Apple at it's same tricks really.. Since they couldn't deliver on 4G, they think.. oh well let's just put the 4G icon on there even thought it's not.. Users will eat it up and it's all good.
This is what's disgusting about that company. Not to mention the idiot users using their phones now yapping and yapping how iPhone 4S actually has 4G..
I can already hear it : "Yeah, iPhone 4S owns because WE DO HAVE 4G.. you see.. there it says 4G in the corner"
Putting 4G in the status indicator is still a rumor, not a fact. Also, it isn't Apple who's touting 4G. In fact, if you saw the keynote, Apple never claims that 4S has 4G, but that others who markets their phones with 4G in their name, has the same speed as the iPhone 4S. Get your facts straight before you get too sick.
Name examples of "same tricks", please. You'll notice that the nonsense 4G indicator wasn't in iOS5, AT&T is requesting it, so it's "same tricks" for AT&T, surely.
Dude, Siri is a collection of web-based services that the device interacts with. The device uses voice recognition to work out what information to send to the web service(s), and that's it. Thus, any device that supports voice recognition and network access (i.e. virtually all of them) can work with Siri just fine.
Apple is the one who pulled Siri support from earlier iPhone models (by killing the Siri app on the app store), to attempt to force people to upgrade to the 4S. Previous iPhone models can/could run Siri just fine. Any device with voice recognition can run Siri if a proper web-service bridge is written for it. There is nothing special about Siri, and nothing that restricts it to running on the iPhone 4S. Except for Apple's marketing strategy.
Um, Siri (the app) is not the same as the current iteration of Siri (integrated). As a user of both, it is laughable to compare the two.
Siri (the app) was woefully inaccurate, as well as slow, and the creator even said it took a lot of work (and reducing some features) to get it to work on a mobile device such as the 4 or 3GS. The app also couldn't access anything on the phone, didn't speak to you, and wouldn't really converse for you.
Siri (integrated) on the other hand is very accurate, even in areas with high ambient noise, and is likely due to the better speaker and microphone on the 4S. It also runs considerably faster (due to the A5 chip), and speaks and converses with you. You can also access things on the phone, like to-dos, SMS, etc.
I know you think you're smart because you are aware that Siri was originally an app in the App Store and therefore spew on about how Apple just pulled it to market their new handset. In all likelihood, the 4 probably can support a somewhat limited and less accurate Siri, but Apple is already biting off a lot to chew and the product is only beta. If I were a large company, I'd reduce the risk by controlling the beta test by limiting to devices designed to run it most effectively. At some point, I expect Siri (integrated) to be available on multiple iOS and Apple devices.
The guy is slamming Apple for an unsubstantiated rumor about 4G iconography and people are pointing out that Android products include 4G IN THE NAME and yet aren't true 4G.
Apple being honest makes you sick? I'm not understanding. No where in the keynote did they tout 4G. It's the other carriers and their misleading crap that do, and if we are going there, it's those Fandroids that claim they are the best and have ridiculous claims and claim that they did it first, when in reality, which is too bad because Android has come out with some good things, but Android wouldn't exist without Apple paving the way for it. It's uneducated comments like this that make this world a biased mess.
Could you stop being a mindless troll? Apple is NOT doing this. They don't have a 4G. I'm disgusted at you be ause you don't know how to read and analyze. Oh by the way, lots of android phones are doing this, Apple isn't.
Did you even read the article,bozofied? HSPA+ in the iPhone is faster than LTE, and thus, legitimately is a fourth generation speed.
The idea that Apple "couldn't deliver" on 4G is a lie. The reality is, they did. Further, LTE chipsets are not power efficient enough, so Apple chose to go with the choice that gave 4G performance while also being battery efficient.
I have to laugh at the stupid idiots who just buy LTE hardware and never have a working phone because the batteries always dead.
Your ignorance and dishonesty is what makes you sick. Oh, and jealousy that apple makes a better product.
After all ,that's the root of all the Apple hate.
I understand it when it comes to computers and poor people can't afford a Mac because apple doesn't make low end machines.
But phones have a subsidy model. Surely, even you can afford a genuine iPhone!
Um, I'm an Apple fan and defender, but you're reading the chart wrong. DC-HSPA is capable of speeds faster than LTE (although only in ideal situations with no network congestion). Right now, the iPhone 4S supports 14.4mb/s downloads max, and that's only in areas where AT&T (in the U.S.) supports that network technology.
LTE is currently much faster, not to mention it is less congested.
The problem is that LTE built into SoC's is not available till Q1 or Q2 2012, and the non-integrated solutions mean decreased battery life. Also, LTE is still limited, and is mostly a U.S. technology for right now.
What matters is the real down and up throughput of the device on the particular carrier.
I recommend that all of us users band together and create a database of real world performance for the phones we use on the carriers we use. Some of the database fields could be date, time, location, carrier, device, source from which data was ontained, notes, comments... Perhaps we could automate this with an App for the different devices that would automate the collection and database population at the puch of a single button.
Let's not all jump to conclusions, let alone get sick, until we have some actual real world data in our hands.
Also let's not denigrate people for their choice of tool (iPhone, Galaxy S II, Blackberry, etc.) - THEY ARE TOOLS PEOPLE, NOT A RELIGION. It would be interesting if we had the Galaxy S crusades and the Balackberry crusades and the iPhone crusades, but is that what intelligent rationale people want?
Hi Brian, one noteworthy point that the media hasn't focused on much is that the iPhone 4S adds receive diversity. This should give a massive performance boost in average and weak signal conditions - 2x isn't an exaggeration. I expect that to have a significantly greater impact than the higher peak rates.
Also keep in mind that the higher HSPA+ data rates per MHz compared to LTE isn't realistic. The technical reason is simple: HSPA(+) can use more aggressive turbo coding, but in practice it can never be achieved except in absurdly ideal conditions (e.g. line-of-sight to tower). They removed this for LTE to slightly reduce redundant baseband complexity.
