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Is 3g speed enough?

AMDisTheBEST

AMDisTheBEST

Senior member
I have cricket as my carrier. I have heard that their 3g speed is capped at 4mbs by AT&T. I plan to import a smartphone from china which does not support American LTE. It will work on 3g tho. This is the phone i wish to purchase http://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_redmi_note_3-7769.php
And I live in New York City and I stream 720p videos a lot on my phone. Is the cricket wireless in NYC fast enough for my needs?
 
What's the point of importing a phone that doesn't support US LTE, especially with the plethora of phones available on the US market that do support LTE? I wouldn't want to live on 3G in NYC now that I have access to LTE.
 
3g is fine for web pages, audio, and low bitrate video.

The biggest "problem" with 3g in the US is it is an overloaded network. Major cities, like NY, have abysmal speeds. And while you can argue as more people get 4g phones, the 3g network becomes more uncrowded, but for years now the 3g infrastructure has gotten no new hardware and no infrastructure upgrades. Failing 3g towers will be phased into 4g.

Id like to know as well, what 3g phone is worth importing when you can find 4g phones dirt cheap here on prepaid.
 
shabby said:
You tell us.
Click to expand...

I don't know because my previous phone runs on cricket LTE. Cricket LTE is only 2x faster than cricket max 3g. It is capped by AT&T at 8mbs max and on average, i receive 5mbs indoors and 5-8 outdoors. My home wifi runs at similar speed. 5mbs which streams HD video just fine. The reason I asked is that I don't know the actual 3g speed cricket runs at.
 
JeffMD said:
3g is fine for web pages, audio, and low bitrate video.

The biggest "problem" with 3g in the US is it is an overloaded network. Major cities, like NY, have abysmal speeds. And while you can argue as more people get 4g phones, the 3g network becomes more uncrowded, but for years now the 3g infrastructure has gotten no new hardware and no infrastructure upgrades. Failing 3g towers will be phased into 4g.

Id like to know as well, what 3g phone is worth importing when you can find 4g phones dirt cheap here on prepaid.
Click to expand...

I know that. My first phone is a LTE htc desire 510 which I've gotten for free from cricket on a contract. I am not happy with that phone thus why I wish to purchase a new one. Digging through all the reviews, Chinese phones, especially the redmi note 3 seem to be the best for the money. Redmi note 3 is a flagship killer which outright destroys the previous year's 600 dollars+ flagships in performance at a mere 200 USD. It does support LTE but only... pretty much everywhere in the world EXCEPT USA. Phone's LTE works in Europe, India, Asia, Africa ,Latin America, just not the America 🙁
 
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it's not just about speed

LTE offers lower latency

though cricket funnels everything through a proxy on their server-end, not sure if 3G latency is that much slower than LTE latency
 
paperwastage said:
it's not just about speed

LTE offers lower latency

though cricket funnels everything through a proxy on their server-end, not sure if 3G latency is that much slower than LTE latency
Click to expand...

Don't some LTE frequencies perform better inside structures as well?

-KeithP
 
KeithP said:
Don't some LTE frequencies perform better inside structures as well?

-KeithP
Click to expand...

that's more of a function of frequency

any 700mhz signal would penetrate better than 1900mhz signal, doesn't matter which technology.

but LTE is more fragile than 3G, you'll maintain the 3G signal for longer than LTE (on the same frequency)
 
AMDisTheBEST said:
I don't know because my previous phone runs on cricket LTE. Cricket LTE is only 2x faster than cricket max 3g. It is capped by AT&T at 8mbs max and on average, i receive 5mbs indoors and 5-8 outdoors. My home wifi runs at similar speed. 5mbs which streams HD video just fine. The reason I asked is that I don't know the actual 3g speed cricket runs at.
Click to expand...

You can set the phone to run at 3g in the settings.
 
The problem is that while 3G gave me 7-10mbps easily on my Nexus 4, AT&T has done a lot of refarming. There's defintiely 1900 MHz LTE in my area now and that means 3G capacity is being cut down. Who knows if you can still get great speeds, but personally I'm ok with 3G as long as the speeds are acceptable.
 
I'd be concerned about battery life as well. 3g means the radio spends far more time on. These days its all about the race to idle.
 
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