[jasperlin]

Does someone have one of the new phones and a playbook? i'm not getting a bb7 phone, but i'm curious if the Bluetooth tethering has improved any.

[jenks5150]

It most certainly has. Significantly faster now. It's clear that Bridge was designed with OS 7 in mind.

[jasperlin]

It most certainly has. Significantly faster now. It's clear that Bridge was designed with OS 7 in mind.

sweet, i see from your tag that you've got the 9900.

think it's bridge or the fact that the modem speed is 14mps vs. 3.5 mps?

[dkingsf]

It most certainly has. Significantly faster now. It's clear that Bridge was designed with OS 7 in mind.

I believe the bridge, along with the PB was designed with QNX in mind. They're just not nimble enough with the Top Two founders micro-managing everything. They need to turn their engineers and marketing folks loose and go play some golf.

[redk]

sweet, i see from your tag that you've got the 9900.

think it's bridge or the fact that the modem speed is 14mps vs. 3.5 mps?

Would you mind doing a speed test on speedtest.net and report back the results while tethering. I currently tether my 9700 to the playbook and never get anything above 1.5mbps. I'm curious to see if that has improved with the new radio on the 9900 supporting up to 14mbps.

[insanekronic]

Would you mind doing a speed test on speedtest.net and report back the results while tethering. I currently tether my 9700 to the playbook and never get anything above 1.5mbps. I'm curious to see if that has improved with the new radio on the 9900 supporting up to 14mbps.

Best I've seen on my 9700 with playbook was 1.3 mbps so I'm curious how this works out too

[xsacha]

I'm sorry guys but you are not going to get any faster than 1.5MB/s as that is the practical (not theoretical) limit of Bluetooth 2.1.

Both devices must have Bluetooth3.0+HS or Bluetooth 4.0 to increase this limit (and also increase battery life drain at the same time).
Basically, the tether needs WiFi to be faster than 1.5MB/s.

[Rello]

I'm sorry guys but you are not going to get any faster than 1.5MB/s as that is the practical (not theoretical) limit of Bluetooth 2.1.

Both devices must have Bluetooth3.0+HS or Bluetooth 4.0 to increase this limit (and also increase battery life drain at the same time).
Basically, the tether needs WiFi to be faster than 1.5MB/s.

im pretty sure its actually 3mbps. this is exactly why the playbook should've launched with bluetooth 3.0 though

[therapyreject174]

The absolute fastest throughput you can get is 3Mbps. That is the theoretical limit of Bluetooth 2.1EDR, which is what the PlayBook uses. Realistically, you're not going to get more than about 2Mbps. There's a big difference between MBps and Mbps, so for reference, a T1 line is usually 1.5Mbps. That comes to about 192KBps, which is just fine for browsing the internet.

That said, tethering probably hasn't improved much in terms of speed since it just uses the phone like a modem, and Bluetooth is still the limiting factor. But I would wager Bridge Browser is noticeably faster, not in terms of throughput, but in terms of responsiveness and page rendering, which would be due to the higher specs of the phone.

[grahamf]

The Bold 9900 had Bluetooth 2.1 + Enhanced Data Rate.

I expect that once HotSpot capability is available, there will be an easy way to link via WiFi for faster speeds.

[treiz]

im pretty sure its actually 3mbps. this is exactly why the playbook should've launched with bluetooth 3.0 though

2.0 is 3Mb, 3.0 & 4.0 is 24Mb

...

24Mb ..... o_0

[Maiev]

Okay, done the test for you guys

I can see a Rogers cell tower, line of sight. 5 bars on 9900 7.0.0.317

Here's a speedtest.net from my laptop via USB.



Here's a speed test done from my laptop via Bluetooth 2.1EDR by Belkin F8T017 Class 1.


Speed Test done via Tethering and using normal Browser on PB. 1.0.7.2670


On the side note, I thought somebody rip apart the playbook and saw a Bluetooth 3.0 chipset inside the Playbook just not being used. Yes, 2 bluetooth transmitter.

Speed Reference

1x = 1Mbps = 150kb/sec.

[djdrastic]

Damn.

So bridging/tethering is basically limited to Bluetooth's b/w limitation if I understand correctly ?

[walcolm]

just tested my 9700 and PB on speedtest...0.46Mbps download and 0.16Mbps upload....

[therapyreject174]

Damn.

So bridging/tethering is basically limited to Bluetooth's b/w limitation if I understand correctly ?

Yes. This is a large part of the reason why people (myself included) really wanted to see wifi hotspot capability on the new phones. Wifi blows away bluetooth in terms of speed.

[Delil]

I wanted to make a remark.

We have to make a difference between the speed with which we are connected to the cell tower and the actual internet speed we get.

I tried to elaborate this with a sketch I quickly drew. You can compare it to your wifi at home.
eg. Connection between laptop and router 54Mbps but you only have a 10 Mbps internet connection. So you will never surf faster than 10Mbps. Same concept here.

So the connection between the cell tower and your mobile provider is the key here.

[jeffreytoronto]

Let me provide a qualitative non-tech view. Upgraded from 9700 to 9900. It feels like I also got a new playbook in the process. The speed difference is significant (I'm on rogers sothis meant move from 3G to faux 4G). With good network connection, feels close to wifi for simple pages like m.crackberry

I also find tethering connection is way better. It used to drop the connection as the network jumped bands. No rock solid.

Finally, the bridge lag I had is now gone. PB was stressing the 9700 past its limits.

Overall, now very very happy with the setup pb+bb07 is great.

ps. Longest Ive put my pb down was to play with the 9900--- almost went a day without pb (note I say almost)

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Delil]

Let me provide a qualitative non-tech view. Upgraded from 9700 to 9900. It feels like I also got a new playbook in the process. The speed difference is significant (I'm on rogers sothis meant move from 3G to faux 4G). With good network connection, feels close to wifi for simple pages like m.crackberry

I also find tethering connection is way better. It used to drop the connection as the network jumped bands. No rock solid.

Finally, the bridge lag I had is now gone. PB was stressing the 9700 past its limits.

Overall, now very very happy with the setup pb+bb07 is great.

ps. Longest Ive put my pb down was to play with the 9900--- almost went a day without pb (note I say almost)

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Jeffrey,

From your comment I'm deducting that it wasn't the internetspeed that was the bottleneck. But more the hardware capabilities of your BB9700 that were the limiting factor. The BB9900's hardware specs are so good that it gives the impression that your internetconnection got faster. it can handle the incoming data (mobile and bluetooth) with more ease and thus provides more fluidity for your playbook.

You can compare it to your router (in this case your BB9700 is a router for your PB). When it doesn't have the necessary processing power and memory, throughput will be bad. Thus giving you the impression the PB is laggy.

I think it's not related because to the fact that the BB9900 got HSPA+.

What do you guys think?

grtz

[rondinia]

Hi, I know this is slightly off topic, but when I tether my PB to my Torch 9810, there are certain things I can't do. For instance, I can't access the App work on the PB, it says there's no connection and I can't update my feeds on BB News App because it says I don't have a connection. Has anyone experienced this? Is there a solution?

[digdah]

I wanted to make a remark.

We have to make a difference between the speed with which we are connected to the cell tower and the actual internet speed we get.

I tried to elaborate this with a sketch I quickly drew. You can compare it to your wifi at home.
eg. Connection between laptop and router 54Mbps but you only have a 10 Mbps internet connection. So you will never surf faster than 10Mbps. Same concept here.

So the connection between the cell tower and your mobile provider is the key here.

Things are no longer the same. That pipe is increasingly changing to fiber. Well, on some networks

Plus the sites use multiple T1's bundled together to provide higher speeds.