And before anyone accuses me of making excuses for Apple, I do have an iPhone 4, but I'm waiting for the Droid Prime :p
Bottom line, I knew the media would start calling HSPA+ "4G" once the iPHone got it.
Because the media only hates HSPA because ATT has it, and they hate ATT. If Verizon had it instead they'd be touting how great it was.
But the media is also of course insanely biased to Apple. So I literally knew the minute I saw the iPhone got HSPA, that the media was in a pickle, and would probably start calling HSPA 4G. And sure enough, we already have fanboy comments like yours saying HSPA is "real" 4G, just because Apple has it now.
Are you replying to the wrong post or do you have serious reading comprehension issues? I did not mention '4G' once in my post, and while my first point is favourable to the iPhone 4S, it applies just as much to quite a few Android superphones which also have receive diversity (I don't have a list off the top of my head). And my second point is negative - I'm pointing out 84Mbps vs 73Mbps for 10MHz is absurd because HSPA's 84Mbps is completely unrealistic whereas 73Mbps is slightly more realistic.µ
And frankly anyone who cares about '4G' is a moron. NTT-Docomo was one of the lead contributors to LTE and they called it 3.9G for a very long time because it didn't (and still doesn't without LTE-Advanced) meet the IMT-Advanced 4G specifications. These numbers are just that; arbitrary numbers. People seriously need to stop caring about them and only look at the network's real-world performance. Obviously Verizon's LTE has a very big advantage there today.
Relevant. Brian covered receive diversity in the VZW iPhone 4 review, which features the same baseband and antenna configuration. You're right to think it's a big deal and should improve the iPhones performance on GSM networks.
I read somewhere that iphone dropped infineon from their assembly....anyone know if this is true? If so, it'd mean the end of the drop call problem that has plagued the iphone since its birth....and it'd be the end of ATT being blamed by phanboyz.
Yes, we've talked about that as well. iPhone 4 used Infineon/Intel X-Gold 618. CDMA iPhone used Qualcomm MDM6600 and iPhone 4S undoubtably does as well.
This is actually something we did talk about immediately with the iPhone 4S in that announcement piece I mentioned in the article (Rx diversity and Tx switching between the two antennas): http://www.anandtech.com/show/4922/apple-iphone-4s... so we are definitely well aware of that, and also talked about it at length with the CDMA iPhone 4.
Interesting regarding turbo coding as well, though on both sides getting close to those theoretical maximum rates is absurd. Myself and others have done extensive testing literally next to an eNB with LTE gear (VZW 10 MHz FDD) with Cat 3 modems and see ~50 Mbps maximum. The point is that with the same features, HSPA+ could arguably be construed as "4G" and is recognized by ITU-R in that case.
While it is true that the bandwidth will be the most noticeable thing that differentiates 3G and 4G there are some other things to consider. As mentioned latency is one, which will be important for mobile broadband gamers.
Another important aspect is the handover latency when moving between cells, serving areas, and when roaming. For data applications this will probably not be all that important, except for certain services, but since LTE does not have any CS part it will be important for voice/video calls. I don't know if LTE/EPC improves on this over HSPA/UMTS but it will at least have to offer comparable values as CS over UMTS to be viable.
Umm, it wont be a "carrier incursion", it will be Apple lying again.
I love how desperately the media and fanboys try to make the (unfairly) hated AT&T the bad guy and the media fawned over Apple the good guy here. No matter the facts.
Guess you'd rather kiss up to Verizon and their horrendous 3G speeds (Att is 3x faster) and ridiculously overpriced phones (Thunderbolt is 249 on Verizon, Inspire which is essentially the same phone is 99 on ATT). Because Verizon is the "good guy", right? Isn't that the script?
"First carrier incursion", uhh, it says WORKING TOGETHER. And why is a 4G symbol an "carrier incursion" and a 3g symbol isn't?
How are they "essentially the same phone"? You realize you're commenting on an article about cellular technologies, right?
I don't remember who was presenting at the time, but during the iPhone 4S keynote the presenter actually mentioned "we don't want to get into the argument of what is true 4G and what isn't". I can't see them going back on that in matter of days. If "4G" gets put into the AT&T iPhone it will because of AT&T playing the bad guy, not apple.
That's not to say that apple hasn't had their fair share of marketing jibber jabber, something about a server grade hard drive comes to mind.
It is NOT 4G and HSPA+ is half the speeds in the table and LTE is double? The table is assuming dual-MIMO network support, where LTE has quad-MIMO network support, neither of which are guaranteed.
Here's the thing: whatever HSPA+ is supposed to be able to deliver in terms of speeds beyond 3G, AT&T's implementation just 'doesn't'.
I have an AT&T Infuse 4G (my company pays for it)...I've never seen it get faster rates than my AT&T iPhone 4 (my phone) - side by side, whereever I am, they have the exact same speed (infuse is actually slower half the time).
I've looked around for reviews on the web, and haven't found anyone getting anything but plain vanilla 3G speeds with HSPA+ on AT&T (I *have* seen reviews with much better speeds on HSPA+ on T-Mobile).
I get the feeling that AT&T upgraded a network segment which wasn't the bottleneck, like upgrading your wifi from 802.11b to 802.11n when your backhaul is 1.5 Mbps DSL.
It does depend on the backhaul of the tower serving you, so that part is correct, however there is a dramatic difference between the iPhone 4 (HSDPA 7.2) and other newer devices with HSDPA 14.4 or 21.1. In the case of the Infuse for example, I can get 9-10 Mbps (pre the latest update, which I won't get into...), whereas the iPhone 4 is literally at the limits of X-Gold 618 with 6.1 Mbps. We'll go into this at more length in that device's review.
