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Sprint iPhone Users Complaining of Slow 3G Data Speeds
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Sprint 3G speed is *garbage* during the day here in Ann Arbor. At midnight, iphone is giving 0.9 mbps - decent. At 9 am, 0.2 mbps. At 11 am 0.05 mbps - useless. I did a side by side comparison of my sprint iphone and my ipad 3g loading the ann arbor.com website. Ipad 3g att: 15 s; sprint iphone 4 minutes. I've already arranged to return my phones and cancel my contracts. You only really have 3 days to get out without fees.
Apple is sullying their premium image by selling the iphone on Sprint.
Apple is sullying their premium image by selling the iphone on Sprint.
Oh just stop it already with your hate. I am glad you are using OUR TECHNOLOGY for your mobile needs, you know, iPhone, 3G, LTE? These are all American technologies. I have a Telecom background but I am not going to sit down and explain the geographic differences between the US and Norway/ Sweden.
Tell Nokia I said hi, their smartphone business is splended.
No need to get into a flamewar. To be honest, we should be embarrassed by our infrastructure in this country, to motivate people to correct it. Yes, there are land mass differences, but there are also population differences that should help make up for that. Using "well we have more land to cover" is a lousy excuse when we also seem to be paying nearly the most per month for what little we do get in well populated areas.
Had we bothered with a slightly more balanced approach of allowing a little of that hated government regulation to steer the carriers to one standard, then we could have been in a better position today. With roaming agreements to cover weak spots from one carrier, we could have had this entire country blanketed in pretty reliable coverage. Instead we let the classic AT&T mostly reassemble, with each carrier holding onto pieces of the spectrum and using incompatible technology on it. The future move to LTE will be nice to see across 3 of the 4 carriers, but who knows how long it will take to have interoperable LTE for both data and voice.
The sooner we start being embarrassed by our internet and wireless technology, the better in my book. I'm tired of seeing wired internet plans rated at 30/3 being "high end". And I'm disgusted with the nearly identical wireless plans and pricing we now are offered by the major carriers, since they know how hard it is to switch. No big incentive for real consumer facing competition.
So we have a current problem of almost no connectivity for data on a smart phone and we have an old problem of a couple (major) markets that had problems with dropped calls a couple years ago. You would rather have a smart phone with almost no connectivity vs a smart phone that use to drop calls more than normal in a couple major markets.
OK
This is Sprint's beginning in the iPhone market, so it's fair to compare beginnings. After 2 years then I think the comparison will be more valid.
And I still got dropped calls on AT&T.
All that aside, I haven't had any connectivity issues with Sprint other than intermittent lag. I'd rather wait a few seconds to download an app, image, etc, than have to reboot my AT&T phone because my data, for some reason, stopped working and then restart a download.
I've been screaming about this on this forum for weeks, Sprints 3G network has been absolute ***** for about 6 months now, this is mostly due to network pigs that are sucking 50 to 60gbs per month, a lot of stupid ass kids out there using rooted cells for their entire internet needs.
So now, Sprint adds a million new customers, of course their network is going to suck fumes.
Pisses me off as I've been a die hard Sprint customer/lover for many years, I stood with them when few others did, now they're turning their backs on us all and letting their infrastructure crumble.
THEY NEED TO THROTTLE! You exceed 10gigs or something and you're going to get dial up speeds. It's the only chance they have to survive.
So now, Sprint adds a million new customers, of course their network is going to suck fumes.
Pisses me off as I've been a die hard Sprint customer/lover for many years, I stood with them when few others did, now they're turning their backs on us all and letting their infrastructure crumble.
THEY NEED TO THROTTLE! You exceed 10gigs or something and you're going to get dial up speeds. It's the only chance they have to survive.
There are two sides to every story. Has the government forced all carriers to a single standard, CDMA, an American technology, would have never been created. GSM is the more global standard, but what a lot of GSM fans forget to tell you is that GSM is an evolution of TDMA, and it cannot carry data. What I'm trying to say, if it wasn't for CDMA, 3G would have never been a reality, as data requires psuedo-random modulation pioneered by Qualcomm for the CDMA technology.
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Those speed test results are pretty meaningless from my experience so far. I can run it and get stupid slow results, like 30-50kbps and then go browse the web at fairly fast/acceptable speeds. Not sure what causes the discrepancies but I don't think those are indicative of real world performance.
Those speed test results are pretty meaningless from my experience so far. I can run it and get stupid slow results, like 30-50kbps and then go browse the web at fairly fast/acceptable speeds. Not sure what causes the discrepancies but I don't think those are indicative of real world performance.
