Help Defective 4G Wimax radio in the Nexus S 4G

nickwest · May 24, 2011

viber said:
Upon further evaluation, the issue is not just 4G, but also Wifi speed.

I tested 3 devices over wifi, and all clocked in around 6Mb down and 1Mb up.

The Nexus S was only able to get 2.98Mb down and .89Mb up.

For whatever reason, this phone chokes on high speeds.

This issue does not exist on the GSM version.

I haven't experienced this on wifi at all.

viber · May 28, 2011

The issue has been confirmed by Google and Sprint.

The story has gone mainstream as well

Engadget Investigates: Samsung Nexus S 4G WiMAX performance issues -- Engadget

I returned my Nexus S to Sprint, and got a replacement. The issue was not solved, and they indicated they were on their 4th shipment. An employee there got his online, and was plagued with the same 4G performance issues.

boteman · May 28, 2011

viber said:
The issue has been confirmed by Google and Sprint.

I'm wondering about the credibility of these tests. People are sticking two Sprint phones smack next to each other on a desk to test speeds, without regard to potential interference problems between the phones, for one thing. Gawd knows what other factors were left uncontrolled in these tests. Some comments in that Engadget thread point out others. This might be why some people report great performance and others can't stand it; it's not consistent across all owners of the same phone, as you would expect if it were a manufacturing defect or a software problem.

I note that they also used the Speedtest app for all their tests.

Is there any truth to the assertion that the Speedtest app is broken and won't report throughput above 4Mbits/second?

tyea · May 28, 2011

My Pre had better wifi performance in my home. The 4G to 3G hand off often results in about 30s of total cellular radio communication blackout. I like the nexus s 4G, but I am in the 30 day return period, and will reluctantly return it if I don't hear any action plans from Sprint. Performance may be improving slightly as days of use go by. It is hard to be sure. I suspect Bluetooth on may contribute to detrimental radio performance.

curtisdr · May 28, 2011

I didn't see a link to this in this thread yet. There are a lot of people in the Sprint forum who are having issues:

Sprint Community: Signal Issues with Nexus S

nkd · May 28, 2011

dark4181 said:
The thing is, this isn't Version 1

wrong version one becuase it has never been on a cdma/wimax radio, other hardware is irrelevant when it comes to radio issues.

NOMster · May 29, 2011

boteman said:
I'm wondering about the credibility of these tests. People are sticking two Sprint phones smack next to each other on a desk to test speeds, without regard to potential interference problems between the phones, for one thing. Gawd knows what other factors were left uncontrolled in these tests. Some comments in that Engadget thread point out others. This might be why some people report great performance and others can't stand it; it's not consistent across all owners of the same phone, as you would expect if it were a manufacturing defect or a software problem.

I note that they also used the Speedtest app for all their tests.

Is there any truth to the assertion that the Speedtest app is broken and won't report throughput above 4Mbits/second?

I did a speed test using ooklas and then xtreme labs. The xtreme. Labs came back 2-3 MB higher every time on 4g. Also at least. .5-1 MB higher on 3g every time on the same device. So yes I would argue that speedrest.net's app is not quite working optimally.

viber · May 29, 2011

Yeah, it's all made up, there is no problem...

Nevermind that the Speedtest website, and the Speakeasy site returned the same results as the Ookla app

I connected my PC to my Nexus S using PDAnet. Guess what? Same result.

I connected the same PC to my Overdrive Pro via USB cable, and magically it gets 7.10 Down.

There's a problem. The Nexus S Wimax service is jacked.

NOMster · May 30, 2011

Well in place of answering your smartass response with a smartass response,(lol internet) I will just say that it is well documented some nexus s phones have a problem and some don't. I will also add that it has been well documented that the speestest app isn't working properly. My nexus so far has achieved results along the same line as my evo did when I compare the curreny xtremelabs test to old speedtest results (before it was broke) on the evo. Also the evo never achieved speeds equal to my overdrive. Not even close. And it never got reception on par with it. I could get 12 and higher with my overdrive regularly. I achieved this with the evo exactly once. The rest of the time I got between 3-6 which is the advertised speeds.

curtisdr · May 30, 2011

NOMster said:
I will just say that it is well documented some nexus s phones have a problem and some don't.

I've been following this pretty close and most of the comments regarding signal have been negative. Obviously, most people come on forums when they have issues, but on the Sprint forum, I saw few people who thought they were getting a good 3G let alone 4G signal. Wifi was bad in a lot of cases too.

boteman · May 30, 2011

curtisdr said:
I've been following this pretty close and most of the comments regarding signal have been negative. Obviously, most people come on forums when they have issues, but on the Sprint forum, I saw few people who thought they were getting a good 3G let alone 4G signal. Wifi was bad in a lot of cases too.

As usual, the overwhelming majority of posts are little more than bitch-fests in which people scream "IT STINKS!!" without specifics to go on. I don't know how that is supposed to help define the problem. So the people are motivated to post because their expectations aren't being met, while the people who are happy are not motivated to post.

I have an unbaked theory that maybe, just maybe, the 4G WiMAx radio in these phones operating in the 2.5GHz band might be throwing out junk in the WiFi 2.4GHz band. This, combined with poor filtering in some WiFi routers, might be the source of trouble with the WiFi performance.

tyea · May 30, 2011

Definitely think the wifi effects the 4G and 3G radios, based on 2 weeks experience with the Nexus S 4G. Perhaps Bluetooth too.
Wifi really reception is definately weak.

viber · Jun 1, 2011

Video showing time and time again that the Nexus S 4G is incapable of matching the speeds of the Evo in 4G speed tests.

Shoddy radio? Bad software? Does it matter? It still sucks that this is the SLOWEST 4G phone you can buy on Sprint yet it is one of Sprint's biggest launches in 2011

Sprint and Google need to address this, pronto

YouTube - ‪Nexus S 4G Speed Tests‬&rlm;

YouTube - ‪Nexus S 4G Vs Evo Speedtest‬&rlm;

aaron3315 · Jun 1, 2011

Just got my Nexus and the speedtest has been consistently 3 to 4 for me which I believe is about the average in my area. (will have to borrow my brother's evo to test side by side.) My biggest issue is that I cant seem to get a consistent connection 3g or 4g like I did with my Evo and other Sprint phones.

Help Defective 4G Wimax radio in the Nexus S 4G

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