I like the information covered in this article. I would like to see an expanded generic article covering all current "4G" technologies. A comparison of HSPA+, LTE, and WiMax and it would be helpful to also include future technologies like Sprints LTE, is it different then Verizons LTE implementation.
If this has already been written please post a link to it.
I was going to ask about the HSPA+ thing soon after the introduction of 4S, but got distracted and saddened by the lost of Steve Jobs. Again, R.I.P.
I was and had always under the impression HSPA+ start at 21Mb/s, and it has to support All IP Network. Since we moved to 3G too early in the early 20s and everyone had gotten used to crappy 3G services, i can understand the frustration and renaming of 4G. All IP Network and 21Mb/s was enough for a break until we get LTE Advanced where we start calling 100Mb/s Mobile Network 5G. At least, i think that is there plan.
However you are now telling me All IP, 21Mb/Mbs, and all other quality assurance and improvement in HSPA+ are OPTIONAL!!!.
My God isn't this like selling a Ferrari and then realize every parts inside are actually Toyota, and all the advertised speed and engine and things are optional extra?
Then there is 4G LTE, which last time i heard doesn't even have a standard for voice yet and are currently using Fall back to UMTS for Voice Signal.
No Wonder why Intel / WiMax wanted to change the Industry, No Wonder why apple wanted to control more of it. What a pile of disgusting mess.
As shown in the diagram at the top of the article, LTE does have a common voice standard, it's Common IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem). Carriers have not yet widely deployed and enabled IMS in their networks at this time. Handoffs between IMS over LTE and 3G services are complicated, which is one reason this is not in production use. Both the carrier and the handset have to support both modes, and work well before a carrier will deploy it. In the US, things are more complicated by having different underlying fallbacks, namely CDMA and UMTS/GSM. Add in complications related to roaming between carriers, and its a tough nut to crack. But, IMS is the future of wireless voice service from carriers as LTE deployments continue. Verizon has expectations to deploy IMS-based volce over LTE sometime in 2012.
There was some effort to use VoLGA (Voice over LTE Generic Access) rather than IMS by Deutsche Telecom as an interim measure, but this effort seems to have stopped. This was the only other viable option for Voice over LTE, other than over-the-top protocols like Skype.
I know you talked about Rx Diversity and it's a very good thing you did :) My point was it's easy to underestimate how much of a performance impact it can have - as I said close to 2x in weak signal conditions (which if anything is where it matters most) is fairly realistic.
50Mbps out of 73Mbps does seem slightly low but I suspect there's a very good reason for that: MIMO doesn't work as well at low frequencies since the signals can go through walls rather than bounce around. And this might be even more obvious at small distances. Receive diversity keeps working though so two antennas is still very much worth the trouble.
And yes, this means LTE performance at 2.6GHz will be slightly faster than at 700MHz if you can get a very good signal, and that's before you consider 20MHz vs 10MHz deployments. But in reality the signal will fade off so much faster and so much bandwidth will be wasted by people using it indoors with a weak signal that 700MHz will remain the clear leader. Unless you created a much denser network with picocells, and long-term that's the future, but another problem for another day :)
Oh and just one more point - the ITU-R did *not* intend to recognise anything as 4G except devices based on standards compliant with IMT-Advanced. The ONLY standards compliant IMT-Advanced that are LTE-Advanced (won't be deployed for at least a few more years) and WiMax2 (aka 802.16m, aka completely dead in the water). The only company which was honest about this was NTT Docomo which called their LTE roadmap '3.9G' until operators pressured the ITU-R to allow practically anything to be called 4G. These branding wars have always been meaningless.
"As the most advanced technologies currently defined for global wireless mobile broadband communications, IMT-Advanced is considered as “4G”, although it is recognized that this term, while undefined, may also be applied to the forerunners of these technologies, LTE and WiMax, and to other evolved 3G technologies providing a substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities with respect to the initial third generation systems now deployed."
This is what I'm referring to above and in our other LTE piece where we discuss what real 4G is. I'm in total agreement though, the correct way to have solved this is to choose some intermediary number like 3.9G or similar - I couldn't agree more. Obviously they also didn't intend for HSPA+ with none of the additional features (DC/MIMO) to be 4G either.
This wouldn't be the first intrusion and won't be the last. While Apple has successfully kept crapware off the iPhone, there are a few examples of AT&T's influence on the iPhone, the most vivid the bars/death grip "issue".
I worked for 15 years in telecom, specifically handset design and AT&T inherited a poor cell layout plan from Cingular and SBC. As a result, the handset specs mandate a higher than usual power level scheme that wasn't per R99. Carrier specs also typically mandate bar interfaces. On top of that, remember the "more bars in more places" ad campaign? ATT mandated a skewed bar scheme that Apple used until death grip popped up and Apple apparently fell on their sword to correct the "error".
Here's to hoping their will be less intrusion going forward...
Apple chose not to call the AT&T version of its phone 4G so as not to bastardize the Verizon version, which clearly cannot be called 4G, at least as subsidized under contract with Verizon.
Why would Apple even want their customers to consider that buying an iPhone for an LTE network isn't the brightest idea in the world, and they're actually getting LESS than the folks on AT&T?
They wouldn't. And that's why they didn't. It's exactly the kind of thoughts Apple wants to keep out of people's heads.
If the carriers fight about it, it's a network issue. If Apple brings it up, it's a hardware issue.
In my mind, the line between generations should be defined not by technology or specifications, but by what a given standard enables. 3G gave us a huge boost in throughput that enabled a whole slew of rich applications, from Netflix to video calling. So what about 4G?
Bumping up the throughput in an incremental fashion, be it from HSPA+ or LTE, that's not enough by itself. It doesn't enable anything we couldn't do before. We might be able to do it a bit better, but there is nothing that was impossible or impractical before that is suddenly possible by having 14.4Mbps HSDPA instead of 7.2Mbps HSDPA.
