Does the N900 have improved 3G technology for browsing?
 

Aside from the web browser being vastly better, i've been trying to compare the N95 8Gb and the N900's browsing speeds in terms of 3G protocols (3G / 3.5G / EDGE / UMTS / HSPA etc).

From what I can tell the N900 has the same technologies as the N95, but correct me if I am wrong.

Are there any other improvements that might increase speeds with simple web browsing? Especially actually gaining a connection to a website (which can sometimes take 1 or 2 seconds), rather than downloading the data.

I live in London, UK and use Vodafone, so I presume the network here is pretty up-to-date and i'm hoping I can take advantage of any improvements in the N900.

Re: Does the N900 have improved 3G technology for browsing?
 

Well, it supposedly will support 10Mbps D / 2Mbps U. does the N95 have that capability?

Re: Does the N900 have improved 3G technology for browsing?
 

Just look around or see some videos of users firing up the browser. It is fast.

I don't know what WebKit version N95's S60browser has but its probably out of date lacking the recent, faster JavaScript JIT implementations.

In NL, Vodafone by default enabled proxy server in web browser. This may speed up browsing. If you use Opera Mini, this uses Opera's proxy server which reencodes pictures to a lower quality.

Re: Does the N900 have improved 3G technology for browsing?
 

In my experience a lot of the waiting time is the speed of the phone itself. For example, have you tried using a PC tethered to your N95 to see if that loads just as slowly over the same connection?

That said, its not that unusual to have really poor ping times over the mobile network and there is nothing you can do about it. When you trying to share a data connection over such a wide area and long distances, you introduce lag. You have to remember your signal could be bouncing around between buildings, passing through trees and be shared with who knows how many people in the area.

Overall though, I would be amazed if you did not see a huge speed increase in web browsing simply because of the massive boost in processing speed in the N900 including the graphics acceleration which means it takes less effort to draw those pages to the screen.

Re: Does the N900 have improved 3G technology for browsing?
 

No, N900 is significantly faster. Nokia has used two different 3G-radio chips lately. The older one "only" supports up to 3.6 Mbps DL speed, while it completely lacks UL. The newer chip supports faster speeds, namely 10.2 Mbps DL and 2.0 Mbps UL.

Nokia phones that use the newer chip from 2009:
- All budget S60v3 devices from 2009, besides those with hardware keyboards (to not compete against the N97) [5630XM, 6710N, 6720c]
- All Eseries devices from 2009 [E72, E52, E55]
- All Maemo devices from 2009 [N900]

Nokia phones that use the older chip from 2007:
- All S60v3 Nseries devices [including N95, N95 8GB, N82, N96, N86 8MP]
- All older bugdet S60v3 devices (from 2008) [including 5320XM, 6210N, 6220c]
- All older Eseries device (from 2008 and earlier) [including E71]
- All S60v5 devices from any date [N97, N97 mini, X6, 5800XM, 5800NE, 5530XM, 5230]
- All budget S60v3 devices with hardware keyboards [including 5730XM, 6760s]

Note: There is a correlation between the 3G-radio chip inside the phone and the phone's CPU. It seems that only ARM Cortex-A8 (or above) and ARM11 600 MHz (or higher clock) are powerful enough to be able to handle the new chip.

Re: Does the N900 have improved 3G technology for browsing?
 

So you can only download bytes on an N95? ;)

But I know what you mean, N95 upload speed is minimal.

Re: Does the N900 have improved 3G technology for browsing?
 

I've updated my previous post. Check it out. It isn't fuzzy anymore... ;)

Edit: It's even better now. :D

Please don't quote the previous version. :o

Re: Does the N900 have improved 3G technology for browsing?
 

Wow, that is mental speed. If only Vodafone wouldn't cap my downloads and the battery had magical powers, I could download torrents using the device rather than my PC

Which brings me to my next thought. With download speeds like that I i'm pretty confident they can get the BBC iPlayer working on the N900 (http://video.aol.co.uk/video-detail/...lks/4001268144). It can't be the graphics chip being unable to render the video, as it can play divx movies with no problem.

Re: Does the N900 have improved 3G technology for browsing?
 

c0rt3x what do you mean no upload? It doesn't provide 384 kbit/sec upload?

If you tether over Bluetooth you're not gonna notice the difference regarding download speed. At least not due to different GPRS radio.

In NL Vodafone provides uncapped speed, but have FUP and for now speed is usually 3.6 mbit/sec download, and upload of 384 kbit/sec (WCDMA / UMTS). The other providers are known to cap. Don't know about Vodafone UK. If you do, please update Data plans entry on Maemo wiki

Re: Does the N900 have improved 3G technology for browsing?
 

Actually I meant data caps. Vodafone UK's standard tariff is a miserable 500Mb per month. I chew through that a night in the house. You've got me thinking about whether they cap speed now though!