Phone fans, fast-forward to 4G! We've got our hands on the first LTE phones to hit the UK and put them through their paces. The iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE, HTC One XL and Huawei Ascend P1 LTE are all on sale today -- but do they deliver on the promise of faster phones?
The four LTE phones will be joined later by the Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820, and a 4G version of the Samsung Galaxy Note 2. Hit play to see the phalanx of 4G phones in action, and read on for the results.
You can buy these 4G phones on contract from EE, the phone network formerly known as Everything Everywhere, formed by the merger of Orange and T-Mobile. 4G hasn't started yet, but you can buy any of these phones and transition seamlessly onto the 4G network when it launches -- although that is taking a gamble on how much your contract will cost.
4G promises faster connection to the Internet, so we put the phones through their paces with different tasks that involve talking to the Web. We turned off browser caching where possible and watched how fast the phones could load up webpages or play a YouTube video. And we used the Speedtest.net app for Android and iPhone to measure upload and download speeds.
We tested each phone individually, and then put them next to each other and raced them to see how your phone would be affected by other people on 4G nearby. And we also ran the same tests on an O2 3G iPhone 5 and an EE 3G iPhone 4S to see the difference between 4G and current 3G.
The results
So the good news is that 4G is indeed faster -- often significantly faster -- than 3G. But what struck us was the variance of the results: sometimes we'd get a download speed of 43Mbps, and sometimes we'd get speeds of 6Mbps when all the phones were racing at the same time.
Upload speeds were more consistent, generally hovering around 9-10Mbps, even when download speeds weren't looking too clever.
In fact, when the 4G phones were running together, the iPhone 5 on O2's 3G network actually managed to beat them a couple of times, hitting download speeds of around 14Mbps. That's roughly three times as fast as the iPhone 4S on EE 3G.
But upload speeds did show 4G's superiority. The O2 iPhone 5 was lucky to hit 2Mbps, but 4G ranged from 7Mbps to 16Mbps, even when the 4G phones were running together.
So when it's slow, 4G is roughly neck-and-neck with decent 3G -- but when it's fast, it's very fast.
Fastest phone
In our tests, the fastest phone was the Galaxy S3 LTE, which loaded webpages the fastest. In speed tests the S3 and iPhone 5 both cracked the 40Mbps barrier a couple of times, but the iPhone 5 showed a much wider range of results, and was often affected by being tested close to other phones.
But there's a but
Firstly and most importantly, the speeds we found for these phones simply show what 4G is like at that one time, at that one spot, and shouldn't be taken as a definitive demonstration of what you can expect from your 4G phone.
And we were in central London, a stone's throw from EE's offices, which is likely to have the best coverage. And despite having a handful of phones 4Ging simultaneously, there's still no way to tell how the network will perform when open to the public, with who knows how many people browsing the Web, streaming music and videos, uploading photos to Instagram and what have you.
We're cautiously optimistic about 4G after our time with the iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE, HTC One XL and Huawei Ascend P1 LTE -- but it's still early days for 4G. To see how they square off in other areas, check out our comparison of the first 4G phones.
What do you think of the LTE line-up? Tell me your thoughts about 4G in the comments or on our Facebook page.
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Comments 3
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rahanullah20 3 October, 2012 15:26
4G will improve and so looking forward to it
anonymous 9 December, 2012 22:09
needs to be cheap but good if they want more customers and also why they only doing it on contract just now when they should have it on pay as you go and contract together would that be a better idea and they can make so much money that way if they taken this up and i found out that the only way they can deleiver 4g is if suiped people take the 4g opp when getting a time contract phone just now and they forking out sheads loads of money to companys like EE (Orange & T-Mobile) the baddes network in the UK and they dont do any good deals like all you can eat data (internet) 3000 text, 300 mins for £15 a month on pay and go. Not sure on other networks right now....
anonymous 1 March, 2013 06:19
It's interesting the range in speeds so close to the cell tower... perhaps to do with the fact all the phones are right by one another and thus interfering with one another.
That said, coming to the UK from Australia I have noticed a few things with 4G here:
One, it's taken you a year and a half longer than Australia to start rolling it out. Most places I'd go in Aus that were anywhere populated had good 4G for at least 6 months before I moved here in Jan 2013..
Two: 4G plans cost considerably higher than 3G, and require changing to a 4G plan. That's not only more complicated and thus costly to manage for the network, but will inhibit 4G's take up. In Australia, if your device was 4G capable when they rolled 4G out in your area you'd automatically get it, no extra cost, payg or monthly plans. (I believe my payg was costing me $39 (£25ish) a month with 1Gb of data and $500 worth of text and call credit included, getting full 4G with speeds usually around 40mbps).
Three: Why is there so much more data available on 4G and not on 3G? I'd happily pay for 3-8Gb of data on 3G for a lower price. Having used 4G (which mostly runs around 40mbps or higher everywhere I used it in Australia) I didn't really notice the need for it over 3G, at least not if you are paying that much more for it. Sure, webpages load faster and uploads are faster, but I rarely upload from the mobile and save most browsing for the PC.
Four: Signal can be great but speeds can be lower than 3G?? I never once noticed an issue with this in Australia, and yes we have less people using our towers, but we also have towers covering a far greater range and thus susceptible to signal degradation.
I hope some of the other networks (such as O2 and 3) roll out 4G as an extension of their 3G without charging for extra over their 3G, I also hope they have more competitive pricing, if 4G is the way ahead, everyone should be able to afford it. I also hope the fight over frequencies is settled soon and that the government is helpful in bringing that to fruition. =)