Study Suggests Samsung Users In U.S. See Faster Download Speeds Than Apple iPhone Users on Average

[jamezr]

I guess you might have inadvertently missed the post I quoted.

nope.......just pointing out your straw man car analogy post

I7guy said: ↑
Using that logic, people pay $$$ for a Ferrari and they can’t even drive it in the snow. One would think for $$$ it should be a snow mobile.

 

[k1121j]

So according to this it’s all about the phone not the carrier? . Drink that kool-aid folks. This post is as accurate as those poles in voting season. Good work Macrumors.

 

[fourthtunz]

Well The Netherlands used to have FIVE different operators with FIVE independent networks.

Dutchtone, Ben, KPN, Telfort and Libertel.

Ben was bought by Deutsche Telekom, was renamed T-Mobile and later took over Orange
Dutchtone became Orange and later merged with T-Mobile
KPN bought Telfort
and Libertel was bought by Vodafone and renamed after the latter.

So 5 providers, competing with each other in a super tiny country = lower prices.

Now after the mergers the prices slowly started to increase, and unlimited data became limited again, and stupid additional costs like 'aansluitkosten' (one time activation/connecting costs) were re-introduced.

Then Tele2 bought one of the 4G licences and shocked everybody by suddenly offering unlimited 4G internet for only 25 euro per month. Immediately prices started to drop again, but unfortunately (and amid much protest) the takeover of Tele2 by T-Mobile has been approved and even though T-Mobile was forced to keep at least the prices what they are for the next 3 years (set aside inflation corrections) but after that they are free to do whatever they want.

So i can already predict that in three years from now I will receive a letter saying that 'due to cost increases and to optimise our services for you, we are forced to increase our prices to XX amount per month'

Competition is good,,any competition we have here is the states is purely an illusion

 

[I7guy]

nope.......just pointing out your straw man car analogy post

If it was Apple getting the best speeds, a lot of people would be bragging about it.

Was an apt analogy given the above.

 

[Jsameds]

Your math is way off. In US, downloads on Samsung phones are 40% faster (28 vs 20). That's actually quite astonishing.

I took an average of all the scores.

Work it out. It’s 5%

 

[sir1963nz]

All I see is how crappy the US is compared to other countries. WTH.

Its all ok...shhhhh.... just keep telling yourself the US is the greatest and you will OK.... that's it... back to sleep.
[doublepost=1565126565][/doublepost]

Not sure how hilarious it is, but do you think it has anything to do with the relatively large area that carriers have to cover? The US is somewhat large, comparatively.

As say compared to Canada ?

 

[Justanotherfanboy]

This quote fta jumped out at me:
“Middle tier iPhone users, which make up the bulk of Apple users, saw speeds of 16.5Mb/s, compared to 16.3Mb/s for Huawei users and 14.4Mb/s for Samsung users.”
Ummmmm.... so wouldn’t the title be more accurate as:
Study shows that the majority of iPhone users in the US enjoy faster speeds than either Samsung or Huawei users

 

[HiRez]

I don't really understand this obsession with faster mobile speeds (Samsung vs. Apple, or 5G in general). I have Verizon on an iPhone X and it seems fine, I don't notice many major delays. I can't really imagine how super speeds would change my life.

 

[ebernet]

Well I saw this last on AT&T in Seattle, so I have nothing to complain about, and I have seen upload speeds in the 70s and 80s...
The WiFi icon in menu bar is from when I took a screenshot of the results. The LTE at the bottom indicates the connection at time of test. At the time, the connection was indicated under the AT&T moniker of 5Ge which is still LTE.

 

[PickUrPoison]

As say compared to Canada ?

OP and I were discussing carrier pricing vs data transfer speeds. Yes, country size is a factor in carrier economics.

Or maybe you disagree? I can’t tell... what’s your point, if you have one?

 

[DinkThifferent]

Thank you for bringing this to our attention, it's information we've never heard before, especially not in, say, every other article on this site that has ever discussed cellular pricing.

All the bolding and UPPERCASE really help us get the message - otherwise we might not have noticed your important message.

Unless you, personally, have a plan that you will be putting into action soon to rectify this disparity in pricing - perhaps you can come here and set up your own low-priced wireless service - your (and other's) ranting/gloating/explaining here... isn't helpful.

I would like to sincerely apologise for not double checking every topic that has ever been written about this subject on this website to see if someone has ever possibly shared a similar opinion about this subject, like mine. I wholeheartedly agree with you that every opinion must be 100% unique and should not be shared, agreed upon or, like in this case, apparently plagiarised.

(C) DinkThifferent 2019. All rights reserved.

 

[ROGmaster]

Speed is just a catchall non-engineers seem to want to use to categorize the problems with Intel RF modems. Intels RF modem problems are more than just speed.

Yeah and most people that complain about Intel Modems don't directly complain about the general or average LTE they are getting.

