Thinking about LTE
A lot of people love to have the latest technology, which includes companies as they can use them on comparison sheets between their products and the competitors products. Anything you can offer than the competition cannot must be a huge boon, right? Well, how about it it doesn’t really benefit you or add to the whole user experience?
One of the new buzzwords in the mobile tech part of the industry is LTE, Long Term Evolution, which is set to succeed the 3G networks that have been around for a while. While you might think this is something new, it has been in the works since 2004 and has been deployed in the wild since late 2009. Looking at the basic specifications of LTE it could become the first truly universal mobile communications system, although there are still a number of variations. One thing that might vary between carrier and country is the frequency it’ll run on, pretty much like it already is today. The solution to this could be solved in a similar manner as we have done for some time, with chips that operate on a multitude of frequencies.
While all this is fine and dandy, it’s the real world benefits that are the interesting thing, and LTE doesn’t disappoint in bandwidth. I have seen real world examples of 50MBit downlink speeds, which I must say if quite impressive and very snappy. These speeds are starting to challenge WiFi in terms of how much data your device can suck down per second. So it’s a really fast connection technology, but everything isn’t just roses and pizza. The by far biggest problem with LTE at the moment is the nearly insane drain on battery life. But don’t take my word for it, just go check out any review of a smartphone equipped with LTE and you will see pretty much the same phenomenon: LTE is blazingly fast and eats up your battery faster than horde of starving people can out-eat a pastry shop!
If you are wondering why Apple and a few others have yet to include LTE in any of their handsets, I have a feeling that the hefty power consumption is the leading reason. While the advantages are indeed obvious and good, the downsides by far outweigh those advantages. Add to the mix the two factors of network availability and cost of usage and it’s probably an even more unappealing offering right now. I emphasize, right now! As LTE becomes more widespread those two factors will become more and more irrelevant.
But in a smartphone I just don’t see LTE making all that much sense right now. There are some use cases, yes, but for the most part it’s a technology that’s not “there” yet. The networks are very limited in where you can find them, specially when you look at a global scale. If you live in any of the areas where there is an LTE network available I’m sure you would love to have use of in your every computing device. But would you really get a huge benefit from these fairly insane speeds? Streaming content might be a bit faster and your buffering of videos is bound to finish quicker, but otherwise? A webpage won’t load all that much faster, unless you have an enormous problem waiting for a second or two.
If you intend on using your smartphone as a gateway to the Internet for another computer, that’s a bit of a different story. Then you might actually benefit from the current higher data transfer speeds. But as smartphones stand with the fastest speeds good old 3G has to offer, it’s quite enough for most users needs. Downloading gigabytes of data while out and about doesn’t strike me as something truly necessary, which is where LTE really excels in comparison to the older wireless data transfer technologies.
Don’t think of me as some sort of middle-ground luddite, because I do think that having insanely fast data communication is the way forward and the way things will undoubtedly be in the near future. For some scenarios I do see a clear purpose and use for LTE and the higher data speeds it offers. I just don’t see it for smartphones yet. The current LTE chips just drain the battery too fast for it to be truly usable in a pocket computer, which one could easily argue that the modern smartphone is.
LTE is very much the way of the future, but using it as a mallet to swing at products that don’t have it is just a marketing ploy. The only major difference most users will notice with LTE is that they need a power outlet nearby at all times, or stock up on a lot of extra battery packs if the device allows them to be interchanged by the end user. The data speed does, in my mind, not outweigh that huge downside. As long as the snappiest 3G network is around, it’s pretty fast and you will have some power left in your battery after a few short hours.
