3.5 g on n900

[mysticrokks]

my browser is super slick and flies.. my iphone isnt as ffast. is thiks 3.5 new or something. i have never heard of it b4 but under my service bar it says 3.5

[Lord Awesome]

3.5G is another name for HSDPA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Speed_Downlink_Packet_Access). On older phones like my N95 it needed to be enabled, but it's on out of the box for most recent compatible devices. It's a much faster mobile data service than previous options so it's often used for mobile broadband.

[cddiede]

3.5G is another name for HSDPA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Speed_Downlink_Packet_Access). On older phones like my N95 it needed to be enabled, but it's on out of the box for most recent compatible devices. It's a much faster mobile data service than previous options so it's often used for mobile broadband.

Yeah so the base 3G spec for GSM handsets is UMTS. This is 3G.

On top of that you can add High Speed Download Packet Assistance (HSDPA) and/or High Speed Upload Packet Assistance (HSUPA). These two are cumulatively refferred to as just HSPA.

This is 3.5G the same way that EDGE is 2.5G as opposed to GPRS's 2G

[deadmalc]

i was in dubai recently, funny in the uk mobile broadband is way faster than land based broadband there.
for simple web browsing i dont notice much difference between 2g and 3.5G
for email and heavy sites 3.5G is well nice though
v happy with n900...how did i cope before?

[mysticrokks]

the biggest problem i used to have with my iphone was that it keptd connecting to some o2 wifi in and around london.. and that wifi sucks 90% of the time. so i was constantly switching wifi on and off-- to b fair to the iphone i suppose it is more about o2..

its nice that my phone isnt trying to connect to wifi when there isnt one i want to connect to.. in london 3g is boom all over

[406NotAcceptable]

Suprised you haven't seen this before, 3.5G has been around for a while. It is a nice speed upgrade to 3G; although, not as much as 2.5G to 3G.

FYI
2.5G (GPRS) 56 kbit/s - 0.114 kbit/s
2.75G (EDGE) 236.8 kbit/s - 473.6 kbit/s
3G (UMTS) 512 kbit/s - 3.6 Mbit/s
3.5G (HSDPA) 1.8 Mbit/s - 16 Mbit/s

[OrangeBox]

Suprised you haven't seen this before, 3.5G has been around for a while. It is a nice speed upgrade to 3G; although, not as much as 2.5G to 3G.

FYI
2.5G (GPRS) 56 kbit/s - 0.114 kbit/s
2.75G (EDGE) 236.8 kbit/s - 473.6 kbit/s
3G (UMTS) 512 kbit/s - 3.6 Mbit/s
3.5G (HSDPA) 1.8 Mbit/s - 16 Mbit/s

Love your summary, it is great. Do you know if the N900 displays 3.5G when it finds one? I remember seeing that on the N95 but never seen it on the N900.

Also can you provide a summary line for WCDMA and LTE as I got confused when they started to talk about how it is derived from other technologies. Thanks.

[Hotshot]

3.5G is mostly shown on my n900 even in doors loving the speed of the device

[youth]

I've notice the 3.5 on my n900, but speedtests don't seem to show much of an improvement getting no more then 1 mbps.

[mysticrokks]

well even at 1mbs its twice as quick of course only practicall whenstreaming or downloading mind. i get 3.5 or 2 so cant really measure 3.

[go1dfish]

Suprised you haven't seen this before, 3.5G has been around for a while. It is a nice speed upgrade to 3G; although, not as much as 2.5G to 3G.

FYI
2.5G (GPRS) 56 kbit/s - 0.114 kbit/s
2.75G (EDGE) 236.8 kbit/s - 473.6 kbit/s
3G (UMTS) 512 kbit/s - 3.6 Mbit/s
3.5G (HSDPA) 1.8 Mbit/s - 16 Mbit/s

Does anyone know if the n900 will display 2.75G? I've seen 2.5, 3 and 3.5 displayed, but don't recall ever seeing 2.75g on my n900

[mysticrokks]

gprs is gash.. how did i use dial up omg.......


i dont think it displays 2.75 . i think it displays 2 for gprs . 2.5 for edge. 3 for 3g and 3.5 for hsdpa

[Alex Atkin UK]

gprs is gash.. how did i use dial up omg.......


i dont think it displays 2.75 . i think it displays 2 for gprs . 2.5 for edge. 3 for 3g and 3.5 for hsdpa

I can confirm that is exactly what it does.

