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is EDGE really that slow?

N

ninjaw95

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 30, 2011
286
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yo. im getting tmobile soon, the $30 plan for unlim txt/web + 100min. im going to put the sim in my iphone 4, which ufortunately only supports E. is Edge really that slow? i live in Seattle which has pretty good coverage, I realize that its slower than 3g -____-. but how slow is it?
Thanks :D
 
It's defiantly not blazing fast, but usable. Pandora loads fine on AT&T Edge just to give you an idea of what you can do. YouTube videos also load fine as long as you are not trying to play HQ videos. Most websites will load reasonably unless there are a lot of images.
 
Pandora works fine. It's slow, but usable.

Do I like it? No.

Can I live with it? Sure...
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4S (64GB): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Sounds faster than the HSDPA we have here in Tokyo (which often speed tests so low I have to change the results to display in Kb/s because Mb/s just says "0.00") ... Between the abysmal network speeds and the **** coverage, Siri works about 10% of the time. :(
 
I use T-Mobile Edge in the Seattle area - Gig Harbor, if you know it - and it's not horrible. The bad part is the horrible coverage, but if you're in the middle of a city you'll be okay. When you have decent coverage, it's fast enough to get some things done.
 
If I have all 5 bars, it actually feels as fast as 3G when WEB BROWSING.

I would say its as fast as a basic DSL connection most of the time. It's not bad, and certainly still faster than dialup.
 
These are my speeds at my current location.

img0040v.png


img0041s.png
 
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Dumbledorelives said:
I use T-Mobile Edge in the Seattle area - Gig Harbor, if you know it - and it's not horrible. The bad part is the horrible coverage, but if you're in the middle of a city you'll be okay. When you have decent coverage, it's fast enough to get some things done.
Click to expand...

Gig harbor is an hour away from Seattle. It's more like the tacompton area.
 
Edge is slow. I would suggest buying a new phone, maybe even get one that's 4G capable if available in your area.
 
ninjaw95 said:
yo. im getting tmobile soon, the $30 plan for unlim txt/web + 100min. im going to put the sim in my iphone 4, which ufortunately only supports E. is Edge really that slow? i live in Seattle which has pretty good coverage, I realize that its slower than 3g -____-. but how slow is it?
Thanks :D
Click to expand...
Yes, it's really slow.
 
Yes, it is, especially after using 3G for the first time, wow...amazing difference
 
Depends whether you mean "EDGE" ("E" top left) or "GPRS" (also considered EDGE by many) ("o" top left).

EDGE is slow, but it's much better than GPRS. EDGE is not suited well for YouTube and stuff, but for normal websites it does just fine.

Many Americans who are used to LTE consider 3G slow, while you might consider 3G fast.
 
Compared to the throughput of 3G, it is slow. The following is a bandwidth test result from T-Mobile's own Speedtest server. Not pretty but still far better than dialup speeds...

IMG_0218.jpg


Streaming live video is even uglier -- I used NHK's NHK WORLD Live app to get an idea of how much packets it would drop -- the stream unsurprisingly pixelates during rapid scene changes (see below). On 3G, this would play quite clearly even on an iPad (the actual video resolution on the iPad version of the app is larger at around 720x400 - requires around 650kbit/sec to play clearly). Thus watching videos on YouTube over EDGE will take patience since those are progressively downloaded and it will take awhile for the entire thing to be loaded.

IMG_0220.PNG


But if your usage pattern is not bandwidth intensive, the actual usage feels ok. Lot of web sites load alright and quite a number of apps which utilize the network also do relatively fine. I've been mainly using mail, Waze, and a few other news type of apps to test.
 
mavis said:
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4S (64GB): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Sounds faster than the HSDPA we have here in Tokyo (which often speed tests so low I have to change the results to display in Kb/s because Mb/s just says "0.00") ... Between the abysmal network speeds and the **** coverage, Siri works about 10% of the time. :(
Click to expand...

Awww man you really gotta get off Softbank :(
I'm on au (4S) and I've never seen speeds anywhere near that slow. In fact, 3G is generally fast enough that I just leave WiFi off even at home (we have unlimited data in Japan). My speeds are almost always over 1 Mb/s DL (1.66 right now).

I gotta wonder though, where in Tokyo are you, Shinjuku? I've heard Softbank's speeds really suck in crowded areas like Shinjuku and Shibuya station, but my two friends who have iPhone's on Softbank don't seem to have problems too often.

Anyway, to the OP, why would you cripple a device like an iPhone with Edge? Is ATAT THAT bad? (I haven't been in the States for a while)?
 
mavis said:
Sounds faster than the HSDPA we have here in Tokyo
Click to expand...

Have you looked into NTT DoCoMo's just released 4G LTE Xi micro-SIM? They have a flat rate ￥5,800 per month promotion until April 2012 (￥7,300 after that) which will give you 3.5G speeds on the 4S. This is what I'll get using when I head back in early 2012...

If you haven't seen the tests performed by Weekly ASCII yet, here is the link.

Edit - after posting this, I just realized you are probably using an iPhone locked to Softbank :(
 
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I took my iPhone 4 to Tmobile and their edge is faster than AT&T. I was happy with it as far as accessing the app store and iTunes. Web browsing was a tad bit slower than 3G the only problem was video streaming next to impossible. And since I watched Hulu plus and Netflix a lot this didn't work for me. I started using Clear's apollo router. Internet in your hand.
 
wow... this is the 1 thread ive posted where i got replys... im so happy T.T
ye, im about to use tmobile in Seattle so i just wanted to see, im wondering between $45 straighttalk or $30 tmobile
 
Last statistic I read stated there were about 2 million iPhones on TMO USA network. If that's not dedication, I don't know what is. Either that, or people really use very little data. That said, there are plenty of people who live with the 200mb ATT plan happily. I am just not one of them!
 
Edge is fast 60 to 300 mb, compared to GPRS 10 to 60 mb

Does anyone remember GPRS? Slower than dial up. Edge is about the same speed as dial up I think.
 
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