Apple’s iPhones trail Samsung, Google devices in internet speeds
If you paid top dollar for the iPhone X and Apple Inc.’s other flagship smartphones expecting the fastest mobile internet speeds around, you won’t like these results.
Apple’s iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and $1,000 iPhone X trail the latest smartphones from Samsung Electronics Co. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google in download speeds, according to data from Ookla LLC, a company that provides the most popular online service for measuring the speed of an internet connection with its Speedtest app and website.
Faster internet data means that users can load websites and start watching movies more quickly, make crisper video calls and get higherquality video. As smartphones start to look more like each other, handset makers are trying to tout underthecover hardware features. Samsung has marketed the issue against Apple with commercials highlighting the faster mobile internet speeds in its recent TV ad push.
Ookla’s data are important because they are created by users — not in a corporate lab — and encompass the range of random realworld conditions that affect performance such as distance from cellular towers and network congestion. Ookla said it hosts millions of tests a day and has done 20 billion in total.
To be sure, it can be difficult for users to tell the differences between how fast pages load on a phone. But it’s easier to sense the quality of video, how long it takes to pull up a song and how long it takes to send an email. Web speeds aren’t the only important device speed metric. Apple’s main processors that control the speed of launching apps, swiping through PDFs and loading games are often recognized as some of the fastest in the industry.
Slower load times also haven’t noticeably hurt the iPhone against its competition. It’s one
of the best-reviewed smartphones in the world.
The speed-test data, reviewed by Bloomberg, show that Samsung’s Galaxy S9 phones had an average download speed — across carriers in the U.S. — of 38.9 megabits per second. The larger model, the S9+, delivered speeds of 38.4 Mbps.
The iPhone X on average downloaded data at 29.7 Mbps. The iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone 8 were close behind with speeds of 29.4 Mbps and 28.6 Mbps, respectively.
Ookla’s data breakdown indicated the iPhone X operated faster on Verizon Communications Inc.’s wireless network with average speeds of 31.5 Mbps and slowest on Sprint Corp.’s with speeds of 25.1 Mbps. The Galaxy S9+, which is closest to the iPhone X in terms of price, recorded average speeds of 38.2 Mbps on Verizon and 34.2 Mbps on Sprint.
Google’s Pixel 2 XL delivered a speed of 33.9 Mbps and the smaller Pixel 2 showed speeds of 34.4 Mbps.