Earlier this week Qualcomm announced a dual core Snapdragon processor that runs at 1.2 GHz. That’s awesome in terms of a massive performance bump, many of us have fond memories of our first dual core computers and feeling like they could do anything, but what’s more awesome about the MSM8260, as it’s known to the tech crowd, is that it supports HSPA+ speeds of up to 28 Mbps. Most mobile phones on the market today don’t support anything higher than 7.2 Mbps HSPA, and while there are a handful of Nokia devices that do 10.2 Mbps HSPA, they’re sadly joined by older ARM processors that can’t take advantage of the raw amount of speed the modem is capable of pushing down.
Towards the end of this year, and you bet your ass during 2011, you’re going to be hear 4G repeatedly. I’ve been saying this for a while now, and my earlier article titled “4G in America: Lies, Lies, and More Damn Lies” has been one of our most popular pieces on the site. As a consumer you need to learn how to cut through the bullshit. When T-Mobile says things like their HSPA+ network delivers 4G speeds, when Sprint says their WiMAX network is the fastest network in America, and when Verizon eventually launches their LTE network, you should approach their marketing with large amounts of skepticism.
LTE is going to be extremely fast, much faster than HSPA+, but if you think you’re going to be able to buy a decent LTE based mobile phone in 2010, or 2011, or 2012, maybe even 2013, you’re going to be upset. Most operators around the world will upgrade their networks to support HSPA+ since it many cases it’ll require nothing more than a software update. We’re talking about massive savings due to not having to deploy LTE.
With that in mind, just how fast in HSPA+ in the real world? Spirent Communications and Signals Research got together and tested America’s networks using the latest HSPA+ equipment from chip makers such as Qualcomm and ST-Ericsson and here is what they found:
“When sitting directly under the cell site immobile, the platforms were able to deliver at the physical layer peak speeds of 19 Mb/s, near the theoretical maximum of 21 Mb/s for HSPA+. But as soon as mobility was introduced, those speeds rapidly fell off.”
“Moving around at a walking pace — peak speeds fell to 8.5 Mb/s and went as low as 3 Mb/s near the cell edge. In truly mobile conditions — in a car at freeway speeds — data rates dropped further, ranging from 2.5 Mb/s to 4 Mb/s. Similar tests performed on today’s typical HSPA networks — which theoretically support up 7.2 Mb/s — produced speeds in pedestrian conditions ranging from 1 Mb/s to 3.5 Mb/s and in mobile conditions from 500 kb/s to 2.3 Mb/s.”
“While HSPA+ can theoretical deliver three times the capacity of a regular HSPA network, in real-world conditions it delivers only double the speed.”
“HSPA+ can deliver speeds approaching 21 Mb/s, but you have to be static under the base station at 3 o’clock in the morning to get anywhere close to that.”
So there you go. HSPA+ is highly promising, and it’s a stepping stone to LTE, and one that I personally think will have a minimum half decade run before people start taking LTE seriously. For what it’s worth, our very own Marin Perez was in Las Vegas and used T-Mobile HSPA+ network there and was getting consistent speeds of around 8 Mbps down and almost 1 Mbps up. That’s really damn impressive.
[Via: Connected Planet]