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How many 3G bars do you get? What is your download speed?

S

shinenjk

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 23, 2008
202
1
Boston, MA
I ask this because I noticed in some posts how people claim they get full 5 bars of 3G but with download speeds of under 1000kbps which doesn't correlate with my # of 3G bars & speed. So I want to compare the results from around the world to see what the general speed range is for each bar.

I just did two speed tests using www.testmyiphone.com sitting in my room:

With 1 bar I get 1350kbps.

With 2 bars I get 2000kbps.

Post your results!
 
I haven't found any way to correlate the number of bars to my download speed. With 1-2 bars, I can get anywhere from 450k to 1300k, if I do several tests from the same location within a couple of minutes. When I get 4-5 bars, I get the same wildly-different results, so there seems to be no observable difference in speed based on the number of bars shown.

In the past 15 minutes, or so, I did a few checks and found I'm getting about 1250-1350 kbps and I'm only showing zero to 1 bar of strength from my current position.
 
Can somebody in NYC area tell me what type of 3G download speeds they are getting. I see all these posts of well over 1000 kbps speeds but I have never come close to that number. Thanks.
 
NYC here. In general I get crappy speeds, particularly downtown/East Village. I dont think i've ever broken 500 kbps in the East Village where I live, but typically am in the 100-250 kbps range and I test all the time on testmyiphone.com. Lots of times my phone drops back to edge as well.

Uptown, on the upper east side at my girlfriend's place, I test both my phone and my GF's phone (we both got 3g's at the same time), and we get anywhere from 400-600 kbps - pretty consistently in that range.

Strangely, at my office in midtown (34th and Park), when I'm actually INSIDE my office on the 6th floor, I get excellent speeds, consistently over 1 mbps, usually around 1.2-1.5 mbps. But strangely as soon as I go down to street level, i'm back into the 400-500 kbps range.

This weekend I tested at a restaurant at 22nd and Park, and i got 1.2-1.5 mbps.

So the bottom line, it seems like I get better speeds in midtown, but upper east and downtown/east village, the signal is generally crappy.
 
randymac88 said:
NYC here. In general I get crappy speeds, particularly downtown/East Village. I dont think i've ever broken 500 kbps in the East Village where I live, but typically am in the 100-250 kbps range and I test all the time on testmyiphone.com. Lots of times my phone drops back to edge as well.

Uptown, on the upper east side at my girlfriend's place, I test both my phone and my GF's phone (we both got 3g's at the same time), and we get anywhere from 400-600 kbps - pretty consistently in that range.

Strangely, at my office in midtown (34th and Park), when I'm actually INSIDE my office on the 6th floor, I get excellent speeds, consistently over 1 mbps, usually around 1.2-1.5 mbps. But strangely as soon as I go down to street level, i'm back into the 400-500 kbps range.

This weekend I tested at a restaurant at 22nd and Park, and i got 1.2-1.5 mbps.

So the bottom line, it seems like I get better speeds in midtown, but upper east and downtown/east village, the signal is generally crappy.
Click to expand...

I work in Tribeca and live in Murray Hill. Always around 200-500 kbps. Wish I was getting some of the speeds others on this forum have been getting.
 
In my office, 42nd @ Grand Central:

5 bars 3G - 221 kbps
5 bars Edge - 215 kbps

That's a bit pathetic, no?
 
With one bar of 3G I get around 700-800kbps and with 5 bars I get around 1300kbps.

With 3-5 bars of EDGE I get around 150-300kbps.
 
just tested my wifi on it and are the servers in the us as they are wrong from UK iphoner's
 
Downtown Denver, inside building:

Edge - 5 bars - 215 Kbps / 26 kB/s (transferred 256 KB in 9.8 sec)

3G - 5 bars - 1255 Kbps / 153 kB/s (transferred 1536 KB in 10.0 sec)

wifi - strong signal - 1307 Kbps / 160 kB/s (transferred 3328 KB in 20.9 sec)

I'm not so sure about the accuracy of this test. Just ran the 3G test a few more times, ranged from 855 Kbps to 1621 Kbps.
 
fastbite said:
one? Just bloody one bar! Biut it works fine so I don't get it.:confused:
Click to expand...

Yea this is why I started this thread but I sort of get it now. Would it be a good analogy to compare 3G bars & download speeds to a wireless connection running on cable internet?

From my experience with using wireless, it doesn't matter if I have 1 bar or 5 bars. I still get the same speed. Except that with 1 bar, the connection isn't as reliable as having 5 bars. So with 3G, I'm assuming it's the same thing? Basically, I'm saying the # of bars = how stable/reliable the connection is and it has nothing to do with speed. It seems like the normal range of speed is ~1000kbps to ~1500kbps regardless of the # of 3G bars looking at people's posts.
 
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