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Traverse

macrumors 604
Original poster
Mar 11, 2013
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This question is actually about both the iPad Air and the iPhone 5 and later.

The iPad Air website talks about how the iPad uses multiple antennas to have Wi-Fi speeds up to twice as fast as the previous generation. Also, starting with the iPhone 5, Apple advertised faster Wi-Fi performance than the previous models.

Does this mean these devices can simply levarge faster networks, or does it mean these devices will run faster than their predecessors on the same network?

For example. I currently have an iPhone 4S and an iPad 3. One of my only grips about my iPad is slow web browsing. I realize that the processors play a part here, but I wonder if better antennas would help.

I have 11 Mbp/s WiFi at home. If I ran an iPad Air or iPhone 5S alongside my current devices would their web browsing be faster discounting processor differences?
 
Does this mean these devices can simply levarge faster networks, or does it mean these devices will run faster than their predecessors on the same network?

For example. I currently have an iPhone 4S and an iPad 3. One of my only grips about my iPad is slow web browsing. I realize that the processors play a part here, but I wonder if better antennas would help.

I have 11 Mbp/s WiFi at home. If I ran an iPad Air or iPhone 5S alongside my current devices would their web browsing be faster discounting processor differences?
It's mostly the iPad 3 processor that's slow when rendering webpages. Even the iPad 4 is a noticeable upgrade. Given both my iPad 4 and Air are faster than the 3 at rendering webpages even at 8-10Mbps LTE, I'd say it should be quite an upgrade for you even with 11Mbps wifi. I haven't used an iPhone 4S for web browsing in quite a while so can't comment on that.
 
Does this mean these devices can simply levarge faster networks, or does it mean these devices will run faster than their predecessors on the same network?

For example. I currently have an iPhone 4S and an iPad 3. One of my only grips about my iPad is slow web browsing. I realize that the processors play a part here, but I wonder if better antennas would help.

Unfortunately, the answer is "it depends". If browsing is slow when you're sitting right next to your router, then your problem is just the processing power of these devices. If you're hitting problems further away, you might benefit from the MIMO arrays in current-generation iPads.

MIMO takes advantage of how fast and cheap specialized processors have before. It uses multiple antennas at different angles and does digital signal processing to
extract the best possible signal despite interference.

It's certainly helpful, but you'll probably see better results switching to an Apple router and using an Airport Express to extend the network and give it longer reach.
 
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