Why is my 4g reception so much worse than my friend's?

[Roger Munns]

Scenario: I am sitting only a few feet from my friend and we are both using 'Speedcheck' to look at the 4g network. I have an old-ish Iocean 'Rock' (M6752) and she has a new-ish Samsung S8.

We press Speedcheck together. It shows her speed to be 9Mb/s and mine to be 0,7Mb/s. We both show the same mast and carrier.

So we then both go online to a newspaper website, lots of pics etc. Again, we press at the same instant. The site opens on her phone in 4seconds, in mine it takes 32seconds.

I am Android 4.4, she is Android 7.

Is the reason simply the fact that my phone is old (and was relatively cheap)?

 

[Clementine_3]

Is the reason simply the fact that my phone is old (and was relatively cheap)?

Yup. There are a lot of factors involved but yes

Welcome to the forums!

 

[Roger Munns]

Yup. There are a lot of factors involved but yes

Welcome to the forums!

Thanks. Maybe I can find answers here to some questions that typically come from older users (73). Just one more for the moment:
In buying a new phone how can I ensure I get one that will access quickly to the 4g network? I can't spend much and it will be an online sale, so it won't be possible to check 'em out first.

 

[Clementine_3]

What is your budget? Carrier? What features are important to you?

 

[chanchan05]

Thanks. Maybe I can find answers here to some questions that typically come from older users (73). Just one more for the moment:
In buying a new phone how can I ensure I get one that will access quickly to the 4g network? I can't spend much and it will be an online sale, so it won't be possible to check 'em out first.

Newer phones will have newer antennas that are capable of faster speeds. For example, older phones will have category 3 hardware, but newer ones usually have category 5.
Just buy a more recent device and it will be faster than your previous phone. However keep in mind that you get what you pay for.

 

[Roger Munns]

Thank you. But what should I look for to see HOW good a particular phone is at 4g reception? Is there a number or a spec. that will tell me?

 

[kate]

You want to make sure the phone supports all the frequency bands that your carrier uses. For example the US carrier Sprint uses 4G LTE bands:
25 (1900 MHz)
26 (800 MHz)
41 (2500 MHz)

An older phone that only supports band 25 will have worse reception then a newer one that supports all three.

A popular site to check phone specs and bands they use:
https://www.gsmarena.com

Page for your friends S8:
https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s8-8161.php

Find and click on the model number for your country/carrier, then click Expand next to the Network category.