4g lte

[Bman123]

So far I'm loving the 4g LTE but hating the battery life. I'm hitting 19mbps all day at home while my thunderbolt drinks battery juice like a old V8 drinks gas lol.. I'm in ne Ohio what speeds are you guys getting on LTE???

 

[MotF Bane]

I have yet to find a 4G LTE signal anywhere.

 

[stag3]

i was hitting around 15mbps when i was in vegas for a few days (no 4g where i live yet)
battery life does suck (if you leave it on 4g 24/7), but when i'm not downloading or browsing, i just go back to 3g.

 

[JS80]

Hopefully this "problem" will help push battery technology.

 

[gsaldivar]

http://www.seidioonline.com/product-p/bacy32htmec-bk.htm

* May not be compatible with skinny jeans.

:awe:

 

[Red Storm]

I get anywhere from 12 to 16mbs here in DC. My apartment is a little further out but I still get LTE there, and my phone lasts me through the day.

Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk

 

[Fear No Evil]

Hopefully this "problem" will help push battery technology.

There are tons of problems that require better batteries and we have not yet found a viable solution. I seriously doubt LTE is going to be the one that pushes it over the edge.. lol

 

[JS80]

There are tons of problems that require better batteries and we have not yet found a viable solution. I seriously doubt LTE is going to be the one that pushes it over the edge.. lol

I think all the other problems lead us to the tipping point and 4G pushed us over. I am addicted to 4G like a crack addict but I am willing to sacrifice battery life for it. As it reaches mass adoption I'm not sure the mob will feel the same.

 

[Dulanic]

How often do you "need" 4g? If your worried about battery turn off 4g until it is needed. 3G typically is more than enough for most uses of the phone.

 

[Red Storm]

How often do you "need" 4g? If your worried about battery turn off 4g until it is needed. 3G typically is more than enough for most uses of the phone.

Network speeds are a modern smartphone's biggest throttle, LTE takes care of that problem.

Using maps, streaming media, web browsing, fetching information within apps, downloading and updating apps. All that and more is made better with faster network speeds, it is not a trivial thing at all.

 

[JS80]

How often do you "need" 4g? If your worried about battery turn off 4g until it is needed. 3G typically is more than enough for most uses of the phone.

Have you ever used Sprint's 3G?

 

[Bman123]

Lmao Sprint 3g is bad..

 

[Chess]

I am in Maryland, but I travel alot and have had FULL 4g in Tampa, DC Metro Area, and Las Vegas....

It def flies between 12-15 megs a second pretty amazing....

no true way to fix the battery issues it was known and it just sucks have to deal with it

 

[hanoverphist]

my mom even switches off 4g when shes not browsing the net on her thunderbolt. she doesnt have any problem with streaming, apps accessing the web for updates and such. it even seems faster than my phone when doing updates, and after running speed tests on her and my phones at the same time she gets better 3g speeds than i do consistently. kind of pisses me off.

 

[Red Storm]

my mom even switches off 4g when shes not browsing the net on her thunderbolt. she doesnt have any problem with streaming, apps accessing the web for updates and such. it even seems faster than my phone when doing updates, and after running speed tests on her and my phones at the same time she gets better 3g speeds than i do consistently. kind of pisses me off.

Nobody said you can't do those things on 3G, but you can do them much faster on 4G, and isn't that the whole point (try streaming a high quality youtube vid on 4G and 3G and tell me there's no difference...)? Why else do people pay for broadband internet connections? They could live with DSL, but broadband let's them fix the major bottleneck to higher performance.

 

[hanoverphist]

when she watches youtube (usually when my kids try to show her something funny) she turns it on. she maybe browses the net a few times a day, but uses her apps much more. the apps are easy on data so far, and when she wants to view stuff in a browser she clicks on the 4g. she streams pandora quite a bit, and said she used it for hours before she remembered she forgot to switch it, and there wasnt any pauses to remind her to check it. hell, i only find issues with pandora when im traveling and go into a dead spot.

while i do totally agree with ya, if i had a 4g phone id use it for everything. but, knowing that id lose battery, id be ok with letting basic apps use 3g and switching 4g on when i actually wanted/ needed the speed.

 

[boomhower]

It will get better with evolutions of the LTE chips. Other than that your pretty much stuck, or just turn it off when you not doing something that needs 4G bandwidth.

 

[s44]

This is largely a Thunderbolt problem. At this point new buyers should be getting a Charge: much better battery, and today's OTA fixes the early network issues.

 

[RockinZ28]

Root.

I did over 30 hrs on battery a couple days ago with light use, at least 20 were on 4G, rest were WiFi. Screw 3G, long as I have coverage I'm using 4G.

Need to test it, but I think 8+ hours with the display on and 4G should be possible and that's more than long enough for me between charges.

 

[iahk]

Network speeds are a modern smartphone's biggest throttle, LTE takes care of that problem.

Using maps, streaming media, web browsing, fetching information within apps, downloading and updating apps. All that and more is made better with faster network speeds, it is not a trivial thing at all.

All of this stuff, sans streaming media, is fine on 3G. I say this AND I use Sprint. Most sites have a mobile version so that's not an issue. Apps on android are tiny compared to iOS apps. The only time I turn on 4G is when I use youtube.

Considering during the day, my 3g drops down as low as 50KB/sec and my smartphone usage is fine, I really don't see a need to go full blast on 4G for any of those reasons above.

I'm not saying that the power usage issues of 4G are to be ignored, just saying that we're not at a point that it's viable to leave the 4G radio on all day.

 

[Bman123]

The key to battery life on the bolt is setting the phone options the best way for your usage.

 

[Dulanic]

Have you ever used Sprint's 3G?

Yes actually I have. Unless your downloading big files, whats the problem? I drive for 30 minutes every day with my phone linked to my car /w BT and stream music from google music, pandora, amazon cloud and/or slacker. Honestly, again unless its large files or maybe youtube videos... I don't see what the issue is.

 

[Red Storm]

All of this stuff, sans streaming media, is fine on 3G. I say this AND I use Sprint. Most sites have a mobile version so that's not an issue. Apps on android are tiny compared to iOS apps. The only time I turn on 4G is when I use youtube.

Considering during the day, my 3g drops down as low as 50KB/sec and my smartphone usage is fine, I really don't see a need to go full blast on 4G for any of those reasons above.

I'm not saying that the power usage issues of 4G are to be ignored, just saying that we're not at a point that it's viable to leave the 4G radio on all day.

I didn't know your web pages were loading instantly on 3G.

Maybe you're just used to waiting for things to load on a mobile device, but 4G definitely helps speed that up. 3G is "fine" the same way DSL is "fine". People like faster access and that's what 4G gives.

 

[iahk]

Well it depends what you're looking at. Like I said before, most websites (at least the ones I go to) have mobile versions, which are fine. If I ever need to goto a full desktop version of a website, it would probably be less than 5 times a month. On top of that, for most news I read, I have it in my rss reader so I can read it at a glance, and if I want to read the whole article, again, it takes me to the mobile version of the site.

Also, I didn't say 3G was fine for everything by any means. I was saying that you don't need 4G on all the time as of right now. The tradeoff is horrible. The OP was frustrated about the power consumption of 4G radios so this is the option we have right now. Flip it on when we need it, otherwise leave it off.