When does the 3G processing become the bottleneck

[geoffreymac]

Hi Guys

New here, but wanted to pose a question.

been using a iPhone 3G since it came out.

I was wondering, what is my bottleneck with slow pages internet etc, is it the 3G connection or the processing power/application handling of the phone itself that is causing the load delay ? I use a wireless connection to my 25MB broadband, and while I do see a diffrence, not a 20x diffrence.

So if it is the processor holding it back, what is the iPhone 4G going to use to handle WiMax etc ?

Also, what is the rule of thumb with Snapdragon and Android, can it handle the full bandwitdth etc ?

Bit of a ramble, but interested in the comments

 

[Pliablemoose]

http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3587

Anand has been an iPhone fan, and has some great articles on the 3G VS the 3GS, answers a lot of your questions.

 

[geoffreymac]

thanks Pliablemoose, does that mean the 3GS can handle Wifi and 4g ?, or are we still bottlenecked.

 

[Pliablemoose]

The iPhone cannot receive 4G in its current form, it will require a new radio to receive it.

The architecture of the 3GS lends itself to faster processing of data via WiFi.

The new phone due out this year will likely not support the 4G RF spectrum.

Apple slightly confused the issue by using the names 3G and 3GS on its 2nd and 3rd generation iPhones...

 

[geoffreymac]

ah okay, I know the 4G in Iphone is not the connection type, but the generation, and know that 3g or 3gs are not 4g enabled.

From my understanding, thought that iPhone kinda needed 4g connection to stay competive as there are 4G enabled phones been release. I wonder what the big "thing" on 4g is going to be ? I know putting 802.11n is a very hard bit of engineering due to the MIMO area's and interference/space/radaition issues. Also wonder the processor, as I suspect a snapdragon cannot handle full 54MBps bandwidth.

 

[Pliablemoose]

There are no 4G enabled smartphones available yet, only 3G.

The first 4G smartphones are expected this summer through Sprint.

http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news...-broadband-driven-by-congestion-not-speed.ars

 

[dguy6789]

I doubt AT&T will need to change to 4G any time soon for the same reason T-Mobile doesn't have to. Only Sprint and Verizon need to get 4G out since their 3G speeds are already maxed out. The technology AT&T and T-Mobile use to provide service is capable of scaling up to 4G speeds and nearly all 3G compatible devices on the network could take full advantage of the speed boost without needing any hardware or firmware updates of any kind. As a result of this, you'll probably get 4G speeds on the iphone eventually. If it is fast enough to have the processor not be the bottleneck I don't know.

 

[geoffreymac]

actaully the Sprint HTC Evo is 4g- http://gizmodo.com/5500343/sprints-htc-evo-the-first-ever-4g-phone-meet-the-new-terrific

was released last week.

As for 4G coverage, AT&T is going 4g. Issue isn't the broadcast equipment actually the last mile connection from the base station to exchange.

great article -

http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news...tm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss (just seen we linked the same article)

I am more interested in were the current bottleneck in mobile data lies. Been such a long time since computers were limited by processing power. Are there new mobile chips been developed to broach the processing power of high speed internet surfing etc ?

 

[Pliablemoose]

actaully the Sprint HTC Evo is 4g- http://gizmodo.com/5500343/sprints-htc-evo-the-first-ever-4g-phone-meet-the-new-terrific

was released last week.

Theres a difference between announced and released, the Evo has been announced, not released.

dguy6789 is correct in that by TMobile & ATT implementing a few things and increasing the backhaul to its towers will provide near 4G speeds, I suspect that the 1GHZ and 1.5 GHZ CPUs will come near being able to process the increased bandwidth...

Google engineers have stated that in 2 years the nexus One will appear to be a toy compared to what they expect to have available on the market...

 

[vshah]

http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3587

Anand has been an iPhone fan, and has some great articles on the 3G VS the 3GS, answers a lot of your questions.

i really hope they re-run those benchmarks with the new gen of phones. just in some impromptu tests at my desk my N1 spanks everything there silly in terms of web/app load times. a full comparison after the next iphone is released would be great.

Google engineers have stated that in 2 years the nexus One will appear to be a toy compared to what they expect to have available on the market...

this gets me very excited....link?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

i really hope they re-run those benchmarks with the new gen of phones. just in some impromptu tests at my desk my N1 spanks everything there silly in terms of web/app load times. a full comparison after the next iphone is released would be great.



this gets me very excited....link?

Apparently the iPhone spanks the N1 in browser test:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMGkhBIqOMg

I think it's inaccurate to say the N1 is that fast. While on paper it's very fast, it has to support double the resolution of the iPhone. That is why the iPhone still remains very fast. Plus, Safari browser itself is insanely fast on a desktop. You can see how their browser is so low weight.

