iPhone now telling me 4G

[JHZR2]

Just updated to iOS 5.1, and now it is telling me that AT&T is 4G.

Seems silly, I don't think my iPhone 4S is capable of 4g speeds.

Does being in a 4g area do anything for me in a good or bad way?

I figure 4g should have more bandwidth, but if everyone is streaming video because they have 4G, what difference does it make? Does it somehow provide benefit to 3G users?

 

[Rand]

4g is usually 3-5x faster than 3g in common use.

for instance my phone on 3g is 1-3mbit

4g is 10-14mbit down 3-10mbit up.

thats verizon though. ATT should be somewhat similar.

only negative for 4g for me is less battery life. In fact I disable it if I am unable to charge for a day or so.. as the battery goes aprox 2x as fast on 4g

 

[PandaBear]

4G has been downgraded into a "marketing" term rather than a technical term. Thank you T-Mobile, you deserve to die in a flaming death.

So now HSPA+ is considered 4G in the US and everything claims they are 4G. LTE is still in deployment and iPhone is not yet supporting LTE.

Quote:
I figure 4g should have more bandwidth, but if everyone is streaming video because they have 4G, what difference does it make? Does it somehow provide benefit to 3G users?


Carrier switch their wireless channel between different services so in high usage area, they will deploy newer equipments that support more "4G" than "3G/2G/etc". The user individually will still get the same amount of data because of the bandwidth caps, but will get less congestion due to the faster speed shared among more users.

IMO they should charge the same amount of $ between different phones because it mainly benefits the carrier rather than the consumers, unless you call getting services you paid for and deserve a "benefit".

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: Rand
4g is usually 3-5x faster than 3g in common use.

for instance my phone on 3g is 1-3mbit

4g is 10-14mbit down 3-10mbit up.

thats verizon though. ATT should be somewhat similar.

only negative for 4g for me is less battery life. In fact I disable it if I am unable to charge for a day or so.. as the battery goes aprox 2x as fast on 4g


Thing is, my phone doesnt support 4G. AT&T is telling me that I am in a 4G area, but so what?

 

[dparm]

HSPA+ is not technically a 4G technology, nor is LTE. Both are "3.75G" or "3.9G". AT&T's older claim of HSPA+ being 4G was wrong. Even their new LTE is not 4G (nor is Verizon's).

LTE-Advanced is a true 4G tech.

It annoys me that the carriers twist a legitimate term into marketing and then distort it. They try to sell 4G as a pure speed increase when in reality the "generational" changes are more significant than just higher speeds. In fact, LTE is not even much faster than HSPA+, but the latencies are much much lower.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: dparm
It annoys me that the carriers twist a legitimate term into marketing and then distort it. They try to sell 4G as a pure speed increase when in reality the "generational" changes are more significant than just higher speeds. In fact, LTE is not even much faster than HSPA+, but the latencies are much much lower.


Wait till iPhone 5 come out, and we will all have "5G" technology according to the bragging owners.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear
Originally Posted By: dparm
It annoys me that the carriers twist a legitimate term into marketing and then distort it. They try to sell 4G as a pure speed increase when in reality the "generational" changes are more significant than just higher speeds. In fact, LTE is not even much faster than HSPA+, but the latencies are much much lower.


Wait till iPhone 5 come out, and we will all have "5G" technology according to the bragging owners.


LOL, IMO it was merely convenience that the naming conventions have aligned so far...

 

[BearZDefect]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear
4G has been downgraded into a "marketing" term rather than a technical term.
...

Like "synthetic" oil.

 

[CBR.worm]

Yeah, mine says 4g now, but I believe it is still the same as it ever was.

 

[DakAttack]

Here you go.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/03/mobile-broadband?

 

[nleksan]

I read it has to do with a software update relating to the new ipad?

 

[DesertSpartan]

iPhone 4S only supports 3G technology, which on your AT&T phone is UMTS. AT&T, Sprint and Verizon are all in various stages of upgrading their networks to 4G (Long Term Evolution) technology. LTE uses the existing radio frequency spectrum more efficiently and is able to compress millions of data transactions in smaller packets on the same wireless frequency, which results in much faster internet speeds.