Latency, on the other hand, does have the potential to be transformative. LTE cuts the latency roughly in half in the real world, or better. We go from 140ms to 70ms, with an effective phone-to-phone latency of let's say 300ms dropping to 150ms.
What does that enable? Tons of stuff. Real-time action gaming, for example. When Carmack was adding multiplayer to the mobile version of Doom, he decided to only support wifi and bluetooth, because the 300ms+ latency he was seeing phone-to-phone over 3G was just not practical for an FPS (even with the best prediction and latency compensation). But drop that down to 150ms and suddenly you're in the realm of playable FPS games. This is true of other types of games too, not just FPS. Some games worked fine with 300ms or higher latency, but some twitch games really needed latency to drop a bunch before they were practical, and now they have.
There are other areas where we'll see big improvements too. VoIP is something that was possible over 3G, despite the latency, but will work a heck of a lot better with LTE's lower latency (and hopefully lower jitter). And I'm sure there are numerous other areas that I haven't even thought of that will see big advancements.
While you are correct in the basic premise, that delay is important, you assume incorrectly that LTE guarantees lower delays.
The delay is mainly due to network architecture and the latest WCDMA architecture is identical to that of LTE (actually even flatter if you take into account the duality of SAE-GW and PDN-GW in LTE).
A modern WCDMA network should offer around 60-100ms RTTs today and those operators that go for the flattened WCDMA architecture,, should be able to offer latencies below 60ms. I've personally seen production equipment in test labs doing sub 30ms.
Thanks for the article, but I'm a bit more confused now than before (though perhaps less misinformed) .
Which phones have DC-HSPA? Does the iPhone 4S have DC-HSPA or does it have HSPA+ 14.4 as implied by the bar chart? Can one expect HSPA+ 21 to be proportionally faster than HSPA+ 14.4? How does HSPA+ 21 compare to LTE?
i have never seen mobile devices used any more then HSDPA 7.2mbs in the uk that is, i have hardly ever seen an phone do more then 2mb in the uk (apart from O2 i can some times nearly max out my HTC desire HSDPA out)
as no network is going to upgrade the masks for faster HSDPA, on top of that 500MB to 1GB an month usage is pointless for LTE or HSDPA in Most cases (unless your on giffgaff that is:) )
LTE in the uk would be 4G as it should be able to do speeds higher then 10mb
UMTS and HSDPA is 3g or 3g+/H (some phones show 3g+ for HSDPA)
just wish phone makers would allow HSDPA to be turned off so we can use UMTS only (uses way less power but still very good for Browsing)
There are many features that define an UE as HSPA+. Still, the main driver of UTRAN evolution is throughput.
Then, saying that the iPhone 4S is HSPA+ is wrong. According to the table above, the MDM6600 is HSPA+ as it implements HSPA+ WCDMA Air interfaces. If it's so, how come the most basic feature of HSPA+ air interface, 64QAM is left behind?
The perspective of this analysis, and the fact that it's even considering a future 4G tag for such "HSPA+" goes beyond wrong, seems to be even manipulated. HSPA+ minimum requirement in Air interface is 64QAM, but, that's not it. Multi-Cell Carrier implementation and MIMO, are supposed to take throughputs (theoretical peak) to 84 Mbps, 168 Mbps, even beyond (NSN just show 336 Mbps). In this analysis 14.4Mbps are enough, because there is implementation of CPC. This is totally wrong. IMO.
While Anand is correct that HSPA+ doesn't necessarily mean any speed increase (CPC, Voice over HSPA, FDPCH or any other new features would also do), I didn't see any real proof that it is an HSPA+ device. I could have also missed it in the article (ready for bed).
I know that the qualcomm feature chart claims this, but where's the proof? What HSPA+ features does the iP4 have? It would be VERY interesting to know if it supports for example CPC or better yet, standardised Fast Dormancy instead of the network breaking implementation found in iP3GS and iP4. Any data on this?
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Drasca - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
Thanks for the explanation. Nice to see everything in perspectiveBozzified - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
Apple at it's same tricks really.. Since they couldn't deliver on 4G, they think.. oh well let's just put the 4G icon on there even thought it's not.. Users will eat it up and it's all good.This is what's disgusting about that company. Not to mention the idiot users using their phones now yapping and yapping how iPhone 4S actually has 4G..
I can already hear it : "Yeah, iPhone 4S owns because WE DO HAVE 4G.. you see.. there it says 4G in the corner"
Makes me sick.
Yuniverse - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
Putting 4G in the status indicator is still a rumor, not a fact. Also, it isn't Apple who's touting 4G. In fact, if you saw the keynote, Apple never claims that 4S has 4G, but that others who markets their phones with 4G in their name, has the same speed as the iPhone 4S. Get your facts straight before you get too sick.zeagus - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
Name examples of "same tricks", please. You'll notice that the nonsense 4G indicator wasn't in iOS5, AT&T is requesting it, so it's "same tricks" for AT&T, surely.jleach1 - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
Don't be naive. All carriers, and all companies hype up their crap.iphone 4's have no trouble using dictation, google voice, or voice controls, yet i can see a future where the iphone is left out of the siri updates.
Apple is out to sell you phones, and the carriers are out to sell you data and text packages. They both use market ploys to do so.
Engineering - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
OMG, you don't even know what you're talking about.There's a difference between voice control and siri.
But then, this is Apple, so people like you feel comfortable telling blatant lies.
rs2 - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Dude, Siri is a collection of web-based services that the device interacts with. The device uses voice recognition to work out what information to send to the web service(s), and that's it. Thus, any device that supports voice recognition and network access (i.e. virtually all of them) can work with Siri just fine.Apple is the one who pulled Siri support from earlier iPhone models (by killing the Siri app on the app store), to attempt to force people to upgrade to the 4S. Previous iPhone models can/could run Siri just fine. Any device with voice recognition can run Siri if a proper web-service bridge is written for it. There is nothing special about Siri, and nothing that restricts it to running on the iPhone 4S. Except for Apple's marketing strategy.
