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Is 3G faster than wifi?

newyorksole

newyorksole

macrumors 603
Original poster
Apr 2, 2008
5,278
6,600
New York.
The only way to access the itunes store on the iPhone is with wifi, do you guys THINK that with the 3G iPhone as long as we are connected to 3G that we can download apps, music and be able to watch you tube videos in a much better quality?

The only reason why I don't use youtube is because the quality is poor. Weather and maps loading is also sluggish.
 
Depends on the 3G reception and WiFi speed and reception.

3G is around 300kbps, a smidgen off 512kbps. Which I think is classified as the lowest of broadband speeds (or was it 256kbps?).
My iPod Touch gets 300kbps on our 2mbps wifi connection whereas the same test on my PC says 1.8mbps. *shrugs*
 
raggedjimmi said:
Depends on the 3G reception and WiFi speed and reception.

3G is around 300kbps, a smidgen off 512kbps. Which I think is classified as the lowest of broadband speeds (or was it 256kbps?).
My iPod Touch gets 300kbps on our 2mbps wifi connection whereas the same test on my PC says 1.8mbps. *shrugs*
Click to expand...

It depends on which flavour of 3G data we're talking about. Basic 3G is around 384 kbps but most implementations use 3.6 or 7.2 Mbps, with 14.4 Mbps starting to get implemented. Most 3G phones can use speeds up to 7.2 Mbps.
 
The current 3G standard is 7,2Mbit/s* Wifi can have speed up to 600 Mbps

The next gen Iphone will hopfully have the 802.11n standard for wifi

* This is only theoretical speed and de facto speed is often MUCH lower, the reason is that the ISP only sends out X M/Gbit to the cell tower but have more users than bandwidth.
 
I have never managed to get anywhere near "broadband" speeds with my 3G card (T-Mobile) even though I was assured I would. It's more like dial-up for the most part.
 
Depends on the 3G.

It also depends on the Wi-Fi.

If someone decided to set up a wireless hotspot sharing their dial-up connection...3G's gonna be faster.

In most cases, 3G is slower, because hotspots are usually sharing at least DSL.
 
newyorksole said:
The only way to access the itunes store on the iPhone is with wifi, do you guys THINK that with the 3G iPhone as long as we are connected to 3G that we can download apps, music and be able to watch you tube videos in a much better quality?
Click to expand...

at home yep. ppl are trading up adsl/cable modem connections for 3g now. this of course is outside the us, but north americans should get fast connections someday.
 
In Scandinavia we got Turbo 3G (yeah, lame name) with support for up to 7.2 mbit/s (which will eventually support speeds up to 40 mbit/s).

It is probably faster than many wired connections.

Hopefully the iPhone 3G supports HSDPA.
 
I find websites load up quick enough with 300-400kbps, but faster for video streaming would be really useful. Would really open up Youtube and the iPlayer.
 
Question "Is 3G faster than wifi?"

Here is a good question that is a bit more difficult to answer than one might think. There are all sorts of questions that come into play, such as how far are you from the tower, other environmental conditions that impact usage are also a factor. Then the is the issue of demand on the network, the carriers policies and such.

WiFi suffers in the same way. That is for a given set of hardware distance and environmental factors impact performance. Then you have the issue of throttling. I'm not sure what the transfer rate spec'ed on the iPhone is but I don't think they even try to get maximum transfer speed. That due likely to power usage.

In simplest terms though WiFi should be faster given optimal conditions.

Dave
 
So basically no one is sure if with 3G we will be able to download on the fly and be able to watch youtube videos clearly?
 
newyorksole said:
So basically no one is sure if with 3G we will be able to download on the fly and be able to watch youtube videos clearly?
Click to expand...

You can't really do that now. That due to the iPhones restriction of one user process at a time. Thus you can't be watching youtube and be doing a Safari transfer at the same time.

Now if you mean download a youtube video while viewing said video you can't even guarantee that on a wired desktop machine. To many things come into play to slow transfers. You might do OK on an optimal 3G connection but that is not a given.

Dave
 
damn this sucks until further notice, I was expecting to be browsing the apps library while conncected to 3G, guess I'll have to wait until june to find out (or sooner)
 
iWizzard said:
The current 3G standard is 7,2Mbit/s* Wifi can have speed up to 600 Mbps

The next gen Iphone will hopfully have the 802.11n standard for wifi

* This is only theoretical speed and de facto speed is often MUCH lower, the reason is that the ISP only sends out X M/Gbit to the cell tower but have more users than bandwidth.
Click to expand...

Um, the iPhone only has 802.11g, so 54mbit/sec is the max speed, although it is really a lot less then that.
 
I use 3G usb modem from o2.

I get 1.4mb in my current home (rural near the sea), my previous house was 2mb (centre of town)

So yeah the 3G iphone should be much faster than current EDGE.


I'm hoping apple allows us to use the iphone as a modem (like the n95) and I can have the iphone do the jov of my usb modem too.
 
newyorksole said:
damn this sucks until further notice, I was expecting to be browsing the apps library while conncected to 3G, guess I'll have to wait until june to find out (or sooner)
Click to expand...

It's already confirmed by Jobs that you will be able to browse and download from the App Store with EDGE.

And don't think that there will 100% be a new 3G iPhone in June, it's still all speculation.
 
Yeah I know that the 3G iPhone isn't DEFINITELY coming in june, but alllll of the speculation is building up for june, but of course I don't have my hopes up. I'm excited about the new firmware for now.
 
7on said:
Depends on location... where in the UK are you?
Click to expand...
I tested in Birmingham Airport and city centre, Glasgow Airport and city centre and the train between Birmingham and Leamington Spa. The train I can understand - it's a Faraday cage of sorts and it's moving at speed. But the airports and city centres are supposed to have the best coverage and I got an average of 6KB/s (min:4 /max:8) download speeds.
 
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