Android's stock browser is known as a shame. Dolphin improves on it. xScope is supposedly king. Maybe then loading times would be better.

That said, you have to give props to how Apple optimized their OS and browser for their given hardware. People can always talk about Nexus One and the 1ghz processor, but I feel as if Android uses a little more resources and can use some optimization still. It boggles me sometimes adding a widget/shortcut menu can take so long to show up on the N1.

Remember, this is the same reason why IE8 vs FF3.6 vs Chrome vs Opera vs Safari, it's clear the last 3 load pages almost instantly while FF3.6 is a tad slower and IE8 is stuck in the stone age. There's a lot of optimizations that can be done to improve browser speed.

 

[vshah]

Apparently the iPhone spanks the N1 in browser test:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMGkhBIqOMg

I think it's inaccurate to say the N1 is that fast. While on paper it's very fast, it has to support double the resolution of the iPhone. That is why the iPhone still remains very fast. Plus, Safari browser itself is insanely fast on a desktop. You can see how their browser is so low weight.

Android's stock browser is known as a shame. Dolphin improves on it. xScope is supposedly king. Maybe then loading times would be better.

That said, you have to give props to how Apple optimized their OS and browser for their given hardware. People can always talk about Nexus One and the 1ghz processor, but I feel as if Android uses a little more resources and can use some optimization still. It boggles me sometimes adding a widget/shortcut menu can take so long to show up on the N1.

Remember, this is the same reason why IE8 vs FF3.6 vs Chrome vs Opera vs Safari, it's clear the last 3 load pages almost instantly while FF3.6 is a tad slower and IE8 is stuck in the stone age. There's a lot of optimizations that can be done to improve browser speed.

apple does have a unique ability to optimize, something that is lacking atm on the android side. in response to that video though, i've seen several where the N1 is faster. I prefer timed "against the clock" videos where the devices aren't accessing the wifi simultaneously as well.

i guess overall they are roughly even. perhaps there have even been more optimizations to the iphone since AT's comparison test. going by those old-ish numbers for app loading however my N1 is always faster. never takes more than a second. that is probably one case where the 1ghz cpu and added ram helps a great deal and isn't held back by things like the poor javascript performance etc. supposedly there's a new JS engine coming to android's browser soon. it was in a cyanogen release recently but was reverted due to compatibility issues. The performance of the android browser is so software/code limited right now that my N1 on 3g is much, much faster loading pages than my G1 is on wifi.

may i also point out that adding widgets to the desktop is something you can only do on android right now so there's no point of reference for comparison on the platforms (correct me if i'm wrong please).

 

[Pliablemoose]

i really hope they re-run those benchmarks with the new gen of phones. just in some impromptu tests at my desk my N1 spanks everything there silly in terms of web/app load times. a full comparison after the next iphone is released would be great.



this gets me very excited....link?

i forget where k read it, but that's an exact quote...

 

[dguy6789]

Apparently the iPhone spanks the N1 in browser test:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMGkhBIqOMg

I think it's inaccurate to say the N1 is that fast. While on paper it's very fast, it has to support double the resolution of the iPhone. That is why the iPhone still remains very fast. Plus, Safari browser itself is insanely fast on a desktop. You can see how their browser is so low weight.

Android's stock browser is known as a shame. Dolphin improves on it. xScope is supposedly king. Maybe then loading times would be better.

That said, you have to give props to how Apple optimized their OS and browser for their given hardware. People can always talk about Nexus One and the 1ghz processor, but I feel as if Android uses a little more resources and can use some optimization still. It boggles me sometimes adding a widget/shortcut menu can take so long to show up on the N1.

Remember, this is the same reason why IE8 vs FF3.6 vs Chrome vs Opera vs Safari, it's clear the last 3 load pages almost instantly while FF3.6 is a tad slower and IE8 is stuck in the stone age. There's a lot of optimizations that can be done to improve browser speed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p01JCj0CPUo

Like I mentioned in another thread, Engadget is pretty much the only site that says the Iphone browses as fast as the N1. Engadget is also pretty much the only website that gave the Iphone the edge over the N1 in a head to head comparison. Their bias is pretty apparent no? Everyone else tests and shows the N1 being consistently faster.

 

[zerocool84]

apple does have a unique ability to optimize, something that is lacking atm on the android side.

Well it's very different to optimize for all the different variations of hardware for Android compared to the very few for Apple. Apple locks down their hardware/software and it makes it easy for them to optimize things for it compared to a more open platform like Android. It's just something you give up when you have to run the same software across different hardware configurations. If Apple ever licensed out their OS's, iPhone or OSX, they would suffer the same problems as the other companies do.

 

[Pliablemoose]

Apple needs to buy ATT.