Testing Relative to AT&T iPhone 4
I went about and did some tests over the weekend to try and get a reference on the performance disparity between my Sprint 4S and my AT&T 4.
I'm in downtown DC, so pretty much everywhere in my immediate vicinity has a strong signal so I haven't been able to compare coverage area around DC or the relative speeds between the carriers at reduced signal. So keep that in mind.
Initially I ran the Speedtest app and here are the averages of the two carriers over a number of measurements taken at a selection of times from Friday evening to Monday morning.
Metric - Sprint / AT&T
Ping - 88 / 93
Down - 0.89 / 2.83
Up - 0.88 / 0.76
As far as these measurements go, there are a couple of things to keep in mind:
AT&T has consistently averaged a fairly high download speed, having never dropped below 1.85 mbps, while reaching as high as 4.79 mbps. Sprint was initially scoring rather dreadfully, consistently measuring down speeds of less than 0.30 mbps on Friday, but since then has fairly consistently been above 1 mbps. So it's average down speed would likely be a little higher had there not been such bad performance on Friday.
These numbers seemed to indicate a fairly substantial performance advantage for AT&T that, outside of the lag on Friday, I really didn't notice in regular use. So I decided to measure the speed of some normal activities.
Here I downloaded 3 apps from the App Store on each device.
App Size - (Time to download) Sprint / AT&T
2MB - 40 / 39
1MB - 16 / 12
13.8MB - 2:53 / 1:19
Here you can certainly see AT&T's advantage, but in general it is not as stark as the Speedtest numbers would indicate. For larger files you can begin to see the advantage more clearly, but in general it didn't seem to be that big of a deal. Though I suppose that would depend on how often you download large files.
But in general the Sprint phone seemed slower when accessing Apple's servers, I don't have a number on it, it just seemed generally slower using Apple than using other sites and servers.
Here is a test of the time to stream 3 Danny MacAskill videos off youtube (Industrial Revolutions, Streets of London, and S1Jobs Extended).
Time to Start Playing / Time to Finish Streaming - (Sprint / AT&T)
9 / 12 - 2:21 / 2:20
8 / 11 - 1:05 / 1:06
10 / 13 - 2:00 / 2:09
Here the performance is more or less identical, though Sprint has a consistent advantage in the amount of time elapsed before the video started playing (though this may be due to the increased processing speed of the 4S).
So, if I had to give a summary of my experiences it is that outside of the REALLY slow Friday evening, the Sprint iPhone has performed pretty well in comparison to the AT&T one. And I haven't had a dropped call yet, which my AT&T phone really was quite adept at, though, to be granted, I've only had it for a few days.
I still need to see how coverage compares to AT&T, and I'm sure I will lament the lack of simultaneous voice and data, but overall Sprint is holding up well to my experience of AT&T.
The sad thing is that while I am certainly not a fan of AT&T, I have a grandfathered unlimited data plan and was not chomping at the bit to leave. The main motivator for me is that Sprint will unlock the phone for me when I travel internationally, which I do several times a year. If AT&T had been willing to do that, I would never have thought of leaving. I really wonder how they imagine they make more money off their ridiculous international plans (which I never used, I always either unlocked my iPhone or used an old unlocked phone) than the reams of potential customers for whom an international unlock is important they would have had access to had they allowed a similar policy to Verizon and Sprint's.
I went about and did some tests over the weekend to try and get a reference on the performance disparity between my Sprint 4S and my AT&T 4.
I'm in downtown DC, so pretty much everywhere in my immediate vicinity has a strong signal so I haven't been able to compare coverage area around DC or the relative speeds between the carriers at reduced signal. So keep that in mind.
Initially I ran the Speedtest app and here are the averages of the two carriers over a number of measurements taken at a selection of times from Friday evening to Monday morning.
Metric - Sprint / AT&T
Ping - 88 / 93
Down - 0.89 / 2.83
Up - 0.88 / 0.76
As far as these measurements go, there are a couple of things to keep in mind:
AT&T has consistently averaged a fairly high download speed, having never dropped below 1.85 mbps, while reaching as high as 4.79 mbps. Sprint was initially scoring rather dreadfully, consistently measuring down speeds of less than 0.30 mbps on Friday, but since then has fairly consistently been above 1 mbps. So it's average down speed would likely be a little higher had there not been such bad performance on Friday.
These numbers seemed to indicate a fairly substantial performance advantage for AT&T that, outside of the lag on Friday, I really didn't notice in regular use. So I decided to measure the speed of some normal activities.
