WiFi vs. 4G/3G visualized...

[Tim K]

Since there is a lot of talk about how much better WiFi is than 4G or even 3G, I thought I'd run a little test just to show it....

On Monday I ran my phone on mobile data all day, no WiFi, a mix mostly 4G and some 3G. Today (Wednesday) I ran my phone in typical fashion. That is WiFi almost all day - 13hrs out of 15hrs - with 2 hours on 4G. Both days had strikingly similar usage, almost exactly 1hr of screen time, no streaming. The only usage difference was that today I had about 40min of voice calls, on Monday it was only 20min. Obviously a pretty mild day usage-wise. Take a look at these charts and then imagine what the 4G would have been like had I spent a couple of hours streaming!

The moral of the story is, obviously, use WiFi whenever you possibly can!

 

[bobo5884]

Pretty big difference! How strong is your 4g Area? I just question this becuase most people say the problem lies with constant switching of the 3G/4G.

 

[Tim K]

I am on the border of what Verizon refers to as "extended 4G coverage" with a footnote stating "certain conditions may cause your service to connect to 3G sometimes". Most of the time I am on 4G, but typically my phone reports a signal of between -93 dbm and -105 dbm which is pretty weak. On a good day, I get -83 dbm. I will say that during the 2 hours of 4G on my "WiFi day" I was in Philadelphia most of that time and got strong 4G coverage.