Database Users

Slow Speeds on Evo (3G/4G)

There have been a lot of posts about slow speeds and 4G issues. There's been speculation on PRI, radios and MAC addresses. My goal with this thread is to create a roll-call for everyone with problems and what they're running with. With this data, hopefully we can draw better conclusions to why we're having issues.
PLEASE POST YOUR DETAILS AS FOLLOWS IF YOU'RE REPORTING SLOW SPEEDS:
ROM: HTC-OTA-3.26.651.6-Final-Froyo-Rooted-Odexed-netarchy-signed
BASELAND: 2.15.00.07.28
KERNEL: 2.6.32.15-g746f4f0 [email protected] #58
BUILD: 3.26.651.6 CL218634
PRI: 1.34_003
PRL: 60669
3G: 500-700kbps (average)
4G: 0 [SpeedTest.net app would not connect over 4G]

TommyNY said:
There have been a lot of posts about slow speeds and 4G issues. There's been speculation on PRI, radios and MAC addresses. My goal with this thread is to create a roll-call for everyone with problems and what they're running with. With this data, hopefully we can draw better conclusions to why we're having issues.
ROM: HTC-OTA-3.26.651.6-Final-Froyo-Rooted-Odexed-netarchy-signed
BASELAND: 2.15.00.07.28
KERNEL: 2.6.32.15-g746f4f0 [email protected] #58
BUILD: 3.26.651.6 CL218634
PRI: 1.34_003
PRL: 60669
3G: 500-700kbps (average)
4G: 0 [SpeedTest.net app would not connect over 4G]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Welcome to Sprint, the NOT Network
or
Welcome to Sprint, The Now UNnetwork.
sprint and slow speeds/spotty service go hand in hand.
to be truthful, people have reported that an unrooted stock phone does better in the same location than a rooted phone.
but others have reported no difference.
for me its a mixed bag but the difference is minor, minor enough that you can chaulk it up to margin or error.
my speeds in my town are fracking all over the spectrum, and i mean that. it's never the same form hour to hour.
and worst of all at my work location and the surrounding 3/4 to 1 mile radius is in a Data Dead Zone, there is almost no data for some reason, but plenty of signal. and when i go into my building i start to roam, and i get faster speeds roaming than i do if i walk outside and get full bars.
That should be a new acronym, DDZ - Data Dead Zone.
now i have never taken the wife on a drive with me to test her unrooted phone at my work area, but plan to soon.

I know that I got a little bit better 3g speeds at home before rooted, and I don't know if it was because I moved to 2.2, but my 4G speeds have went down alot, and hardly work, though thats how it was before, but for a week or so it was perfect 5mb/s, but now I can't have consistant speeds, it gets down to like 1mb/s now, and doesn't even top 2mb/s.

I did a quick, unscientific, test the other day in my house comparing my 3G to 4G speeds. I sat in the exact same spot and ran the speedtest and my 4G speeds were 1.07mb and my 3G speeds were 1.03mb..........Pretty dissappointing.

I never gone past 140 kbs on download on 3g here in wisconsin with 3g.. it be nice if they come out with 4g support to cover most customers when they comeout with a phone made for 4g.. i tried the whole list of cities and at different times.. top speed of 140 kbs.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

http://www.speedtest.net/android/9270522.png
Sent from my Sexy EVO 4G using XDA App

What I'm looking for is for anyone who's having similar issues to report their software details. With this info we can drill down what could be causing these issues.