Here I downloaded 3 apps from the App Store on each device.
App Size - (Time to download) Sprint / AT&T
2MB - 40 / 39
1MB - 16 / 12
13.8MB - 2:53 / 1:19
Here you can certainly see AT&T's advantage, but in general it is not as stark as the Speedtest numbers would indicate. For larger files you can begin to see the advantage more clearly, but in general it didn't seem to be that big of a deal. Though I suppose that would depend on how often you download large files.
But in general the Sprint phone seemed slower when accessing Apple's servers, I don't have a number on it, it just seemed generally slower using Apple than using other sites and servers.
Here is a test of the time to stream 3 Danny MacAskill videos off youtube (Industrial Revolutions, Streets of London, and S1Jobs Extended).
Time to Start Playing / Time to Finish Streaming - (Sprint / AT&T)
9 / 12 - 2:21 / 2:20
8 / 11 - 1:05 / 1:06
10 / 13 - 2:00 / 2:09
Here the performance is more or less identical, though Sprint has a consistent advantage in the amount of time elapsed before the video started playing (though this may be due to the increased processing speed of the 4S).
So, if I had to give a summary of my experiences it is that outside of the REALLY slow Friday evening, the Sprint iPhone has performed pretty well in comparison to the AT&T one. And I haven't had a dropped call yet, which my AT&T phone really was quite adept at, though, to be granted, I've only had it for a few days.
I still need to see how coverage compares to AT&T, and I'm sure I will lament the lack of simultaneous voice and data, but overall Sprint is holding up well to my experience of AT&T.
The sad thing is that while I am certainly not a fan of AT&T, I have a grandfathered unlimited data plan and was not chomping at the bit to leave. The main motivator for me is that Sprint will unlock the phone for me when I travel internationally, which I do several times a year. If AT&T had been willing to do that, I would never have thought of leaving. I really wonder how they imagine they make more money off their ridiculous international plans (which I never used, I always either unlocked my iPhone or used an old unlocked phone) than the reams of potential customers for whom an international unlock is important they would have had access to had they allowed a similar policy to Verizon and Sprint's.
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Thank you so much for the fantastic review. It is interesting that repeatedly the real world use it doesn't make a significant difference AT&T's faster speeds -- I think it's due to AT&T has very high latency in it's internet connectivity.
With that said, the 4s supposedly has a much improved antenna and a much faster CPU. I wonder the effect on your test being between a 4 and 4s?
iPhone 4 speed test from NYC (Manhattan). Middle of the afternoon.
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This mirrors my experience exactly. Internet is working fine, though speedtest gives a really low figure. But the App store and Siri are having network connectivity issues, which is pretty strange.
grumpleton said:
This mirrors my experience exactly. Internet is working fine, though speedtest gives a really low figure. But the App store and Siri are having network connectivity issues, which is pretty strange.
Yeah, unfortunately, I can't really say. Though I think that certain tasks, like downloading an app, are fairly network bound, so that should at least take the CPU out of the equation. That's the same reason I included the time it took to load the entirety of the youtube videos and not just the time to start playing.
I am completely at a loss to account for the improved antenna, but from what I gather the difference should mostly manifest itself in reduced attenuation from your hand by being able to switch back and forth and having a higher potential top speed, but not actually "increasing" the speed of any given signal.
In my tests the phone was placed on a table by the window on my apartment, so there was no interference from my hand, and at no point did my iPhone 4 approach it's "theoretical" limit. So I doubt there is too much of a component to the new antenna in the numbers I've cited. Also, looking around the web it seems like my AT&T numbers are on par with what people are measuring on their 4S's.
But still, in the end its a bit of apples and oranges. Doing what I can with what I've got though.
Now I'm just conflicted about what to do. I don't hate AT&T, but I don't like always having to hold off on iOS updates to maintain my software unlock, it would be nice to have a legitimately unlocked iPhone for travel. That really steers me toward Verizon and Sprint, and Sprint is more attractive to me because of the unlimited data, which, while not all important now (at least for me) is going to be a big bonus when LTE comes around.
But, Verizon is kicking all kinds of ass with LTE rollout and would seem to be the only provider that will have complete coverage for the expected LTE iPhone next summer. Conversely, AT&T looks to have an edge on Sprint but both claim they will have the major cities covered by the end of next year with national coverage by the end of 2013. So that means I'd be missing out on a lot of 4G goodness if I wasn't on Verizon, though, since I live in a major city, as long as Sprint had LTE in DC by next summer, I really wouldn't notice.