Also, 3.5G only shows up when its in use. For example with IM turned on my N900 mostly stays on 3G just switching to 3.5G when it needs to update. Not sure about 2.5G though as it rarely has shown up, it may also only appear when "in use" so its not simply a case of looking at the icon to see what is available, you have to be using data for it to be accurate.

Also if you are stuck with 2G/2.5G reception it seems most if not all people cannot receive calls while data is active. You are supposed to get kicked off data when a call comes in, but it doesn't seem to happen at least on many networks.

[go1dfish]

Also if you are stuck with 2G/2.5G reception it seems most if not all people cannot receive calls while data is active. You are supposed to get kicked off data when a call comes in, but it doesn't seem to happen at least on many networks.

Regarding this issue, if the connection is open (i.e. you are connected), you will be booted for incomming calls, I've seen this happen it looks like this:


Yellow message: Data connection unavailable
Phone starts ringing 1-2 seconds later
After hanging up, data connection is resumed, depending on the length of the call, your open ssh etc... connections may or may not have disconnected


I think it's only an issue with receiving calls when you are actively transferring data and saturating the connection, not just having the connection open.

Of course this has been my experience, YMMV

[vins]

Does anyone know if the n900 will display 2.75G? I've seen 2.5, 3 and 3.5 displayed, but don't recall ever seeing 2.75g on my n900

Me neither. 2g is gprs. As it moves to edge, people start calling it 2.5g. Then umts comes around and people calls it 3g. Oops, I mean on my phones, not n900 because I do not own one.haha.just for info.
Anyway,it's just the speed of the infrastructure connecting from your provider to you, not necessarily the provider's connection speed to the backbone.that's why you see no difference even if you have upgraded to faster phones.there's no point using 3g if your provider limited you to 64kbps data

[vins]

My experience with 3g is that data can go along with voice, only at lower speed. but if I'm using gprs, data connection will always be suspended if there's voice connection

[wedda]

Hi guys. I have had this happen to me. when getting 2G signal and someone call you, if your using data services the call will go toVM. With edge or 3G voice and data connections can occur at the same time. I'vwe tested this, not on my n900 & can asure you this is the case. It easy to test, just call cell phone from landline or other cell when in 2G mode. Sometimes when using active sync you may find you get VM when the phone did not ring. Thats why, in 2G mode & data in use.

[pycage]

There is no such thing as 2.75G AFAIK. GPRS is 2G while EDGE is 2.5G and the N900 displays it that way, too.
G stands for "Generation" and is not a unit of speed measurement. 2.5G and 3.5G are simply speed-enhancements (software-upgrade on the carrier's side) based on 2G (GSM) or 3G (UMTS), respectively.

[jchows60]

yup! the .5 just means its enhanced/ a little faster. 3.5 is enhanced 3g

[Russianhaxor]

Interesting, and sorry for the bump... I live in San Diego and have fairly spotty HSDPA coverage as well. I hear that we might be getting HSPA+ coverage, but how the heck are we to know?

[siperkin]

Interesting, and sorry for the bump... I live in San Diego and have fairly spotty HSDPA coverage as well. I hear that we might be getting HSPA+ coverage, but how the heck are we to know?

HSPA+ I believe is greater than 14Meg Downlink and greater than 2 in the uplink.

Current limits for these seem to be 21Meg DL and 5Meg UL, although no real affect for the N900 as our limits are 10Meg DL and 2UL. With something called MIMO this will increase further.

Closest I have got to that is 9.4M DL and 1.4UL, but that was in near perfect radio conditions on a site with 25+ Meg back-haul transmission, think I posted the results somewhere round here. Found it:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/790259596.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

[Deaconclgi]

http://mobile.engadget.com/2010/06/16/t-mobile-expands-hspa-footprint-now-covers-over-25-metro-areas/

I am getting 6Mbps down and almost 2Mbps Up!!!!!!!! Non ideal situations.