So, I have found that I prefer to turn off 4G when I am at home due to my wifi, and apparently my apartment sits on the edge of 4G and 3G causing it to swap between the two most of the time. I am just STUNNED at the speed of 3g... I figured it would be as fast as my OG Droid, but I tell you, it loads pages three times faster than my OG easily!!! I am thinking CPU and RAM had much more to do with 3G slowness on my OG than I realized. P.S. I used Anycut to make a shortcut to the network settings, which makes it an easy 2 button presses to turn the 4G on and off. I turn it on when I want to watch youtube/etc, which is basically afterwork/bartime. At work I leave 3G on since 99% of the time I don't have time to go watch videos and it just sits there bored.
CPU and GPU rendering of images is what is making the difference. Same thing at your home PC - take an old (say a Pentium D) machine and load a webpage using the same browser (and same OS so no one complains). make it a 2 or 4 GB machine. Now, build a machine with 12 GB, core i7 CPU and same OS and load it again. Internet speeds dictates how fast the info is delivered to your device. Hardware dictates how fast your delivered info is displayed. (I know you know this already, but I'm stating it for other people's benefit)
I had an inkling of an idea on this, didn't know it played THAT much of a difference however... Since the OG Droid wasn't THAT bad of a phone... Anyways, yeah, I have found that 3G is a lot better than I thought haha. Hell, I can stream music and netflix on 3G without a problem... If I want to get HD netflix/youtube I need to be on 4G however.
Wait, I've been streaming NetFlix, Pandora HQ and SiriusXM over 3G for many months now. no issues at all. OK, SiriusXM has an issue - it keeps cutting the bitrate down (I think), or something - it's extremely noticeable how the quality degrades for periods of time, and then will kick back into better quality. it happened on Thursday with my Bionic too, so it's not my DROID that was the problem, it's SiriusXM that is the problem.... NetFlix - never had a problem since may(?) when I first got the hacked version onto my CM7 nightly build.
I have to say that I'm very impressed with the 3G as well. We've been getting terrible 3G in our area for quite a few months now, and it's super frustrating. The dreaded 1X looms over us at all times. It was never just my phone, it was every phone on my plan, each of my fellow WSEs, and even the display units at the VZW store (which I spent an awful lot of time in this summer). I'm not experiencing any of these issues with the Bionic. I have consistent 3G. The only time I see 1X is immediately after hanging up a call, and that's on any Verizon device. I'm getting terrible speed test scores, but my DLs are fast, and internet is smooth. I suppose this could be because of the internals, but it really seems like there's an improved antenna or something.
I would probably say the same but my phone rarely goes to 3G. It's always 4G. I love the radio on this Moto phone! So I wouldn't be surprised if 3G data speeds are also great.
