BruceDimon

I tried out a new EDGE phone and measured its performance against the slower GPRS phone.

The baseline is my Dell Axim X30 connected to a Sony Ericsson T610 via Bluetooth. I have T-Mobile's Mobile Internet added to my regular cell phone account so that I can use the cell phone as a modem.

According to the Mobile Speed test at
http://www.dslreports.com/mspeed
The GPRS rate with the Sony-Ericsson T610 is only 35 kilobits per second.

The MDA in the T-Mobile store scored a 165 kilobit per second rate using the same test. I expected a big speed increase by upgrading my phone.

I tried a Nokia 6103 with EDGE. It connected easily to the Dell using the same settings as the Sony Ericsson. The speed test returned a disappointing 65 kilobits per second.

Since I knew that Bluetooth ran around 1 megabit per second, I was confused. The answer was the overhead. Although Bluetooth communications runs along near a megabit, the packet construction and networking overhead wastes a lot of that bandwidth. The bottom line is that a bluetooth modem can communicate with a computer between 65 and 128 kilobits per second!

I returned the Nokia phone and went back to the Sony Ericsson for this reason and because it did not support hands-free use on my motorcycle. Bluetooth will never give me the speeds I want on my Dell Axim.

Do I want to upgrade to the MDA? Hmm. Gotta think about that.

It's not all bad news, though. T-Mobile's Mobile Internet includes unlimited use at T-Mobile Hot Spots which are as ubiquitous as Starbucks stores. So I can use WiFi for uploading photos and downloading podcasts. The 35 Kilobit rate is fast enough for my GMail as long as I limit the Pocket Outlook message size to 5 KB.

Now if I could just improve the lousy phone reception on that Sony Ericsson...

akao

Edge is slow as molasses compared to evdo. Look at Sprint and Verizon's offering if you need the faster speeds. BT is not your bottleneck it's the service..