find was from sonyericsson. For example the W660i and v640i. http://developer.sonyericsson.com/getDocument.do?docId=98880

Standby time GSM 350 vs UMTS 378 for V640i. 395/395 for W660i.
The talk time is quite clear though 10/4.9 hrs and 9/3 hrs.

Here for W950 and M600 (released earlier this year).http://developer.sonyericsson.com/getDocument.do?docId=91509
Standby GSM/UMTS 340/250
Talk time GSM/UMTS 7.5/2.5

This means that from a data point of view the energy consumption would not be so bad. While for telephony you can always use GSM. And you can clearly see that the standby consumption has been dramatically improved. I was very surprised to see that there are actually phones that have a longer standby time with UTMS than GSM.
Other than that, the Safari on the iPhone is simply amazing in usability and speed.
 
iWizzard said:
They do not seem to say what type of 3G they are using, most likely the old standard that has 365Kbps, today we have 7,2Mbps (tho 3,6Mbps i most common).

Edge has 236,8Kbps. So it seems that safari is much faster then Nokias STANDARD browser, at that location at that specific time.
Click to expand...

Ah, in denial.
 
While 3G speeds would be great, I think I would be happy if I could just get speeds closer to the EDGE maximum. In practice, at least here in the Twin Cities, I'm lucky to get 100 kbps, and often just loading something like wikipedia's main page can take several minutes!

My only hope is enough well-connected people get iPhones to convince AT&T to fix the problem...
 
I have an iPhone and from that video both phones seem awfully slow. I see much faster webpage load times in real world conditions with my phone (sometimes it is that slow but on average it is much quicker) even when I only have a couple bars of service.
 
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