RIM coud've made it 4G and knocked it out of the park but they didn't....again.

**otacon#AC** · 05-02-2011, 06:28 PM

I doubt we'll see a 4G BB until this time next year and by that time I'll be long gone.

**papped** · 05-02-2011, 06:32 PM

Think you mean LTE...

Current "4G" on GSM carriers is nothing but HSDPA+, which is going to be supported.

**D_March** · 05-02-2011, 06:35 PM

The 9900 left the park in my book but what do I know...i love the playbook. As a TMO customer, the hspa+ will be great for me.

**Snipperdo17** · 05-02-2011, 06:39 PM

lte isn't very efficient right now so there is no point. Terrible on the battery as well. They aren't in the rush to get one of the first lte phones out so they will wait until the chips are better, same as Apple.

**Masahiro** · 05-02-2011, 06:39 PM

I'm glad the 9900 isn't LTE capable. I want my battery to last more than a quarter of the day.

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**ragingklu** · 05-02-2011, 06:47 PM

As amazing as the LTE network and the Thunderbolt are, there is a lot of micromanaging that needs to be done in order to get halfway decent life out of the phone. For a lot of my friends, this is worth it, and they are waiting for an OC/UV kernel to increase the efficiency as well. The LTE network isn't perfect (last Monday? it was out nationwide completely).

I'm not at all surprised BB isn't on board with it just yet. The chipsets aren't efficient enough.

Also, technically this phone will be HSPA+ ready for TMo and ATT, which I guess is "4G" but nowhere near LTE.

**papped** · 05-02-2011, 06:50 PM

Even with the custom kernels and roms you can basically get "bad" battery life out of the TB instead of terrible on LTE...

**ragingklu** · 05-02-2011, 06:55 PM

Originally Posted by papped

Even with the custom kernels and roms you can basically get "bad" battery life out of the TB instead of terrible on LTE...

Yeah it's all relative though. Relative to BB, it's still bad. Relative to other 4"+ 1GHz Android phones, it's not that bad.

**Deathcommand** · 05-02-2011, 07:00 PM

Originally Posted by Snipperdo17

lte isn't very efficient right now so there is no point. Terrible on the battery as well. They aren't in the rush to get one of the first lte phones out so they will wait until the chips are better, same as Apple.

Gonna be honest, T-Mo's "4G" is pretty battery efficient.

**papped** · 05-02-2011, 07:05 PM

We were talking about LTE... Also already stated that it supports HSDPA+...

**palomartian** · 05-02-2011, 07:06 PM

The BB bottleneck makes 3G slow by comparison. What the **** good is 4G on a BB?

**ragingklu** · 05-02-2011, 07:13 PM

Originally Posted by Deathcommand

Gonna be honest, T-Mo's "4G" is pretty battery efficient.

Yeah for good reason. Well-evolved chipsets and it's not incredibly fast. HSPA+ uses existing chipsets and really shouldn't be considered "4G" and at first wasn't categorized that way. But the sanctioning body changed their requirements for 4G unfortunately. Sucks that AT&T and TMo can group their crappy HSPA+ in with LTE. They're on different levels altogether.

**Andy Anonymous** · 05-02-2011, 08:36 PM

Originally Posted by ragingklu

Yeah for good reason. Well-evolved chipsets and it's not incredibly fast. HSPA+ uses existing chipsets and really shouldn't be considered "4G" and at first wasn't categorized that way. But the sanctioning body changed their requirements for 4G unfortunately. Sucks that AT&T and TMo can group their crappy HSPA+ in with LTE. They're on different levels altogether.

T-Mo's HSPA+ is going to be at 42Mbps by the end of the summer, and said to be hitting 84 by year's end, which will make it faster than Verizon's LTE. I wouldn't call that even remotely crappy.

**jpicky86** · 05-02-2011, 08:49 PM

seriously though who cares? if it was LTE capable with the same 1.2 ghz processor I would dare to say that you would not see the difference between 3g and 4g. Now tethering to a laptop with LTE, that would be nice but as mentioned above hspa+ is improving speeds and att is investing in LTE technology as well.

