Archive for the ‘Verizon 3G MyFi’ Category

HTC Thunderbolt: Frequent disconnects from Verizon 4G while using Mobile Hotspot

Posted: March 21, 2011 by Troy Saxton-Getty in Android, dropSKIP? What???, HTC Thunderbolt - Verizon, Verizon, Verizon 3G MyFi
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HTC Thunderbolt: Frequent disconnects from Verizon 4G while using Mobile Hotspot
By Troy Saxton-Getty

I bought the HTC Thunderbolt 24 hours ago. I decided to swap out my MyFi 2200 which was dropping signal here and there and this phone could simply replace it with a 4G Hotspot mode which also steps down to 3G when needed. Since this was my primary reason to buy it, I was quick to find out about the frequent disconnects from 4G and Mobile Hotspot mode.

Ok, the HTC Thunderbolt is fantastic, long have I lived with EVO envy…. Finally, I have something better, so I thought…

HTC Thunderbolt

HTC Thunderbolt

At first, I thought it was possibly my location; the downtown financial district of San Francisco is a tough place for the competition to serve up even quality 3G. Let’s look at the issues; large building attenuation, lack of towers in the right places, horde’s of mobile voice and data users and so on, it is challenging for all 4 big US carriers . With that thought in mind, I went across town to multiple different areas with full signal and noticed I had the same problem.

I tried setting the Thunderbolt to forced 4G LTE only mode with the super secret diagnostic and options *#*#4636#*#* menu (Don’t tell anyone ;-) ), while it did stay connected a bit longer, it still recycled, dropped and reconnected, after 30-60 seconds and sometimes minutes between issues however, regularly enough to make the data mode almost useless for a hotspot.

So many different apps and tools struggle to recover from whacky connectivity that it actually increased my frustration to all new levels, almost as frustrating as AT&T dropped voice calls, but not quite. ;-)

This is clearly an issue with the new HTC Thunderbolt, in my humble opinion it’s during a step down at a reduction or loss of 4G signal, however the error recovery process fails and the phone goes stupid, sometimes requiring a total reboot. Locked in 4G LTE only mode, it drops and sometimes recovers and eventually it requires a reboot as well, just slightly better than multi-mode.

I wondered why the phone had a new shutdown option called “Restart”, which says “closes all apps and restarts the phone” on the descriptor.

Just like the good ole days of Microsoft…. I am glad I dropped nearly a cool phat grand on this phone and accessories since I didn’t want to extend my contract, I am even happier that I swapped out my MyFi 2200 3G Hotspot, it was far more reliable than the Thunderbolt Hotspot and now I have a non-operational MyFI 2200.

After some careful research and digging around, it is clear that I am not the only one having this problem, in fact, MSNBC.com has a video report on it, outlining how the phone gets “confused” and doesn’t recover from it very well. use this stories title and search, you will find many others already just days after its public debut.

HTC, why are you beta testing on us with this? I have a friend in QA there, I should call him and find out if this was a known/logged bug and they let it ship since they slipped on the original date…

Speedtest.net from my Macbook Air

Speedtest.net from my Macbook Air

Did I forget to mention this thing flies…. 4G LTE is unreal, better than most home and business high-speed internet… too bad it’s not WORKING reliably.

How frustrating!
http://www.dropSKIP.com ->; real gadget drabble and mashing…

FaceTime Video calls won’t work over 3G, or will it? A work-around of sorts…

Posted: March 13, 2011 by Troy Saxton-Getty in Android, Atrix-ATT, ATT, Audio / Video Gadget, iOS, iPhone4-ATT, iPhone4-Verizon, Motorola Atrix realtime review, Motorola Xoom realtime review, Operating System, Personal HotSpot Devices, Phones, Sprint Overdrive 4G MyFi, Verizon, Verizon 3G MyFi
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So anyone with a smart phone will probably at some point (if you haven’t already), run into a restriction with an App that requires WiFi and won’t work over your carrier’s 3G connection. In fact, even the iTunes and the Apple App Store won’t let you download over 3G if the file size is too large and you will promptly get a message telling you to use WiFi. Worse yet, FaceTime, the video calling tool available on iPhone4, iPad 2 and even a Mac will not run over the iPhone4 or iPad 2′s native 3G connection by design due to an agreement to block it with their respective carrier. (For now)

So tonight we spent a few hours testing FaceTime from our iPhone4′s (both Verizon & ATT), from our iPad 2 and FaceTime on our Macbook Air, all connected over a group of different WiFi hotspot devices to get us around this restriction. (You can also use this method to download files/movies/Audio/Apps larger then they allow over native 3G, iTunes too)

We called with FaceTime over each device and each WiFi Hotspot as well as received FaceTime calls on each, hoping this would give us a good understanding of video and audio quality as well as an understanding of what worked and what didn’t.

