3g vs 4g

[jbcohen]

I understand that the new fire HDs have 4g in them, and some of the new kindles are 3g. I do understand that 3g refers to third generation, like my blackberry is 3g, and 4g refers to fourth generation. So what is the difference?

[Jessica Lares]

It's much, much, much, much faster. LTE just blows your socks off. YouTube videos DON'T buffer, pages load crazy fast, and you get like huge, huge download/upload speeds.

I could never go back to 3G, we pay hundreds for AT&T U-Verse and that isn't even as good as LTE.

The 250MB would go in a day though. But your Kindle books would show up in like less than one second on that connection.

The Fire with 4G at 250mb/month = 8.3mb/day. That will be gone in moments! I wonder what kind of charges will kick in after you blast through 250mb on day one of the month? If people aren't careful they might get one heck of a big bill via the provider AT&T. (The Amazon FAQ on their support page states the provider will be AT&T.)

[afv011]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

I understand that the new fire HDs have 4g in them, and some of the new kindles are 3g. I do understand that 3g refers to third generation, like my blackberry is 3g, and 4g refers to fourth generation. So what is the difference?

There's a lot of confusion with 4G because the name has been misused by carriers to sell their 3.5G packages (also known as HSDPA+). The max you can get on HSDPA+ is, theoretically, 84Mb/s, but current implementations top out at 42Mb/s.

4G should be used exclusively for LTE, which is the new standard and provides increased speeds over 3G. You can get speeds in excess of 100Mb/s on LTE, again, theoretically.

[Skydog]

Has anyone seen anything in print disclosing the carrier used? 4G LTE on Verizon is blazing fast but Amazon, thus far, has only used Sprint and AT&T on the eink Kindles.

[vxf]

I am hating LTE on my ipad. I don't know what games Verizon is playing - but the same content on LTE using much larger bandwidth. I can understand a movie on netflix - you get better quality on 4g and less frame loss.

But I download an issue of National Geographic on Zinio - and it goes from 300 MB on 3g to 850 MB on LTE - not the size of the file, but the bandwidth used to download it. I send a 5MB attachment through mail and, on LTE, it sucks up 20 MB of traffic.

In short, where I usually never got to my 2GB limit on my previous iPad, I now hit the 5GB cap on LTE in 10 days, with the same behavior.

Ok, rant off. It's fast. That's true.

[Kumabjorn]

Packets are probably bigger. That will eat into your traffic. That is how operators with caps create revenue streams.

[Skydog]

Originally Posted by vxf

I am hating LTE on my ipad. I don't know what games Verizon is playing - but the same content on LTE using much larger bandwidth. I can understand a movie on netflix - you get better quality on 4g and less frame loss.

But I download an issue of National Geographic on Zinio - and it goes from 300 MB on 3g to 850 MB on LTE - not the size of the file, but the bandwidth used to download it. I send a 5MB attachment through mail and, on LTE, it sucks up 20 MB of traffic.

In short, where I usually never got to my 2GB limit on my previous iPad, I now hit the 5GB cap on LTE in 10 days, with the same behavior.

Ok, rant off. It's fast. That's true.

That's interesting. Although I've never done any scientific tests other than speedtest, I have not had the same experience with my Xoom 4G. I suspect your data eating is due to larger packets. I use LTE heavily for email and exchange of small files, dropbox uploading/downloading, live news feeds and browsing. That said, I never use LTE on the Xoom to download my magazines and very large files. On my phone it's entirely different since I still have unlimited data.

Originally Posted by Skydog

Has anyone seen anything in print disclosing the carrier used? 4G LTE on Verizon is blazing fast but Amazon, thus far, has only used Sprint and AT&T on the eink Kindles.

Like I stated in post #3 above, the Amazon FAQ on their support page states the provider will be AT&T.

[David Munch]

Originally Posted by Jessica Lares

It's much, much, much, much faster. LTE just blows your socks off. YouTube videos DON'T buffer, pages load crazy fast, and you get like huge, huge download/upload speeds.

Provided that the servers are up for the task of sending content at that speed.

Personally I would never pay more for 4G over 3G - The latter suits most peoples needs just fine. Who cares if your website loads in 0,3 seconds instead of 0,5 seconds, and you don't need 1 hour of youtube film buffered anyway when you are watching it.

Yes, file downloads are much faster, but meh, I can wait.

Originally Posted by vxf

I am hating LTE on my ipad. I don't know what games Verizon is playing - but the same content on LTE using much larger bandwidth. I can understand a movie on netflix - you get better quality on 4g and less frame loss.

But I download an issue of National Geographic on Zinio - and it goes from 300 MB on 3g to 850 MB on LTE - not the size of the file, but the bandwidth used to download it. I send a 5MB attachment through mail and, on LTE, it sucks up 20 MB of traffic.

In short, where I usually never got to my 2GB limit on my previous iPad, I now hit the 5GB cap on LTE in 10 days, with the same behavior.

Ok, rant off. It's fast. That's true.

Wow, so one issue of National Geographic is larger than the Fire LTE 250mb monthly limit! I guess Fire LTE owners will spend a lot of time DLing via WiFi and not much time with cellular.

[Skydog]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Like I stated in post #3 above, the Amazon FAQ on their support page states the provider will be AT&T.

Thanks -- in the interest of time, I skipped earlier posts. My fault.

I detest AT&T.

[Skydog]

Originally Posted by David Munch

Provided that the servers are up for the task of sending content at that speed.

Personally I would never pay more for 4G over 3G - The latter suits most peoples needs just fine. Who cares if your website loads in 0,3 seconds instead of 0,5 seconds, and you don't need 1 hour of youtube film buffered anyway when you are watching it.

Yes, file downloads are much faster, but meh, I can wait.

I pay no more for 4G than I did for 3G.

[Serpentine]

3g generally deals better with range from the mast, LTE quality drops extremely quickly when you're in a medium to low quality area. The 'larger packet' idea doesn't really come into play, it's more that the packets are being seen as corrupt or invalid and re-retransmitted. This can easily eat bandwidth allocations and will also give you your dropped frames and such in a video (set larger buffers if possible).

Over all, for a Kindle, who really cares? The 3g will be more reliable and far more broadly accessible.

[Skydog]

Originally Posted by Serpentine

3g generally deals better with range from the mast, LTE quality drops extremely quickly when you're in a medium to low quality area. The 'larger packet' idea doesn't really come into play, it's more that the packets are being seen as corrupt or invalid and re-retransmitted. This can easily eat bandwidth allocations and will also give you your dropped frames and such in a video (set larger buffers if possible).

Over all, for a Kindle, who really cares? The 3g will be more reliable and far more broadly accessible.

Well, those purchasing the Kindle Fire 4G will care. I believe that was the reason for the OP.