I just posted my results. So I don't see an issue and it looks like your area.
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novanosis85 said:
I just posted my results. So I don't see an issue and it looks like your area.
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Click to collapse
New York City?
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I'm Chicago.
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TommyNY said:
New York City?
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Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It very well could be degregated performance in NYC. I know awhile back ATT was telling their customers to use wifi whenever possible because of the network congestion:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/05/25/att.free.wifi.nyc.cnet/index.html

I live in the chicago suburbs and around my house 4G and 3G speeds are terrible. However, if I venture about 5 minutes out, towards the elgin area specifically, I have seen speeds of up to 11mbs. Its just a little dissapointing that I appear to be on some crummy fringe area, but if I drive a couple miles out my speeds improve SO much.

martyzidek said:
I never gone past 140 kbs on download on 3g here in wisconsin with 3g.. it be nice if they come out with 4g support to cover most customers when they comeout with a phone made for 4g.. i tried the whole list of cities and at different times.. top speed of 140 kbs.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dunno what ur doing dude but I live in WI and hit 2000kbps consistent
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In palatine I get 10.5 mbps consistently and I am rooted.
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Where in wisconsin? Live in sheboygan..
sent from my Evo

Meh...I'm in Kentucky and in Louisville and Lexington I get an average of 1.0-1.5Mbps...it rairly ever drops under.
~Jasecloud4

I have read all of the PRI threads and really don't know if that is a cause for slow speeds or not. The problem I have is that I can do a speed test 5 times in a row and get 5 completely different results. A couple of nights ago I did about 6 speed tests over a 1 hour period. they ranged from 296 kbps down to 2198 kbps down (all on 3g). I just think that Sprints network, at least where I live is pretty unreliable.
For the record my specs are.
ROM-Fresh 3.1.0.1
baseband-2.15.00.07.28
Kernel-2.6.32.15-g746f4f0 [email protected] #58
Software-3.26.651.6
PRI: 1.34_003
PRL: 60669

martyzidek said:
Where in wisconsin? Live in sheboygan..
sent from my Evo
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Two rivers...30 minutes north
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Anyone else in Tempe/Phoenix have their 3g speeds die? My download speed has slowed to a crawl, just did speedtest a little bit ago and it actually showed -1kbps.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/910198801.png
St. Louis, MO with 1 bar of 4G. Stock everything.
Swyped from my PC36100 using XDA App

Did Sprint lower 3G speeds

Guys please help me understand I'm running DC Rom 3.2.3 with the old radio and just updated to the newest radio and still getting slow three g speed. However I do get good 4g speed around 4.3 mbps. But what I donot understand is why my upload speed is higher than download speeds. I took a snap shot. Is it because I'm In a 4g area or could it possible be that the network is having problem.
Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

From what I have been reading about radios, it seems that some radios work better in some places, and the latest may not be the best for everyone. Try different radios to see what different speeds you get.

thats horrible. i just tested 1604 down and 692 up. not too shabby. ive gotten 2000 before though.

lee.n.doan said:
From what I have been reading about radios, it seems that some radios work better in some places, and the latest may not be the best for everyone. Try different radios to see what different speeds you get.
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Click to collapse
The radio I had before worked great until few days ago I just update to new radio so I figure I upgrade to the new radio to see if it fixes the problem. Do you think sprint is forcing 4g people that are in 4g area to use 4g? 4g is great but runs battery down for just surfing and textin.
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hockey4life0099 said:
thats horrible. i just tested 1604 down and 692 up. not too shabby. ive gotten 2000 before though.
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Click to collapse
I'm in greensboro nc where you located. Are you rooted
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The problem is that you are using the speedtest.net app I presume. If I am not mistaken it is fairly inaccurate. Try using the xtremelabs(sp?) speedtest app in the market or try using the speedtest.net website.
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ewilson said:
I'm in greensboro nc where you located. Are you rooted
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Click to collapse
I'm rooted in the metro detroit area.
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I have the same problem sometimes, and I am fairly sure it isn't your radio, it is Sprints network. Last night for the first time I experienced the same thing as you did with the uploads being higher then the downloads, weird. I have been testing it at random times daily and it is just really inconsistent. Here are some screen shots of my tests for the last few days. As you can see from the shots, I have almost full 3g signal (the red bars at the top of the screen) when I did these screen shots, yet two hours ago I had no 3g at all in the exact same spot for about an hour.

thats crazy, i live just out side a tiny city where most folks have dial up yet the whole area gets sprints 3g. my tests are usually 1.2mb down and 700kb up.
on a side note, i had no idea sprint had such sweet speeds even in areas that you just wouldnt think they would spend the money on. maybe att had me bamboozled all this years.

