AT&T 4G vs 3G plan with Titan

[Loxias]

Anyone in '4G' areas with the Titan have any thoughts on the speed? Had a friend stop by with a Bionic the other day showing me his LTE speeds. He was pulling upwards of 30 Mbit on some of the tests.

 

[kevm14]

I am thinking at this stage the entire point of LTE is to be able to have good speedtest numbers. I don't do a single thing with my phone that requires 30Mbps. In fact, I can say the same about my home PC.

 

[Major]

Well for media consumption, particularly streaming video, it's better to have and not need than it is to need and not have.

 

[kevm14]

And streaming HD video is going to be MURDER on the battery...meaning it's for a 2-minute clip as a gimmick.

 

[Major]

Battery technology is the next frontier in consumer electronics (and arguably in the automobile industry).

 

[naplesbill]

On Android devices, not having a 4G plan does affect speeds. I couldn't even get data without it on my SGSII. The APN settings on 4G phones are different than 3G. Maybe this is not the case with WP7 devices though?

 

[Dr.Phil]

I don't really want my next device to be LTE. First of all, it is a battery hog. Secondly, it makes the devices about a cm thicker than their non-LTE form. And finally, I don't think anyone is really thinking about the health hazards associated with LTE. I mean if you thought cell phones caused cancer before, I have no doubt that having LTE would increase that. I mean just think about your wireless router at home. Imagine putting that next to your body every single day. Wouldn't you be a little concerned about your health? I am pretty sure they even say on those wireless routers to not put your hands next to the antennas. Idk, I may be a worrywart but I just have this bad feeling about LTE (at least right now). I don't think you need really anything faster than HSPA+. 21 Mbps is just barely shy of my internet speed at home. Not to mention that you are talking about loading a website on a mobile phone which in a lot of cases would be less information to load. I honestly think AT&T should have just done the T-Mobile route and just increased the HSPA+ to 42 Mbps if anything.

 

[spokanedj]

Couple thing to add. Yes, you must have a 4G Data plan on the phone for Data to work. I don't know why, but I got a Focus S in store and had (still waiting for) the Titan direct fufilled. A really good friend works at the AT&T store and processed the order for me. He sais I'd need to call or come in have the other line switched to 4G before it would work.

I just tried putting my SIM in my Girlfriends Focus and it worked fine. I verified via Premier that I have a 4G data plan. So it does look like 3G phones can operator with data on a 4G plan but not vice versa.

Also, there IS a different between the iPhone data plan, BB data plan and the rest. Mainly it has to do with Voice Mail configuration (ala VVM). I had two people on my account still with iPhone data plans using 1st gen WP7 phones I bought used to replace the hand-me-down iPhone 3GS no one wanted. They were working fine data wise, but have odd voice mail problems (voice mail service would stop working after a while). I finally pinned it down with an AT&T CSR that actually had a clue, after calling numerous times w/out resolution.

 

[palandri]

This ought to confuse the average consumer even more I got this in an email from AT&T. We know what 4GB means, but the average consumer is going to get confused with terms like 3G and 4G flying around, now add 4GB.

 

[pseudoware]

Fwiw, I put the sim from my Focus into my Inspire 4G, entered some APN settings someone posted on the at&t online forum, and its all good. To my knowledge, I not on a 4G plan for my Focus.

Not sure what it means, but the 4G indicator "H+" on the Inspire shows that it's available, and that I'm even connected at times. It will show "E" sometimes, also. I don't think there's a separate 3G indicator. At least I haven't noticed any, nor do I see one in the quickstart that came w/the phone.

Sent from my Inspire 4G using Tapatalk

 

[palandri]

The AT&T SIM card I have in my Nokia N8 is before they offered HSDPA+ and my Nokia N8 says 3.5G on the data connection.