We tested the WiFi devices below in HotSpot Mode (meaning you can connect any WiFi device to them over WiFi only and these devices use 3G or 4G to connect you to the internet: (some of these devices will also let you connect to them via USB or Bluetooth for internet access, for this test, we used them all in WiFi mode)

iPhone4 (Verizon) in 3G Hotspot mode
iPhone4 (ATT) in 3G Hotspot mode (requires iOS 4.3)
MyFi 3G (Verizon) (5 connection dedicated Hotspot)
Atrix 4G (ATT) running in 4G Hotspot mode
Xoom Tablet 3G (Verizon) running in 3G Hotspot mode
(MyFi 4G Overdrive (Sprint) is traveling in Gill’s bag, so no testing with it, I suspect it will work just fine)

If we turned off the native 3G on the iPhone4 and iPad2 and connected to any home WiFi connection, FaceTime worked, of course it did, that is how it was meant to work, over your home WiFi and not over ATT or Verizon 3G/4G natively.

So we did exactly that, but turned off the home/office WiFi and made each device connect over each hotspot list above, FaceTime worked and connected every time, the video quality was decent considering the reduced connection speed of 3G/4G over home/work WiFi.

If you want to use FaceTime on the road, you need two devices, one for FaceTime the other to act as the WiFi Hotspot… It seems completely stupid to us or actually, maybe it is brilliant on their part, we haven’t really figured that part out.

Oh, did I mention, you can go iPhone4 to iPhone4 using your native 3G (same device) with the latest version of Skype with video, you can also go to/from a PC or MAC and iPhone4 as well, pretty flawlessly…

Tell me, if FaceTime won’t connect over your native 3G on iPhone4 or iPad2 and Skype will, why are we trying to use FaceTime? Thank you Skype! We hear an Android Skype version with video is coming soon too! Click here for more information on Skype Video for the iPhone4:

http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/get-skype/on-your-mobile/download/iphone-for-skype/

Speed testing various personal hotspot devices from downtown San Jose, CA.

Posted: March 2, 2011 by Troy Saxton-Getty in Atrix-ATT, ATT, Carrier, iPhone4-Verizon, Motorola Atrix realtime review, Personal HotSpot Devices, Sprint, Sprint Overdrive 4G MyFi, Verizon, Verizon 3G MyFi
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Today via our new Macbook Air we decided to test 4 Personal Hotspot devices head to head. This is a tough comparison due to the fact that not all cell towers from the different vendors are in the same spot but our speciality is testing ITRW (in the real-world). We picked a spot that was as close to equal signal for all devices. we would see between 4 and 5 bars of signal on all of the devices consistently.

Here is what we tested: An older Verizon 3G Myfi Hotspot, a new Verizon iPhone4 running in 3G Hotspot Mode, A new Sprint 4G Overdrive Myfi device and a new ATT LTE 4G Atrix Phone from Motorola running in Hotspot mode.

How we tested: we used Safari on a new Macbook Air, using http://www.speedtest.net, we picked the shortest distance provider unless it would default on it’s own to a specific provider gateway. (this would be automatic and there isn’t much you could do about it anyway) As a general rule, the farther the testing distance the more the latency (Ping) times would go up. We booted the Macbook Air fresh each time, waited a few minutes for it to load completely and connected to the specific hotspot the same as you would do ITRW. We ran the test for each device 5 times and took the middle score which is what you see below. We also enabled WPA security on all devices.

The trusty old Verizon 3G MyFi showed a pretty reasonable score and was about the most consistent for each test, this is a respectable 3G result. This was the older “gold standard” for portable hotspots and is still one of the most popular hotspot devices out there.

Verizon-3G-MyFi

Verizon-3G-MyFi

Next, our new Verizon iPhone4 which is a 3G network device, with the personal hotspot mode enabled (not USB or Bluetooth) It was surprising to see the latency figure go up so high, but on each test this is what we saw, the speed wasn’t too bad, very usable but not blazing speed and a little slow on responding.

Verizon iPhone4-3G-Hotspot

Verizon iPhone4-3G-Hotspot

We had much bigger hopes for the 4G devices, so we tested the Sprint Overdrive 4G personal hotspot. We expected so much more from this device, low latency, but just average 3G like speeds and we verified the 4G connection each time, it was in 4G mode.

Sprint-4G-Myfi

Sprint-4G-Myfi

All week we have been testing the Motorola Atrix 4G LTE phone and accessories on ATT’s new high speed network, although it was the fastest performer, each test was all over the place and the speed varied test to test clearly this little Android phone kicked butt on the test, but still, 4G is supposed to offer so much more speed. we have seen greater speeds than this with ATT USB 3G adapters so it wasn’t that impressive.

ATT Atrix-4G-Hotspot

ATT Atrix-4G-Hotspot

All-in this was a pretty good wrap up on 4 Personal Hotspot capable internet connections for just about anything that will use a WIFI connection.

We can’t wait to see some really impressive 4G LTE speeds as promised, but as of this writing, just average 3G speeds were observed today and the 4G devices reported solid 4G connections but didn’t blow any of us away ITRW testing..

More to come!