 

[theorist9]

That variability would apply to all handsets on all networks. Some networks will perform better with Samsung, some better with Apple, and most will perform equally. That's born out by the data from the report. Across 3 billion interactions and 23 million devices the effect is pretty much null. The article does a good job of explaining that the modems used across the product lines makes a big difference.

In the end, it really doesn't matter. We're talking small percentages that only mean something on paper since we only have the phone that we have so another phone - that we don't have - being faster or slower doesn't mean anything.

I'm thinking of different confounding variables that would not necessarily be nullified by the size of the data set. [Also, as a general principle, data set size per se does not eliminate confounding variables.] For instance, suppose we have two enormous competing networks, A and B, covering a large region, and A is (on average) faster. Now suppose that, for whatever reason (commercial reasons, say), network A promotes phone brand X over phone brand Y, and visa versa for brand B. So network A is 60% X and 40% Y, and B is 40% X and 60% Y (ignoring other brands for simplicity). On average, even if phones X and Y were identical, X would show faster average download speeds for reasons external to the hardware itself. Now maybe when you average over the entire globe such differences average out; or maybe they don't. You can't assume either one or the other, you need to analyze it.

Alternately, as another poster mentioned, suppose brand preference is, on average, weighted towards phone brand X in rural areas, and phone brand Y in urban areas. And suppose download speeds in urban areas are, on average, somewhat higher. Then one will see higher average download speeds for Y than X, not because of hardware differences, but because of the confounding variable of geographically-influenced phone brand preference. Further, it is possible that, after averaging over the entire globe, it may be found that this preference is small, but doesn't disappear.

 

[kis]

I think it is. Netherlands (where I'm from) is up there at #3 when it comes to 4G speed, but we're #4 when it comes to population density. There's an incredible amount of people living in this tiny country but our infrastructure is absolutely amazing.

When 4G was first introduced here, my phone supported it. So I understand what you mean as the speed was much higher back then. That said, 4G is still a heck of a lot faster than most public WiFi options. The only time I experience any form of slowness is when there's a massive amount of people together in a single spot, like a football stadium.

darn it, the Netherlands narrowly beat us (Switzerland). But in our own defence: we got a crapload of mountains here and getting coverage up there was a bit of a challenge At least Apple users allegedly have faster 4G speeds here than Samsung users.

Where Samsung beats Apple here is 5G, though. Apple doesn't have any. It'll be a painful experience for Apple having to cede the field to Samsung for an entire year, until they finally will release 5G hardware in 2020. Over 90% of the population will have 5G coverage by the end of this year in Switzerland.

 

[PickUrPoison]

Or, from the article

Apple's challenge is that few of its current models are high-tier devices when we group iPhone models based on their mobile network experience capabilities. In our measurements, just 14% of Apple users are high tier. Instead, Apple has chosen to focus its handset designs on other capabilities such as facial recognition, camera innovation, long battery life, and extremely fast application processors and graphics using Apple's in-house silicon designs.​

So it seems that even in countries with excellent infrastructure, Apple seems to be unable to capitalize on it. It's probably a relatively irrelevant metric since Apple has prioritized how the phone is used over absolute speed. That's a very Apple thing to do.

I don’t understand what you mean by “even in countries with excellent infrastructure, Apple seems to be unable to capitalize on it.” In some countries Apple is fastest, in some countries Samsung is fastest.

If you look at the US, at the high tier Apple’s XS/XS Max were slower then Samsung by an average of 1.5Mbps, with speeds of about 25Mbps. At the mid tier, Apple was faster than Samsung by 2.1Mbps on average, with speeds around 15Mbps.

Neither of those differences is particularly meaningful, are they? And how are these averages relevant in any way to my 6s, when I can get 85 down (highest 114, Verizon) and 30 up—but sometimes as low as 3/3 (Sprint... no surprise right?).

That’s what I mean by it seeming to be more of an infrastructure issue than a handset issue.

 

[The Game 161]

Speed on EE in the UK where I am is great on the XS Max, 151Mbps down 42Mbps up.

Same when at work but where I live it’s poor...guess depends on the area.

overall though happy with the speeds from EE

 

[nt5672]

Yeah and most people that complain about Intel Modems don't directly complain about the general or average LTE they are getting.

Good point. Intel modems don't negotiate with the network as well as they should. I don't really know if that is the network or the modem, but I have to guess that Qualcomm engineers have more experience with the network's quirks.

 

[loybond]

This seems to reflect Speedtest's global results as well... Canada is #2 in the world for speed, #1 most expensive for data (FFS).

Best thing at the moment seems to be to go get a US prepaid sim across the border with US/Canada/Mexico roaming and use it on Canadian networks!

 

[nebo1ss]

All I see is how crappy the US is compared to other countries. WTH.

Its actually improved believe it or not. When i moved from Europe to the US in 1996 i was surprised that the cell networks in the US were still analogue. Europe had been using GSM for a number of year already.