**papped** · 05-02-2011, 08:54 PM

Originally Posted by jmoney860

seriously though who cares? if it was LTE capable with the same 1.2 ghz processor I would dare to say that you would not see the difference between 3g and 4g. Now tethering to a laptop with LTE, that would be nice but as mentioned above hspa+ is improving speeds and att is investing in LTE technology as well.

Errr.... no you can really tell the different between LTE and 3g... Really, really can tell...

**the one and only M** · 05-02-2011, 08:58 PM

I would've picked up a 9930 if it was lte. Not because of the data speeds, but because I would've been able to swap between it and my thunderbolt by easily swapping the sim.

Switching back and forth from 4G to 3G device seems like an unessesay hassle (lte sim gets deactivated

). Now there's no going back (to 3G) for me.

**jpicky86** · 05-02-2011, 09:05 PM

ok yes LTE is fast but you can't just throw a LTE chip in every phone. Me personally I could care less about LTE right now, it would be just one more feature I fuss with too much to be worth it. I am way more impressed with the speediness of this new OS and the processor. Multi-tasking speeds far outweighs browser speeds in my book. BB OS is not designed for browser speeds like android is.

**grahamf** · 05-02-2011, 10:34 PM

Originally Posted by the one and only M

I would've picked up a 9930 if it was lte. Not because of the data speeds, but because I would've been able to swap between it and my thunderbolt by easily swapping the sim.

Switching back and forth from 4G to 3G device seems like an unessesay hassle (lte sim gets deactivated

). Now there's no going back (to 3G) for me.

not exactly. Because the fallback is CDMA, you will have to call Verizon everytime you swap or something bad might happen. weither that is simply 4g only or intermittent 4g, IDK.

**Stein357** · 05-02-2011, 10:45 PM

True 4G, LTE, has limited coverage right now and terrible battery life, I had a Thunderbolt.

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**southlander** · 05-02-2011, 11:00 PM

Originally Posted by Masahiro

I'm glad the 9900 isn't LTE capable. I want my battery to last more than a quarter of the day.

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Same here. Or if it was, I'd like to be able to turn it off to force 3G. I bought a PlayBook for web browsing. Don't really need it on the phone any more. Though IF the phone supported WiFi hotspot, I would then want it on for bridging to the PB. I did not see WiFi hotspot mentioned as a feature.

**gord888** · 05-03-2011, 12:46 AM

I think lag - not bandwidth - is the limiting factor for wireless speed. No matter how you want to look at it, you're miles away from a cell tower, and it takes time to get from you, to the tower, to routing through the interweb, back to the tower, back to you. Plus you're timeslicing all that bandwidth with others... lag... the biggest hurdle.

**heartUrE36** · 05-03-2011, 01:25 AM

While it would be nice to have the option of 4g and I'm on Sprint and never EVER used 4g and I have very good 4g coverage and had an EVO. Then again with the EVO i never used 4g because the battery would hardy get my through a day with just 3g and minimal data usage.

**ragingklu** · 05-03-2011, 08:36 AM

Originally Posted by Andy Anonymous

T-Mo's HSPA+ is going to be at 42Mbps by the end of the summer, and said to be hitting 84 by year's end, which will make it faster than Verizon's LTE. I wouldn't call that even remotely crappy.

You do realize the LTE system is capped and is capable of speeds much larger than that, right?

No matter what, when transferring data over a data protocol versus transferring data over a voice protocol, the data protocol will be much more capable and will be much more efficient when loading the network with a lot of devices. HSPA+ is nice and all, but is inhibited by that fact, and is the reason that LTE is going to trounce it in the future.

**kbz1960** · 05-03-2011, 09:54 AM

I'm glad they aren't 4g I don't need to pay extra for something that isn't available to me and even if it were I still don't want to add to my bill.

**BergerKing** · 05-03-2011, 10:44 AM

Until the multi-mode chips become available in, probably, the last quarter of this year, you're not going to see RIM or Apple putting out a 4G handset. Those companies aren't going to compromise on the requirement of having to use 2 radio chipsets to be used on the multiple networks.

So, whining and griping about the lack of 4G is a moot point. You can compromise, go Android and deal with those issues as they are, or put on adult pants and be patient until the hardware has a chance to mature.

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