iPhone 3G vs T-Mobile G1 – 3G speed test

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...

• John

  Alright, i know im teetering in fan-boy territory here, but that was pretty worthless and unscientific since the iphone hit some sort of unknown error with no explanation. Still not good that it hit an error but it looked like once the iphone started loading it was about on-par with the G1.

  I did my own unscientific test here in San Francisco on the iPhone 3G and got a result of 26 seconds loading cnet.com (standard version). Still kudos to the G1 for being zippy…. I noticed that the G1 loads in a zoomed in view while the iPhone has the full page displayed, the G1 also looked like it had a somewhat jerky scroll down the page… I'd say for browser usability the iphone still has it beat.

• pete

  Uh.. they did one test of one website?

  testing methodology FAIL!!!

• Will Park

  Browser usability is the iPhone's forte, so John's statement is definitely on point.

  Testing methodology is questionable, as is the hiccup at the beginning of the test. Still, the G1 loads pretty quickly in its own right.

• ThisGuy

  uh lets admit guys, iPhone = FAIL. Its just garbage!!!! Someone should do a internet speed test of the iPhone vs G1 vs Bold vs Nokia E71. I bet the E71 would whoop some ass!!!

• Charles

  Is this inane or what? T-Mobile has almost no traffic on their brand new 3G network. Of course it will be faster! ATT has millions of 3G iPhones sharing congestion on its 3G network with probably a large contingent of 3G data card users.

  This test is like telling me your car is faster at 3 am than mine is at rush hour.

• TareX

  So after seeing that iPhone error message, they still thought they shouldn't try out another site or reload the page?

  I'm not an iPhone owner and I'm very Pro-Android. But I had hoped for a more reliable test.

• yingying

  iphone is major in 2008.

  some people like that. me too!

  need test!

  where buy it?

  chinagrabber.com or gizmograbber.com?

• semekil

  I have a g1 , I like it for the most part , I just has way too many downfalls ,no headphone

  Jack.hello htc wtf, it is also laggy compared to the iphone, way thicker than It should be

  But I suppose with the qwerty that is some what of an exception but still . The music player isn't bad still doesn't compare with apple. No flash enabled browser I would have to say that is one thing that does really annoy me ,the track ball is a bit too sensitive. Those are all my major dislikes , but outside of that its not a bad phone. The g1 one is also a lot more affordable roughly 4-5 bills compared to to iphone at 6-7 bills

  For those of you that don't already know ,Ultimately what it comes down to is just a bunch of marketing bs , htc was more than capable of making a better phone that would surpass apple but they won't because they make more profit off of 1st gen devices , its a pretty sick game when you think about it. Good luck everyone with your phone endevors

• michael

  Dude I don’t think a million people already have the iPhone 3g in the US, and if so your saying it like its a big f*cking deal, look on youtube and you’ll see the iPhone 3G AT&T “FASTEST 3G network” getting its ass kick by the Verizon Storm what do u guys have to say about that hah???? Fastest network jajajajajajajaja don’t make me laugh, anyways verizon sold millions in one month for its storm I don’t think the iphone acomplished that (a)hole! I got a G1 and its alright for me, I got copy and paste you know that feature that the iphone doesn’t have, I could also mms, download files from the internet, multi-task, better camera, third party apps no jailbreaking needed, louder speakers, better qwerty keyboard I thousand times better then the iphones even steve jobs would agree with me on that one, before talking s*it do your f*cking searching if u don’t know wat to say, dumnb people make me mad

• Boomer

  listen first of all the G1 can watch videos so i dont matter if it got flash all of u iphone lovin people need to bet off its nuts….the new is better than the old the G1 does the same thing as a iphone but better and much more….and its only thisk beacuse of the key pad so it will be much eaiser to type on then that s##t iphone i owne an iphone and its sh## i let my little 13 year old ness have it

• magiccrackball

  I own both an iPhone and a G1, the former on AT&T and the latter on T-Mobile (I am in the process of transitioning from T-Mobile to AT&T).

  I do prefer the iPhone over the G1 for just about everything. The areas that are an exception in which I prefer the G1 are its desktop like home screen that is more customizable, it has better multi-tasking (though this sometimes is a drawback as application performance can degrade when memory is being mishandled), Gmail on push, the physical keyboard, and its support for SD cards.

  Despite the iPhone having a lower megapixel camera, the photos typically come out clearer than the G1's. Also, iPhone's Exchange support gives it out-of-the-box corporate email without the use of 3rd party apps at an extra cost. The screen is larger and brighter, and it's hard to live without multitap once you get used to it. Not to mention that in my experience the battery life on the iPhone is roughly twice that of the G1.

  In the Seattle area, the iPhone is much faster on data. I can load websites much more reliably, and the applications tend to be more robust.

  I think that Android will eventually overtake the iPhone, but the G1 is not the phone that will do it. It's too clunky and has too many performance-related issues. I estimate in about two years time, Android will be giving Apple a serious run for its money.

• Quezz

  I'm getting sick of the proprietary nature of U.S. networks, period. I use a Nokia N85 and am currently testing it on AT&T's network. I WAS with T-Mobile for six years, but I am likely leaving this week over the fact that even though T-Mobile picked up 2100 3G band spectrum, you can't use a 2100 band phone on the network. Everywhere else in the world has 2100, so I was psyched that T-Mobile was going to use it. No go — it's a Frankenband signal that doesn't work. My N85 is 850/1900/2100 for 3G, so I'm jumping ship for AT&T unless I can find a compelling reason for T-Mobile to get its head out of its ass.

• KORG

  Tong your iPhone is broken