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Comment by ericdykstra | Hacker News Reader

No LTE is a deal-breaker for me on the Nexus 4. I would pre-order one right now if it was included. I think I'll wait for the next great Android phone that has LTE. The Nexus S is a pretty good phone, so without an upgrade in internet speed I don't see any reason to upgrade.

As for the Nexus 10, I hope that it gets enough sales to start pushing developers to make tablet apps for Android, and for Google to make the split between phone/tablet sized apps better in the Play Store.

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> No LTE is a deal-breaker for me on the Nexus 4. I would pre-order one right now if it was included. I think I'll wait for the next great Android phone that has LTE.

There's a good explanation of the LTE situation by The Verge[0]. If Google wants to release timely upgrades, they need to break free of carrier control. And since Verizon and Sprint devices require carrier approval, this will never happen. As for AT&T, their LTE coverage is so limited and the frequencies unique, so it doesn't make economic sense.

> The Nexus S is a pretty good phone, so without an upgrade in internet speed I don't see any reason to upgrade.

With AT&T, there will be an upgrade in speed from the Nexus S to the Nexus 4 (or to the Galaxy Nexus, for that matter). The Nexus S doesn't support HSPA+ (what AT&T is falsely claiming in its TV ads to be 4G - it's actually more like 3.5G), whereas the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4 do.

0: http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/29/3569688/why-nexus-4-does-...

Oh I definitely understand why Google made the decision, it just isn't a decision that suits me. HSPA+ isn't enough of an upgrade for me to make the purchase, especially if 6 or 8 months from now there's a great Android phone that does have LTE.

I may end up buying the Nexus 4 anyway, but no LTE puts up a big resistance barrier that would otherwise put me in line to pre-order the phone.

Definitely not my experience. I'm sitting miles away from Walnut Creek, a town i the East Bay, and I have LTE on AT&T. I certainly have it anywhere closer to civilization, like SF itself or NYC. I wouldn't call AT&T coverage limited at all.

Well, your anecdotal data doesn't line up with the facts. There's a Verge article from a month ago[0] that contains LTE coverage information for Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint. There's simply no comparison - Verizon is leaps and bounds ahead of AT&T. Just because you have AT&T LTE in your neck of the woods doesn't mean that the vast majority of Americans do.

0: http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/21/3367602/iphone-5-lte-marke...

The valid metric to observe in asserting AT&T's LTE coverage's uselessness is not relative standing. We should measure the number of people who can be reasonably expected to have LTE coverage a reasonable percent of the time.

Maybe he misinterpreted it like I did. It read a bit like you were saying AT&T's coverage was not only worse than Verizon, but also Sprint.

That's a pretty useless chart. It appears to be just charting carrier claims.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but yeah, the chart is flawed. Dallas, TX shows Sprint for example, but Sprint's LTE in Dallas is notoriously bad. As in, many people never see it, and I've never seen one single person claim to get it regularly. I think I've seen it mentioned that the maps are "4 to 5 year" projections, but today's actual coverage is something like 4% of DFW.

This "explanation" is a BS excuse.

LTE is mostly about increased capacity - no one reaches the theoretical maximum unless they camp under an antenna. So while LTE will improve the network as a whole, don't expect too much from it as an individual user - and don't break a deal just for that...

Says who? I've benchmarked my friend's Verizon LTE phone and gotten consistent 20 megabits down and 20 megabits up in a variety of locations across the tri-state area (NY, NJ, CT). This is better than cable modem service in a lot of areas.

That's great and all.

And what exactly do you need that for in your phone? To watch youtube in HD?

If you look at what happens after a user action in detail, you'll sometimes see a bit of upstream traffic, then a brief pause for serverside processing, then some downstream traffic.

Responsive interfaces have to do all that in a few hundredths of seconds. Say ten for routine clicks, twenty for actions that seem less routine to the user, as much as fifty for really exceptional actions. Even twenty is not very many, and shaving off one, two or four hundredths helps.

Does it seem stupid to say that a search available in 0.19s is better than one in 0.23s? But these things do matter.

Tethering. I like having decent speeds when I travel. Have you tried the abomination known as hotel wifi recently? I actually get better performance from a 3G phone with tethering than most hotel wifi.

It's 2012, dammit. Why can we not reasonably expect 100 megabits bandwidth in the continental US? I'd be happy with only 10 megabits, but with hotel wifi you can usually only get around 100kbps or less.

How many LTE terminals are running in the wild ? Too few to provide the shiny new LTE network with a normal load. Enjoy your empty airwaves before the unwashed Youtube consuming masses bum rush the show !

Whats your use case for LTE? With most carriers in the world, 5 minutes of continuous LTE usage at the advertised speed will race you across any traffic limits and put you back into 64k stone age.

Every single thing you do that involves network access of any amount does it faster. Do you enjoy waiting for pages to load and apps to pull in data? LTE isn't about more data per se, it's about faster data. It's entirely possible to use it without downloading any more data and still benefit from it.

I don't think bandwidth is as important. I'd bet that the most waiting is incurred through the inherent large latency in the medium. Did LTE improve in that area?

You are confusing latency with throughput.

If you are downloading 1MB of data the difference in delivery between the two speeds (42mbps vs. 72mbps) is 80ms (190ms vs 111ms) Hardly life-changing.

Latency is actually quite a bit better with LTE. That said, I moved from T-Mobile HSPA+ to Verizon LTE and it wasn't earth shattering. Both pretty much feel like WiFi and I agree with Google that it's not worth compromising several other aspects of a phone just to get LTE.

Can you really tell the difference between 42mbps and 72?

That's what I was thinking. And in that case, why do we even need 42mbps. My home internet is fast enough and is only 15mbps.

No one gets near the theoretical maximums.

It was probably a deal breaker for a lot of the carriers Google talked to as well. T-mobile is on board for pushing the phone, but the others really prefer any new device to support LTE. It doesn't make sense for them to push devices that don't use the huge amounts of money they are putting into supporting and building out LTE.

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