I’m in the market for a new cell phone and 4G is a big selling point. But I’ve seen a number of articles saying that 4G doesn’t really matter. For example, this article made me quite confused. So what’s really going on? From a consumer perspective, what does 4G mean?
Technical stuff:
For Verizon it means that the device (or network speed) is the latest generation, called LTE or Long Term Evolution.
For ATT it means it is either the latest generation (LTE), or the last generation (called 3G), with a addition to make it run as fast as 4G does now.
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In smartphones 3G (Last generation speeds), is pretty much fast enough for everything as it stands now. So yes you can get away with a 3G phone, but unless you are really sent on a particular one, such as a iPhone, it may be short sighted to get a 3G phone. Though also understand that smartphones have about a 2 yr life before upgraded, so having 3G may be enough for that time.
The question is what will happen going forward. 4G is not so much built for the needs today, but what the projected needs are tomorrow. The part of ATT’s ‘3G+ technology’ they call 4G can not keep up with true 4G LTE and will fall behind. As smartphones become more powerful and more uses are found for them the higher speeds of 4G will helpful in the future.
Can I piggyback a question? Is the “speed” the speed of the phone itself flipping between screens of features on the phone itself as I press and swipe, or is it the upload/download speed when the telephone is communicating with the cell tower and the web?
If I don’t use web on my phone, do I care at ALL whether it’s 3G or 4G?
The 4G speed doesn’t matter when you are still trying to sell 3G product. 
Seriously, I am a heavy user of internet usage at work and need to rely on a high speed connection for my corporate apps to work seamlessly; 3G speeds were not capable of doing that, now that I have a 4G connection I rarely get dropped by my VPN service or my corporate license server. I also use my tablet as a hotspot and with a hotspot you should go with 4G if you are thinking of serving more than one person (for work or home). Also, if you plan on selling your stuff later you will be better off if the technology isn’t too old; nobody is going to pay much for a 3G phone a year from now.
And of course, no one every wanted faster when it came to computing speed and power; right? :smack:
For you it doesn’t matter since you are not using the web.
It’s the data transfer speed. If you use your phone “only” to make phone calls, 3g/4g makes absolutely no difference. But, as the linked article mentions, “4g” isn’t an accurate descriptor of download speeds.
I just got a 4g Android phone on Verizon in an area with mixed 4g coverage, and IMO, 3g is good enough for even most smartphone purposes. Web browsing, email, and even music streaming all all reasonably fast on 3g. 4g is only critical if you want to stream video, transfer large files, or use it as a computer internet connection.
(Mobile web pages are typically very compact, not image-heavy at all, so 4g doesn’t add much there. But if you’re browsing with a desktop, or visiting non-mobile pages from your phone, you’ll run into plenty of webpages that are full of megabytes of images and video and flash animations, and browsing will be noticeably faster with 4g.)
I noticed the other day that my iPhone 4S (from AT&T) now says “4G” on the top banner. It, of course, is NOT a 4G phone, and doesn’t come close to 4G speeds on Verizon.
It means “faster than 3G”. 3G is essentially an industry standard (actually, a group of industry standards, but as far as I know all US carriers adopted CDMA2000).
4G is also theoretically an industry standard (1 GB/sec transfer for a stationary device), but no US carrier (possibly no non-US carriers either) have actually met it yet. Thus, for reasons that escape me, the ITU allows carriers to call their service “4G” as long as it’s faster than 3G and they cross-their-hearts-hope-to-die promise that they’ll implement actual 4G networks at some point.
As pointed out above, none of the current phones are “really” 4G, based on the original standards for the name. The AT&T “4G” indicator on the iPhone means you’re in an area that gets HSPA+, which is faster than the standard 3G but slower than LTE might be. Since “4G” in the US is just a marketing term, I think it’s fair, even if it’s a little deceptive.
As a point of comparison, though, I live in Redmond, WA, which for reasons that might be obvious is something of a technology hotspot. From a downtown restaurant, my “4G” AT&T phone gets about 4 Mbps download speeds, and my LTE iPad gets 51 Mbps – so there’s a dramatic difference that will depend on the technologies available at your location.
I notice the difference for using Pandora or Maps. Unfortunately, both apps that one might wish to use when one is outside of 4G network coverage.
I use Google maps to look at traffic before I leave work, and I’ve found that my new Verizon 4G LTE phone updates the map a lot faster than my old 3G one - or my new one if I’m not getting 4G.
Is this the reason why they want to take our TV channels away and sell them to the phone companies?
Huh?
The question is worded poorly but there is a grain of truth to it. The spectrum occupied by the analog TV channels is quite valuable and analog TV used it wastefully. The transition to digital TV freed up much of this spectrum, which was then auctioned to other digital communication companies, such as phone companies. For instance, AT&T’s 4G frequencies used to be UHF channels 53, 54, 58, and 59. Verizon has 60, 61, 65, and 66.
Of course no one is* taking away* our TV channels, first because this already happened in 2009, and second because it was a transition and not a removal.