Pendergast - Monday, October 17, 2011 - link
Um, Siri (the app) is not the same as the current iteration of Siri (integrated). As a user of both, it is laughable to compare the two.Siri (the app) was woefully inaccurate, as well as slow, and the creator even said it took a lot of work (and reducing some features) to get it to work on a mobile device such as the 4 or 3GS. The app also couldn't access anything on the phone, didn't speak to you, and wouldn't really converse for you.
Siri (integrated) on the other hand is very accurate, even in areas with high ambient noise, and is likely due to the better speaker and microphone on the 4S. It also runs considerably faster (due to the A5 chip), and speaks and converses with you. You can also access things on the phone, like to-dos, SMS, etc.
I know you think you're smart because you are aware that Siri was originally an app in the App Store and therefore spew on about how Apple just pulled it to market their new handset. In all likelihood, the 4 probably can support a somewhat limited and less accurate Siri, but Apple is already biting off a lot to chew and the product is only beta. If I were a large company, I'd reduce the risk by controlling the beta test by limiting to devices designed to run it most effectively. At some point, I expect Siri (integrated) to be available on multiple iOS and Apple devices.
Euphonious - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
So Apple are the bad guys because of a completely unconfirmed rumor that they'll brand a non-4G technology as 4G?When the Android competition are actually *naming phones* 4G left, right and center - because they support some non-4G technology?
robindurden - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
woah there, angry bears...does anyone else find this comment hilarious? i've learned that the one's that call out "fanboys" are "fanboys" of another.
motorola atrix 4G, LG thrill 4G, HTC inspire 4G, iphone4s.... anyone else read the graph?
Ammaross - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
I'll believe the graph when it has Anand's name in the copyright. Until then, it's just lies and statistics.Tegeril - Monday, October 10, 2011 - link
You missed the point entirely.The guy is slamming Apple for an unsubstantiated rumor about 4G iconography and people are pointing out that Android products include 4G IN THE NAME and yet aren't true 4G.
Engineering - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
I wouldn't say he missed the point so much as he's dishonest.RD3AV5 - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Apple being honest makes you sick? I'm not understanding. No where in the keynote did they tout 4G. It's the other carriers and their misleading crap that do, and if we are going there, it's those Fandroids that claim they are the best and have ridiculous claims and claim that they did it first, when in reality, which is too bad because Android has come out with some good things, but Android wouldn't exist without Apple paving the way for it. It's uneducated comments like this that make this world a biased mess.skumancer - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Could you stop being a mindless troll? Apple is NOT doing this. They don't have a 4G. I'm disgusted at you be ause you don't know how to read and analyze. Oh by the way, lots of android phones are doing this, Apple isn't.Engineering - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Did you even read the article,bozofied? HSPA+ in the iPhone is faster than LTE, and thus, legitimately is a fourth generation speed.The idea that Apple "couldn't deliver" on 4G is a lie. The reality is, they did. Further, LTE chipsets are not power efficient enough, so Apple chose to go with the choice that gave 4G performance while also being battery efficient.
I have to laugh at the stupid idiots who just buy LTE hardware and never have a working phone because the batteries always dead.
Your ignorance and dishonesty is what makes you sick. Oh, and jealousy that apple makes a better product.
After all ,that's the root of all the Apple hate.
I understand it when it comes to computers and poor people can't afford a Mac because apple doesn't make low end machines.
But phones have a subsidy model. Surely, even you can afford a genuine iPhone!
Pendergast - Monday, October 17, 2011 - link
Um, I'm an Apple fan and defender, but you're reading the chart wrong. DC-HSPA is capable of speeds faster than LTE (although only in ideal situations with no network congestion). Right now, the iPhone 4S supports 14.4mb/s downloads max, and that's only in areas where AT&T (in the U.S.) supports that network technology.LTE is currently much faster, not to mention it is less congested.
The problem is that LTE built into SoC's is not available till Q1 or Q2 2012, and the non-integrated solutions mean decreased battery life. Also, LTE is still limited, and is mostly a U.S. technology for right now.
bettercitizens - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
What matters is the real down and up throughput of the device on the particular carrier.I recommend that all of us users band together and create a database of real world performance for the phones we use on the carriers we use. Some of the database fields could be date, time, location, carrier, device, source from which data was ontained, notes, comments... Perhaps we could automate this with an App for the different devices that would automate the collection and database population at the puch of a single button.
Per MacWorlds review of iPhone 4S ( http://www.macworld.com/article/162944/2011/10/iph... ) "Still, in my tests I couldn’t get download speeds above 4.2Mbps on AT&T’s 3G network in the San Francisco area."
Let's not all jump to conclusions, let alone get sick, until we have some actual real world data in our hands.
Also let's not denigrate people for their choice of tool (iPhone, Galaxy S II, Blackberry, etc.) - THEY ARE TOOLS PEOPLE, NOT A RELIGION. It would be interesting if we had the Galaxy S crusades and the Balackberry crusades and the iPhone crusades, but is that what intelligent rationale people want?
adavidw - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
AT&T's "working together" is a strange way of saying, "We're asking Apple, and Apple keeps saying 'hell no'"Brian Klug - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
I seriously, seriously hope that's what it means, and nothing more. Throwing "4G" up top again will be the first carrier incursion into iOS.-Brian
ArunDemeure - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
Hi Brian, one noteworthy point that the media hasn't focused on much is that the iPhone 4S adds receive diversity. This should give a massive performance boost in average and weak signal conditions - 2x isn't an exaggeration. I expect that to have a significantly greater impact than the higher peak rates.Also keep in mind that the higher HSPA+ data rates per MHz compared to LTE isn't realistic. The technical reason is simple: HSPA(+) can use more aggressive turbo coding, but in practice it can never be achieved except in absurdly ideal conditions (e.g. line-of-sight to tower). They removed this for LTE to slightly reduce redundant baseband complexity.