Somebody should start one of those Google maps that we can all put pins in with notes about the most reliable radios in our region. I bet we could populate it pretty fast if a few root users would be willing to flash a few versions and test each one. I'd do it, but I'm in the middle of another project.

No speed increase with 1.4 pri

I finally after 7 hours of work, got my PRI updated to 1.4 and got all my original stuff back and I am updated to the tilt with all current version of everything.
I just finished my speed tests and have found that this 1.4 PRI update has done nothing to increase my 3g speed.
Backstory:
My speed at work dropped from 1mb in June to 125kb (looks like it is capped) two weeks ago. I have done everything in my power to fix it. Nothing has worked and Sprint is not saying anything.
Hope this saves someone time and effort.

There was a tower at my house that was bad. Packet loss was in the thousands when I looked at it on my aircard. It took them over a year to fix it.
I had the same issue you did. went from good speeds to crap.

Did yours appear to be capped? My speed hits that 128kb mark and just stops, everytime.

I've had pretty much the same exact thing in my house... Went from 1mb+ on 3g to around 200-300 kbs. However, after the PRI update I am getting a slight raise in dl speed. around 500-600 now....
My signal strength is still weak and has not improved at all however, which is what I was really hoping for with the pri update....
Honestly...all of this bullsht with sprint makes me want to go back to tmobile. I left them because I was getting terrible signal strength...but i'm getting the same thing with sprint. /: at least tmobile has beast 3g speeds and the vibrant........
ahhh well. I still love my Evo.

Its a known fact that sprint is capping data.
PRI updates only affect a small percentage of users, used for when sprint brings new towers online. Chances are you have no new towers in your area.

Unfortunately, this is the wrong forum to post this, so you may get flamed.
Pri does not affect speed directly, it affects your data access times...pings. So with the new update and possibly lower pings, you will generally see faster response times in the web browser as compared to what you have had before.

Sprint doesn't cap, they throttle.
When I go over 6 gigs of data for the month, my speed tends to drastically drop off the face of the earth.
Last month alone, I used close to 8 gigs...not cool having to deal with 1X like speeds for the last week of the month.
~Jasecloud4

I now have 4g after this update

aman1127 said:
I now have 4g after this update
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Click to collapse
lol.... what?

I think that nearly everything people are reporting related to speed and latency with PRI can be explained by the placebo effect.

Nothing changed for me, still around 1MB... I didn't really expect anything but why not... BTW Those that are complaining about horrible signal at home address, call sprint and have them give you airave for free. I did that on my first month of service and been much happier ever since.

Sawawa said:
I think that nearly everything people are reporting related to speed and latency with PRI can be explained by the placebo effect.
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Click to collapse
I agree, but there is something to be said for sprint pushing/making the update available.
In any case, I've found that the sprint network can not be considered anywhere near consistent, 3g or 4g, pri 1.34 or 1.40.

jasecloud4 said:
Sprint doesn't cap, they throttle.
When I go over 6 gigs of data for the month, my speed tends to drastically drop off the face of the earth.
Last month alone, I used close to 8 gigs...not cool having to deal with 1X like speeds for the last week of the month.
~Jasecloud4
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know if they do throttle or maybe its a case by case thing. Last month I used 13gbs of data since this is now my primary source of internet. I still get 2-3mbps
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Sawawa said:
I think that nearly everything people are reporting related to speed and latency with PRI can be explained by the placebo effect.
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Click to collapse
+1 agreed.
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damn, i am lucky to get 100-300kb/sec
i dont think anyone ever expected to get better speeds, ie; 500kb/sec to 1mb/sec
better latency is many times better than a faster connection.