Most likely the next iPhone will be 4G capable, however it will be years until 4G is ubiquitous in all population centers of the US. The large top tier markets (LA, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, etc.) will get the service first (Verizon is already providing 4G service in many markets) and the large secondary markets (Denver, Phoenix, Detroit, etc.) will get them afterwards.

We all think of cell phones still in terms of voice calls, however it is important to note that 4G is all about data. Do not be surprised if your next 4G device does not have the traditional dialing menus built in. In the future, voice calls will be transacted through Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which means if you want to call someone, you will simply access an app on your device in order to place a call over the internet. Your wireless carrier and device, however, will look at the VoIP transaction the same as if you are looking up the latest NCAA Basketball scores on ESPN.

 

[tmorris1]

Originally Posted By: Rand
4g is usually 3-5x faster than 3g in common use.

for instance my phone on 3g is 1-3mbit

4g is 10-14mbit down 3-10mbit up.

thats verizon though. ATT should be somewhat similar.

only negative for 4g for me is less battery life. In fact I disable it if I am unable to charge for a day or so.. as the battery goes aprox 2x as fast on 4g

There is no iPhone available with a 4G (LTE) radio. The indicator tells you that you are in a 4G area, but your phone is still only capable of 3G.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: DesertSpartan
We all think of cell phones still in terms of voice calls, however it is important to note that 4G is all about data. Do not be surprised if your next 4G device does not have the traditional dialing menus built in. In the future, voice calls will be transacted through Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which means if you want to call someone, you will simply access an app on your device in order to place a call over the internet. Your wireless carrier and device, however, will look at the VoIP transaction the same as if you are looking up the latest NCAA Basketball scores on ESPN.


VoLTE will be here later, but I don't think even the carriers are ready for it yet. So most LTE smart phones will still be using 3G for voice for quite some time.

 

[kkreit01]

I don't plan to update soon. I will ignore the message. Mine is working fine as is. The last time we updated my wife's android, it quit working with Uconnect (which pretty much sucks anyway). We couldn't get it to work until we reset it back to factory settings, and started from scratch.

 

[DesertSpartan]

Panda, you are correct. It is a bit early and 3G is not going away any time soon, however carriers have already started to test and deploy VoIP. MetroPCS, for example, announced earlier this year that they plan on deploying VoIP in select markets for 2012. AT&T already has an application available called AT&T Call International. This application allows AT&T smartphones to make VoIP based calls over WiFi to international numbers at very low rates. The app also works in foreign countries and will allow AT&T customers to make low rate calls over WiFi back to the US.

 

[Cujet]

I jailbroke my previous phone (iPhone 4) to tether it to my laptop.

Locally I am throttled at 3Mb/s speeds, or tethered with speed tests.

Every once in a while it's faster, then it would throttle back, to 3.0 Mb/s during the test.

My new iPhone 4s has exactly the same speeds, which mirror what I've been getting for the last 3 years!

However, my old iPhone 4 was able to achieve 14Mb/s in the NY/NJ area, in certain locations. I was able to download large aircraft navigational databases in a fraction of the time it normally takes. Dunno if my 4s can do that, as it's not jailbroken and does not provide a wireless hot-spot to my laptop.

Conclusion: 4G is exactly the same thing as 3G.

 

[jigen]

The 4S on AT&T has always supported HSPA+ speeds. Tmobile and AT&T will call HSPA+ a "4G" phone, whether it's 4G or not is always up for debate. The actual definition of a 4G wireless network is not too specific. Either way, an AT&T 3G phone will hit download speeds of between 1-3mbps where your 4S should be between 3-7mbps. It's capable of faster download speeds, always has been. It's just that now it seems apple agreed to label the 4S as a 4G device on att's network.

 

[Cujet]

Just an FYI,

I was recently in TN, and tried my iPhone 4s with the 4G service on "speed test" app, Against my friends iPhone 4 with the 3G service indicated. (same time, same location)

While the results are variable, his 3G phone returned faster speeds, nearly ever time.

AT+T 3G is exactly the same thing as AT+T 4G. There is no functional difference.