And before anyone accuses me of making excuses for Apple, I do have an iPhone 4, but I'm waiting for the Droid Prime :p
bill4 - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
Bottom line, I knew the media would start calling HSPA+ "4G" once the iPHone got it.Because the media only hates HSPA because ATT has it, and they hate ATT. If Verizon had it instead they'd be touting how great it was.
But the media is also of course insanely biased to Apple. So I literally knew the minute I saw the iPhone got HSPA, that the media was in a pickle, and would probably start calling HSPA 4G. And sure enough, we already have fanboy comments like yours saying HSPA is "real" 4G, just because Apple has it now.
ArunDemeure - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
Are you replying to the wrong post or do you have serious reading comprehension issues? I did not mention '4G' once in my post, and while my first point is favourable to the iPhone 4S, it applies just as much to quite a few Android superphones which also have receive diversity (I don't have a list off the top of my head). And my second point is negative - I'm pointing out 84Mbps vs 73Mbps for 10MHz is absurd because HSPA's 84Mbps is completely unrealistic whereas 73Mbps is slightly more realistic.µAnd frankly anyone who cares about '4G' is a moron. NTT-Docomo was one of the lead contributors to LTE and they called it 3.9G for a very long time because it didn't (and still doesn't without LTE-Advanced) meet the IMT-Advanced 4G specifications. These numbers are just that; arbitrary numbers. People seriously need to stop caring about them and only look at the network's real-world performance. Obviously Verizon's LTE has a very big advantage there today.
DigitalFreak - Monday, October 10, 2011 - link
Who let the crack head in here?JasonInofuentes - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4163/verizon-iphone-...Relevant. Brian covered receive diversity in the VZW iPhone 4 review, which features the same baseband and antenna configuration. You're right to think it's a big deal and should improve the iPhones performance on GSM networks.
Enjoy your prime.
jleach1 - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
I read somewhere that iphone dropped infineon from their assembly....anyone know if this is true? If so, it'd mean the end of the drop call problem that has plagued the iphone since its birth....and it'd be the end of ATT being blamed by phanboyz.Brian Klug - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
Yes, we've talked about that as well. iPhone 4 used Infineon/Intel X-Gold 618. CDMA iPhone used Qualcomm MDM6600 and iPhone 4S undoubtably does as well.-Brian
Brian Klug - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
Arun,This is actually something we did talk about immediately with the iPhone 4S in that announcement piece I mentioned in the article (Rx diversity and Tx switching between the two antennas): http://www.anandtech.com/show/4922/apple-iphone-4s... so we are definitely well aware of that, and also talked about it at length with the CDMA iPhone 4.
Interesting regarding turbo coding as well, though on both sides getting close to those theoretical maximum rates is absurd. Myself and others have done extensive testing literally next to an eNB with LTE gear (VZW 10 MHz FDD) with Cat 3 modems and see ~50 Mbps maximum. The point is that with the same features, HSPA+ could arguably be construed as "4G" and is recognized by ITU-R in that case.
-Brian
eriwik - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
While it is true that the bandwidth will be the most noticeable thing that differentiates 3G and 4G there are some other things to consider. As mentioned latency is one, which will be important for mobile broadband gamers.Another important aspect is the handover latency when moving between cells, serving areas, and when roaming. For data applications this will probably not be all that important, except for certain services, but since LTE does not have any CS part it will be important for voice/video calls. I don't know if LTE/EPC improves on this over HSPA/UMTS but it will at least have to offer comparable values as CS over UMTS to be viable.
bill4 - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
Umm, it wont be a "carrier incursion", it will be Apple lying again.I love how desperately the media and fanboys try to make the (unfairly) hated AT&T the bad guy and the media fawned over Apple the good guy here. No matter the facts.
Guess you'd rather kiss up to Verizon and their horrendous 3G speeds (Att is 3x faster) and ridiculously overpriced phones (Thunderbolt is 249 on Verizon, Inspire which is essentially the same phone is 99 on ATT). Because Verizon is the "good guy", right? Isn't that the script?
"First carrier incursion", uhh, it says WORKING TOGETHER. And why is a 4G symbol an "carrier incursion" and a 3g symbol isn't?
mfenn - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
Because 3G is actually 3G?HibyPrime1 - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
Thunderbolt - LTEInspire - HSPA+
How are they "essentially the same phone"? You realize you're commenting on an article about cellular technologies, right?
I don't remember who was presenting at the time, but during the iPhone 4S keynote the presenter actually mentioned "we don't want to get into the argument of what is true 4G and what isn't". I can't see them going back on that in matter of days. If "4G" gets put into the AT&T iPhone it will because of AT&T playing the bad guy, not apple.
That's not to say that apple hasn't had their fair share of marketing jibber jabber, something about a server grade hard drive comes to mind.
Pendergast - Monday, October 17, 2011 - link
Again? When did Apple lie?sleepeeg3 - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
It is NOT 4G and HSPA+ is half the speeds in the table and LTE is double? The table is assuming dual-MIMO network support, where LTE has quad-MIMO network support, neither of which are guaranteed.The table in this article seems to reflect that, with LTE boasting 4x the theoretical transmission rates:
http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/cellulartele...
This article was needlessly complicated just to explain away the iPhone 4S's 4G deficiency.
If you want a true 4G phone or a Super AMOLED+ screen w/expandibility, buy a Samsung Galaxy S II.
sleepeeg3 - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
Edit: Sorry, scratch that last line. Forgot LTE was not shipping to the US on the SGSII, except on Verizon.stationstops - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
Here's the thing: whatever HSPA+ is supposed to be able to deliver in terms of speeds beyond 3G, AT&T's implementation just 'doesn't'.I have an AT&T Infuse 4G (my company pays for it)...I've never seen it get faster rates than my AT&T iPhone 4 (my phone) - side by side, whereever I am, they have the exact same speed (infuse is actually slower half the time).
