iPhone uses LTE over 3G?

[Nyy8]

Oddest thing happened on my new iPhone, I was looking at bars, and saw I had a 1 bar, LTE Connection, So I thought... Strange. I look at my other iPhones (2 iP4's) and they both have 4 bars of 3G. So I disable LTE, and my phone shoots back up to 4 Bar 3G.

The question, would a phone use a 1 Bar LTE connection over a 4-5 bar 3G connection? Doesn't make sense to me. Btw, I'm on Verizon.

 

[Intell]

Modern cell phones have digital connections. It's ether on or off. There is no in between like analogue. iOS is set to default to LTE, so if it can get and hold a LTE signal, it will. Even one bar LTE is faster than 5 bar EVDO.

 

[Applejuiced]

It makes perfect sense.
Like intell said 1-2 bars of LTE is way faster than full bars 3G service.
And that's the reason you have the option in settings to disable LTE if you dont want it on at times.

 

[Nyy8]

Thanks for the responses guys! I understand now, Does it consume more battery life? If it does, I'll flip off LTE for now.

 

[HowardSmith]

Thanks for the responses guys! I understand now, Does it consume more battery life? If it does, I'll flip off LTE for now.

Are you having battery problems? I am on 1-2 bars LTE and my phone is getting excellent battery consumption. Just arrived home after taking my 5 off the charger at 3:30am and I still have 60%! This is after many phone calls, texts, emails and just plain showing my phone to others.

Not only that the speed and phone quality is the best of ANY iPhone I have ever owned.

 

[Nyy8]

Are you having battery problems?

Not Sure yet, I've had my phone the entire weekend and it's only started connecting to LTE today. But its promising to hear it does not impact battery!

 

[HowardSmith]

Not Sure yet, I've had my phone the entire weekend and it's only started connecting to LTE today. But its promising to hear it does not impact battery!

Even if it DID slightly increase battery use, it is WELL worth it. I would get voice echo and other problems but now it is all clear like it should be.

 

[CyBeRino]

Modern cell phones have digital connections. It's ether on or off. There is no in between like analogue. iOS is set to default to LTE, so if it can get and hold a LTE signal, it will. Even one bar LTE is faster than 5 bar EVDO.

That's not entirely true.

How it is for LTE, I don't know because I'm not up-to-speed on the technical details, but for many technologies like this, a lower ratio of signal to noise (i.e., less signal, more noise) means the protocol will scale down to lower speeds so as to keep the error rate down. ADSL is a nice example of this.