Why bother with 4G?

ycon on 24/04/2013 - 18:56

Hi,

I've been looking to get a new phone recently, and at first I thought it must be 4G. LTE/4G phones (and plans) are generally a premium price.

Then today I realised- how important could 4G really be on a phone? The only real reason for such speed I could think of, would be for tethering… Right?

Otherwise, with most data caps, you simply can't download all that much anyway. I"m more than happy with 3G browing, streaming, and downloading speeds.

So besides tethering really- why else is there a real need for 4G on a mobile?

Just interested in your thoughts…

Mobile

Comments

  • SShannonAU on 24/04/2013 - 19:20

    Personally no not really. Unless your in a LTE area most of the time, you will be quite happy on Telstra 3G. Speeds are great. It's mostly just for IT nerds to drool over the high download speeds. Unless they increase the quota for their plans, you'd wanna be on 3G anyway cause you will be eating up that quota very very quickly.

  • plmko on 24/04/2013 - 19:20
    +1

    The way 4G works is that it sends more data packets per second than a 3G connection, therefore there will be much less latency when you are surfing the web and not just more bandwidth for faster browsing.

    On top of that (for the time being), there won't be much people on the 4G network, so you don't have experience the ultra congested 3G network.

  • ycon on 24/04/2013 - 19:25

    I'm in an LTE area, but I'm happy with 'Optus' (LiveConnected) 3G speeds.

    4G being less congested could be good for big events etc. is somewhat of a benefit too.

    Is 4G future proofing at all? I guess if data plans start growing into the 10GB's area, it would be a much better idea. Is this far off?

  • evol on 24/04/2013 - 20:26

    I have Optus 4G service, but disabled 4G on my iPhone because of the battery drain. 3G speeds are more than fine for browsing the interwebs and OzBargain. I'd rather get a full day of usage out of my phone than have web pages load 0.01 seconds faster.

    The only time I activate 4G is when I need to download an app.

  • superklue on 24/04/2013 - 22:51

    I upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy S3 4G in September, and was then given an iPhone 5 by work in January. I've seen speeds averaging around 30-40mbps on the Telstra network. I've gone as high as 65mpbs. Pings average 35ms. That's almost double the speed of the faster ADSL2+ connections (24mpbs).

    What does this speed mean to me? Super fast web-browsing. Instant upload. Very little buffering time for HD videos. 2-3mb/s downloading via uTorrent (Android).

    I travel a lot for work, often to regional areas, and when I revert back to 3G it's painful. Pages seem to take an eternity to load.

    However, I don't have a data limit on my work phone and i'll regularly go through 3-4GB of data a month. If I were you, I'd go with an LTE/4G phone and pick a moderate data cap. Just use it for web browsing and the occasional video.

    On a side note, the congestion experienced on the 3G network should reduce as more people are migrated by Optus and Telstra to their 4G networks. The 4G network speeds on popular mobile towers will suffer as a result.

    • _Bruce_ on 25/04/2013 - 08:21

      On a side note, the congestion experienced on the 3G network should reduce as more people are migrated by Optus and Telstra to their 4G networks. The 4G network speeds on popular mobile towers will suffer as a result.

      This combined with the short tern LTE system (to be replaced with LTE-A and frequency changes) is why I would not bother unless this is really important to you.

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