I've looked around for reviews on the web, and haven't found anyone getting anything but plain vanilla 3G speeds with HSPA+ on AT&T (I *have* seen reviews with much better speeds on HSPA+ on T-Mobile).
I get the feeling that AT&T upgraded a network segment which wasn't the bottleneck, like upgrading your wifi from 802.11b to 802.11n when your backhaul is 1.5 Mbps DSL.
Brian Klug - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
It does depend on the backhaul of the tower serving you, so that part is correct, however there is a dramatic difference between the iPhone 4 (HSDPA 7.2) and other newer devices with HSDPA 14.4 or 21.1. In the case of the Infuse for example, I can get 9-10 Mbps (pre the latest update, which I won't get into...), whereas the iPhone 4 is literally at the limits of X-Gold 618 with 6.1 Mbps. We'll go into this at more length in that device's review.-Brian
fancarolina - Monday, October 10, 2011 - link
I like the information covered in this article. I would like to see an expanded generic article covering all current "4G" technologies. A comparison of HSPA+, LTE, and WiMax and it would be helpful to also include future technologies like Sprints LTE, is it different then Verizons LTE implementation.If this has already been written please post a link to it.
iwod - Monday, October 10, 2011 - link
I was going to ask about the HSPA+ thing soon after the introduction of 4S, but got distracted and saddened by the lost of Steve Jobs. Again, R.I.P.I was and had always under the impression HSPA+ start at 21Mb/s, and it has to support All IP Network. Since we moved to 3G too early in the early 20s and everyone had gotten used to crappy 3G services, i can understand the frustration and renaming of 4G. All IP Network and 21Mb/s was enough for a break until we get LTE Advanced where we start calling 100Mb/s Mobile Network 5G. At least, i think that is there plan.
However you are now telling me All IP, 21Mb/Mbs, and all other quality assurance and improvement in HSPA+ are OPTIONAL!!!.
My God isn't this like selling a Ferrari and then realize every parts inside are actually Toyota, and all the advertised speed and engine and things are optional extra?
Then there is 4G LTE, which last time i heard doesn't even have a standard for voice yet and are currently using Fall back to UMTS for Voice Signal.
No Wonder why Intel / WiMax wanted to change the Industry, No Wonder why apple wanted to control more of it. What a pile of disgusting mess.
jhh - Monday, October 10, 2011 - link
As shown in the diagram at the top of the article, LTE does have a common voice standard, it's Common IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem). Carriers have not yet widely deployed and enabled IMS in their networks at this time. Handoffs between IMS over LTE and 3G services are complicated, which is one reason this is not in production use. Both the carrier and the handset have to support both modes, and work well before a carrier will deploy it. In the US, things are more complicated by having different underlying fallbacks, namely CDMA and UMTS/GSM. Add in complications related to roaming between carriers, and its a tough nut to crack. But, IMS is the future of wireless voice service from carriers as LTE deployments continue. Verizon has expectations to deploy IMS-based volce over LTE sometime in 2012.There was some effort to use VoLGA (Voice over LTE Generic Access) rather than IMS by Deutsche Telecom as an interim measure, but this effort seems to have stopped. This was the only other viable option for Voice over LTE, other than over-the-top protocols like Skype.
ArunDemeure - Monday, October 10, 2011 - link
I know you talked about Rx Diversity and it's a very good thing you did :) My point was it's easy to underestimate how much of a performance impact it can have - as I said close to 2x in weak signal conditions (which if anything is where it matters most) is fairly realistic.50Mbps out of 73Mbps does seem slightly low but I suspect there's a very good reason for that: MIMO doesn't work as well at low frequencies since the signals can go through walls rather than bounce around. And this might be even more obvious at small distances. Receive diversity keeps working though so two antennas is still very much worth the trouble.
And yes, this means LTE performance at 2.6GHz will be slightly faster than at 700MHz if you can get a very good signal, and that's before you consider 20MHz vs 10MHz deployments. But in reality the signal will fade off so much faster and so much bandwidth will be wasted by people using it indoors with a weak signal that 700MHz will remain the clear leader. Unless you created a much denser network with picocells, and long-term that's the future, but another problem for another day :)
ArunDemeure - Monday, October 10, 2011 - link
Oh and just one more point - the ITU-R did *not* intend to recognise anything as 4G except devices based on standards compliant with IMT-Advanced. The ONLY standards compliant IMT-Advanced that are LTE-Advanced (won't be deployed for at least a few more years) and WiMax2 (aka 802.16m, aka completely dead in the water). The only company which was honest about this was NTT Docomo which called their LTE roadmap '3.9G' until operators pressured the ITU-R to allow practically anything to be called 4G. These branding wars have always been meaningless.Brian Klug - Monday, October 10, 2011 - link
Arun,This is somewhat true, though did you see the revised ITU-R rules? http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/...
"As the most advanced technologies currently defined for global wireless mobile broadband communications, IMT-Advanced is considered as “4G”, although it is recognized that this term, while undefined, may also be applied to the forerunners of these technologies, LTE and WiMax, and to other evolved 3G technologies providing a substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities with respect to the initial third generation systems now deployed."
This is what I'm referring to above and in our other LTE piece where we discuss what real 4G is. I'm in total agreement though, the correct way to have solved this is to choose some intermediary number like 3.9G or similar - I couldn't agree more. Obviously they also didn't intend for HSPA+ with none of the additional features (DC/MIMO) to be 4G either.