So basically, if Verizon had unlimited data, I'd be with them right now. If AT&T would unlock my phone for international use, I'd stay with them. Ultimately I'm simply being forced to Sprint as it is the only one that has both unlimited data and international unlocking. But I worry about the state that their LTE network will be in when the iPhone 5 comes out.
And in the end, much of these concerns may be pointless since none of the carriers may honor their 3G unlimited plans come LTE preponderance, which would mean I'm running around wringing my hands over nothing. What would really piss me off is if Sprint restricts their 4G while AT&T does not and I go and vacate my grandfathered plan only to shoot myself in the foot.
It's funny, you and I are in the exact same situation! I live in DC and have a 3GS and I am frustated all the time with the inconsistent network and constant time outs with AT&T. I swore I wouldn't stay with AT&T but I am conflicted now as well. I can live without the unlock on AT&T, and I have my unlocked jailbroken 3gs if I need a phone for foreign sims while traveling.
I have ruled out Sprint, so for me it's Verizon vs AT&T. People with 4s anecdotaly told me that they are getting far less dropped calls, none in fact, with their new 4s over their old 3g and 3gs.
It's the "not in my backyard" problem. AT&T said it takes 3 years to get a new cell tower approved in some cities.
- I realize that these poor speeds on Sprint's network are not representative of what the American networks are capable of, but I just keep seeing poor test results from America with only the occasional good result. This goes for both mobile and broadband.
AT&T "usually" has EDGE? My carrier (3 or "Three") does not, to my knowledge, even have a GPRS network and hasn't had for several years. It's 3G almost everywhere in Denmark, with some virtually or totally unpopulated areas only having EDGE.
It would actually be interesting to see a comparative study of the mobile networks in various countries. To see who has the best.
Might've just been activations? I have an Evo on sprint and i'm seeing typical speeds (around 1Mbps in the day on 3G on Manhattan).
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Those speeds are not typical...why do you thikn people are saying "hey why are my speeds slow?" now and not before?
My Evo is still showing good speeds on par with CDMA Rev. A typical speeds. (obviously not HDSPA)
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sigh...sprint detractors form the old days who swear up and down they still suck:
http://newsroom.sprint.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1901
been on sprint for about 8 years and I can tell you how much better and consistent they are. I pay $70 a month after taxes and have zero dropped calls. And i mean that, zero dropped calls in 2011.
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Here is a speed test results just for proof:
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Those speeds are not typical...why do you thikn people are saying "hey why are my speeds slow?" now and not before?
My Evo is still showing good speeds on par with CDMA Rev. A typical speeds. (obviously not HDSPA)
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sigh...sprint detractors form the old days who swear up and down they still suck:
http://newsroom.sprint.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1901
been on sprint for about 8 years and I can tell you how much better and consistent they are. I pay $70 a month after taxes and have zero dropped calls. And i mean that, zero dropped calls in 2011.
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Here is a speed test results just for proof:
Well, that's certainly true. I know the area around my parents house (dense surburb) has almost no signal for any of the major carriers and reason is because of NIMBYs. Lots of organized and paranoid upper-middle class folk can put up quite the resistance.
So I give the carriers a pass on stuff like that, though again, having a more highly regulated mobile industry would likely make it easier for industry to overcome resident resistance because of infrastructure mandates. Nor does it explain why it's nearly impossible to go a day without dropping a call in places like NYC and SF on certain networks.
In the end, the US made a lot of mistakes in telecom, particularly with wireless. It's embarrassing to compare the quality of the infrastructure here with that of many Asian and European countries. Though, of course, the same can be said for the state of things like our roads and electricity infrastructure. Maybe it's just the end of empire.
+1000 I agree with you 100%. I too am a long time Sprint customer (11+ years) and I too stuck with them through all the bad. While I'm trying to be understanding about the 3G problems I think you're about throttling. I would even make it lower, somewhere in the 6 to 8 GB's. I doubt very much that any more than 2% of the users would be affected.
As you also point out I too believe that the vast majority of the offenders are the young kids with their rooted phones who tether illegally (Or at least against ToS). In the past I know for a fact that Sprint let these users do it and didn't care. But now Sprint is in a new bracket. Now there are more affluent and more demanding users coming in for the iPhone and these folks won't stick around if the service is going to be poor.
Today I started doing something I didn't think I would. I started comparing VZN and ATT plans and checking the last date I can return the iPhone. I really don't want to but if things don't get better by this Friday I'm going to have to consider my options.