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32GB iPhone 7 significantly slower than more expensive versions, tests show

theguardian.com

41–50 of 51 posts

Re: 32GB iPhone 7 significantly slower than more expensive versions, tests show

#41
post #5

title omission: "... in benchmarks". In the real world, the flash speed difference is rather insignificant. I don't copy around huge 4K movies on my phone very often.

Depends on your use case for your phone - I usually copy 20-30 GB of videos to my iPhone 6S(using VLC) on a fairly frequent basis - for some reason it's my primary way of watching TV shows. The saving grace here, is that with only 32 GB, there is a pretty hard limit to how much you can copy before you just run out of space.

Re: 32GB iPhone 7 significantly slower than more expensive versions, tests show

#42
After reading both of the Guardian's sources here and seeing what their testing methodology was, I think I'll withhold judgement until someone with a more solid reputation does the testing.

Quite a few users in the comment thread over on GSMArena are posting testing results for their 32GB iPhone 7 which are much faster than what GSMArena is claiming. Judge for yourself:

http://www.gsmarena.com/the_32gb_iphone_7_plus_uses_a_substa...

Edit: one more note. GSMArena's article on this was posted on October 7; too early for the latest iOS updates to have been used in testing.

Re: 32GB iPhone 7 significantly slower than more expensive versions, tests show

#44
post #21

From the looks of it, my 7+ shipped with the Intel modem, and I can definitely see a drop in network strength when compared to my wife's iPhone 6. This is particularly worse when traveling, as the phone barely manages handoff properly. I also noticed strange interference noise when using my earphones during my everyday commute. This seems to have been fixed by the recent update (10.0.3) though.

The moment I heard that modems were different between service provider models, I suspected that trouble like this may arise from them more band-restricted model of the two. It's one of the reasons I waited for the SIM-free/international model to become available before buying. I think band/antenna differences between models should be much, much more visible. Right now this info can only be found on the tech specs pag…

> Otherwise you're going to have a bunch of AT&T/Sprint subscribers being unpleasantly surprised when their $700+ "unlocked" flagship phone is almost useless overseas

This was a dealbreaker in the dualband/quadband days, an issue in the early UMTS days (when there were phones without 2100), but these days even the "band restricted" models mean you're just not going to get extended range bands, far from "useless overseas".

Re: 32GB iPhone 7 significantly slower than more expensive versions, tests show

#45
The 128GB iPhone 7 wrote to memory at 341Mbps, but the 32GB iPhone 7 was over eight times slower at just 42Mbps.

Slow write speeds are the hallmark of being too much of a cheapskate when buying SSDs. 42Mbps would be miserably slow for a laptop SSD. Buying such a slow SSD is the kind of mistake I'd expect from a non-savvy consumer.

Then again, how much data is being written to an iPhone's SSD per second on average?

Re: 32GB iPhone 7 significantly slower than more expensive versions, tests show

#46
post #9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this really depends on how long you are expecting to use your phone. Presently the iPhone 7 feels unnecessarily fast, but in 2-4 years when more data is consumed and operating systems are more taxing, I may care more about those difference.

How can something feel unnecessarily fast? It may be unnecessarily fast but to me tech never feels fast enough. Unless it would respond before I do something perhaps... I'd like lag to approach zero to be honest.

but to me tech never feels fast enough

Because of programmers and Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons." Coders will always use the computation, memory, and bandwidth resources that are there. "If I just use a little more, it benefits my app, but it hurts everyone else just incrementally." Everyone makes the same calculation, and voila, the machine that's 2X faster feels just as slow. It's the same reason why building more highways just results in more people stuck in slow traffic.

Re: 32GB iPhone 7 significantly slower than more expensive versions, tests show

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moment I heard that modems were different between service provider models, I suspected that trouble like this may arise from them more band-restricted model of the two. It's one of the reasons I waited for the SIM-free/international model to become available before buying. I think band/antenna differences between models should be much, much more visible. Right now this info can only be found on the tech specs pag…

> Otherwise you're going to have a bunch of AT&T/Sprint subscribers being unpleasantly surprised when their $700+ "unlocked" flagship phone is almost useless overseas This was a dealbreaker in the dualband/quadband days, an issue in the early UMTS days (when there were phones without 2100), but these days even the "band restricted" models mean you're just not going to get extended range bands, far from "useless overs…

Granted, but it's still disappointing and less than I'd expect from a device costing so much.

Re: 32GB iPhone 7 significantly slower than more expensive versions, tests show

#48
post #21

From the looks of it, my 7+ shipped with the Intel modem, and I can definitely see a drop in network strength when compared to my wife's iPhone 6. This is particularly worse when traveling, as the phone barely manages handoff properly. I also noticed strange interference noise when using my earphones during my everyday commute. This seems to have been fixed by the recent update (10.0.3) though.

That's crazy! I noticed this when I got the iPhone 6+. When I'm on the train I have to put it in airplane mode and take it back out for it to find the nearest tower sometimes. I thought this was just a power saving technique by Apple (maybe if it doesn't poll as much it doesn't use as much battery?) but it's obnoxious as hell if you're a commuter.

Indeed, trying to find signal when there is no signal or when it's too weak is big drain on the battery. So when the iPhone thinks there's no signal, it's going to throttle its searches a bit to avoid draining too much power.

In my experience, you can often get it to check again by locking the screen and then unlocking it again. Usually I only have to resort to going to airplane mode and back when the phone does have signal but it can't get reliable data (I'm assuming that going through airplane mode may cause it to switch towers).

Re: 32GB iPhone 7 significantly slower than more expensive versions, tests show

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Verizon/Sprint version has the Qualcomm modem. Are you saying that even with Qualcomm there's a noticeable difference between the iPhone and the S7?

Yes, the Samsung is better. Important is not only the baseband modem, the Qualcomm MDM 9645M, but also the RF Front End, the number of antennas, and the antenna design. Both units have the Qualcomm X12 MDM9645M baseband modem and two transceivers, Qualcomm WTR3925 and WTR4905. But the iPhone has only 2 antennas and only able to support 4x2 MIMO while the Samsung has 4 antennas does currently support the 4x4 MIMO. The…

We could also just link to the source: http://cellularinsights.com/iphone7/

Re: 32GB iPhone 7 significantly slower than more expensive versions, tests show

#50
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the Samsung is better. Important is not only the baseband modem, the Qualcomm MDM 9645M, but also the RF Front End, the number of antennas, and the antenna design. Both units have the Qualcomm X12 MDM9645M baseband modem and two transceivers, Qualcomm WTR3925 and WTR4905. But the iPhone has only 2 antennas and only able to support 4x2 MIMO while the Samsung has 4 antennas does currently support the 4x4 MIMO. The…

We could also just link to the source: http://cellularinsights.com/iphone7/

CellularInsights was a source. My undergrad is EE/CS and I studied digital comms as well as meet Qualcomm people mobile health summit and other health computer conferences.

Sources included iFixit which discussed the chips involved (but neglected to mention whether there were 2 or 4 antennas in iPhone 7 which cellular insights did provide), Qualcomm data sheets, Tmobile and Verizon press releases, fiercewireless, howardforums, Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) specs and datasheets from Ericcson, Nokia, and others.

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