-Brian
Binkley - Monday, October 10, 2011 - link
This wouldn't be the first intrusion and won't be the last. While Apple has successfully kept crapware off the iPhone, there are a few examples of AT&T's influence on the iPhone, the most vivid the bars/death grip "issue".I worked for 15 years in telecom, specifically handset design and AT&T inherited a poor cell layout plan from Cingular and SBC. As a result, the handset specs mandate a higher than usual power level scheme that wasn't per R99. Carrier specs also typically mandate bar interfaces. On top of that, remember the "more bars in more places" ad campaign? ATT mandated a skewed bar scheme that Apple used until death grip popped up and Apple apparently fell on their sword to correct the "error".
Here's to hoping their will be less intrusion going forward...
cptcolo - Monday, October 10, 2011 - link
R9 = DC-HSPAdeV14nt - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Apple chose not to call the AT&T version of its phone 4G so as not to bastardize the Verizon version, which clearly cannot be called 4G, at least as subsidized under contract with Verizon.Why would Apple even want their customers to consider that buying an iPhone for an LTE network isn't the brightest idea in the world, and they're actually getting LESS than the folks on AT&T?
They wouldn't. And that's why they didn't. It's exactly the kind of thoughts Apple wants to keep out of people's heads.
If the carriers fight about it, it's a network issue. If Apple brings it up, it's a hardware issue.
Guspaz - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
In my mind, the line between generations should be defined not by technology or specifications, but by what a given standard enables. 3G gave us a huge boost in throughput that enabled a whole slew of rich applications, from Netflix to video calling. So what about 4G?Bumping up the throughput in an incremental fashion, be it from HSPA+ or LTE, that's not enough by itself. It doesn't enable anything we couldn't do before. We might be able to do it a bit better, but there is nothing that was impossible or impractical before that is suddenly possible by having 14.4Mbps HSDPA instead of 7.2Mbps HSDPA.
Latency, on the other hand, does have the potential to be transformative. LTE cuts the latency roughly in half in the real world, or better. We go from 140ms to 70ms, with an effective phone-to-phone latency of let's say 300ms dropping to 150ms.
What does that enable? Tons of stuff. Real-time action gaming, for example. When Carmack was adding multiplayer to the mobile version of Doom, he decided to only support wifi and bluetooth, because the 300ms+ latency he was seeing phone-to-phone over 3G was just not practical for an FPS (even with the best prediction and latency compensation). But drop that down to 150ms and suddenly you're in the realm of playable FPS games. This is true of other types of games too, not just FPS. Some games worked fine with 300ms or higher latency, but some twitch games really needed latency to drop a bunch before they were practical, and now they have.
There are other areas where we'll see big improvements too. VoIP is something that was possible over 3G, despite the latency, but will work a heck of a lot better with LTE's lower latency (and hopefully lower jitter). And I'm sure there are numerous other areas that I haven't even thought of that will see big advancements.
nasula - Monday, December 12, 2011 - link
While you are correct in the basic premise, that delay is important, you assume incorrectly that LTE guarantees lower delays.The delay is mainly due to network architecture and the latest WCDMA architecture is identical to that of LTE (actually even flatter if you take into account the duality of SAE-GW and PDN-GW in LTE).
A modern WCDMA network should offer around 60-100ms RTTs today and those operators that go for the flattened WCDMA architecture,, should be able to offer latencies below 60ms. I've personally seen production equipment in test labs doing sub 30ms.
RoninX - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
Thanks for the article, but I'm a bit more confused now than before (though perhaps less misinformed) .Which phones have DC-HSPA? Does the iPhone 4S have DC-HSPA or does it have HSPA+ 14.4 as implied by the bar chart? Can one expect HSPA+ 21 to be proportionally faster than HSPA+ 14.4? How does HSPA+ 21 compare to LTE?
leexgx - Saturday, October 15, 2011 - link
i have never seen mobile devices used any more then HSDPA 7.2mbs in the uk that is, i have hardly ever seen an phone do more then 2mb in the uk (apart from O2 i can some times nearly max out my HTC desire HSDPA out)as no network is going to upgrade the masks for faster HSDPA, on top of that 500MB to 1GB an month usage is pointless for LTE or HSDPA in Most cases (unless your on giffgaff that is:) )
LTE in the uk would be 4G as it should be able to do speeds higher then 10mb
UMTS and HSDPA is 3g or 3g+/H (some phones show 3g+ for HSDPA)
just wish phone makers would allow HSDPA to be turned off so we can use UMTS only (uses way less power but still very good for Browsing)
miusuario - Sunday, October 16, 2011 - link
There are many features that define an UE as HSPA+. Still, the main driver of UTRAN evolution is throughput.Then, saying that the iPhone 4S is HSPA+ is wrong. According to the table above, the MDM6600 is HSPA+ as it implements HSPA+ WCDMA Air interfaces. If it's so, how come the most basic feature of HSPA+ air interface, 64QAM is left behind?
The perspective of this analysis, and the fact that it's even considering a future 4G tag for such "HSPA+" goes beyond wrong, seems to be even manipulated. HSPA+ minimum requirement in Air interface is 64QAM, but, that's not it. Multi-Cell Carrier implementation and MIMO, are supposed to take throughputs (theoretical peak) to 84 Mbps, 168 Mbps, even beyond (NSN just show 336 Mbps). In this analysis 14.4Mbps are enough, because there is implementation of CPC. This is totally wrong. IMO.
nasula - Monday, December 12, 2011 - link
While Anand is correct that HSPA+ doesn't necessarily mean any speed increase (CPC, Voice over HSPA, FDPCH or any other new features would also do), I didn't see any real proof that it is an HSPA+ device. I could have also missed it in the article (ready for bed).I know that the qualcomm feature chart claims this, but where's the proof? What HSPA+ features does the iP4 have? It would be VERY interesting to know if it supports for example CPC or better yet, standardised Fast Dormancy instead of the network breaking implementation found in iP3GS and iP4. Any data on this?
Remingtonh - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
It is even more relevant today!