v_lestat said:
damn, i am lucky to get 100-300kb/sec
i dont think anyone ever expected to get better speeds, ie; 500kb/sec to 1mb/sec
better latency is many times better than a faster connection.
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Click to collapse
Yup. You can download however fast you want but if you can't connect to the server itself in a timely manner then that fast down speed doesn't really matter.

jasecloud4 said:
Sprint doesn't cap, they throttle.
When I go over 6 gigs of data for the month, my speed tends to drastically drop off the face of the earth.
Last month alone, I used close to 8 gigs...not cool having to deal with 1X like speeds for the last week of the month.
~Jasecloud4
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have to see what I used in July, probably 2g...however, my speed didn't pick up when August hit. Anyway, I just posted this because I saw the instruction thread on the PRI was closed. Well, I will just keep calling Sprint and telling them my work zip code sucks now.

I can confirm there is no 3G speed difference between PRI 1.40_003 & 1.34_003 as I have run speedtest.net on my wife's unrooted Evo and mine simultaneously. Our speeds are similar and also similarly vary between 200 - 1100 kbps while driving from downtown San Francisco heading north for 20 minutes or so.
I'm guessing poor 3G speeds are determined by specific tower and load - but definitely not by PRI version.
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No difference here and it broke the prl hack i use to get evdo service. I reverted back to eng build and all is good again. Minus the 7 hours of pri fix attempts.
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What's the worst speedtest speed you've ever gotten on 3g?

So far on 3g I've never broken 1000kbps. yes thats kbps.
I just ran a few speed tests again.
5 out of 6 bars.
3 tests run.
Highest download speed: 26 yes TWENTY SIX kbps.
Upload was the normal 147.
IS THIS THE ENHANCED 3g/4g experience I'm paying for?!?

Sprint 3G sucks pretty badly compared to AT&T and T-Mobile. I've seen AT&T phones get over 1500kbps way more often than not.
With my phone I consistently get under 1000kbps with good signal areas giving me over 1300kbps and up to 2000kbps if I'm lucky.

Yeah, this was one of the major disappointments of coming from tmobile with 2-6mbps dls and not realizing how slow cdma 3g data was..probably the main reason im getting the g2 soon.
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Ha, I just got 592 down and 87 up.
Honestly, though, my house sucks for signal quality. My AT&T phones could barely even make a call out of here. My Epic sounds basically like a land line in comparison. But yeah, data speeds suck. It's not the Epic's fault.
Luckily I have wi-fi at home and at work and I'm in a 4G area otherwise.

arashed31 said:
Sprint 3G sucks pretty badly compared to AT&T and T-Mobile. I've seen AT&T phones get over 1500kbps way more often than not.
With my phone I consistently get under 1000kbps with good signal areas giving me over 1300kbps and up to 2000kbps if I'm lucky.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're comparing 2 gsm providers with a cdma provider. Cdma is not real 3g, so their gsm speeds are always better...personally sprint gives me the best service of verizon, usc, or att. My data speeds with sprint are twice what I ever saw with vz and I never had att 3g serviceat home, had to drive into town.
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98 down and 111 up. I upgraded from a Hero that didn't ever drop below 300 up or down.
:-/
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ansong said:
98 down and 111 up. I upgraded from a Hero that didn't ever drop below 300 up or down.
:-/
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My phone rarely drops below 600dl. One of the places I work I get decent speed at 1700 down (still upload capped). The 1 time I got no upload cap, my phone must have been downloading an update from Sprint (DI07) cause I got prompted to install it shortly afterwards. This has to account for something... I'll patiently wait for the fix though as I love the phone and rarely upload anything. E-mails still send fine (no pics, just text for work).

Sprint's 4G...has a little catching up to do, to say the least.

http://ashleyesqueda.com/just-so-you-all-know-im-not-bullshitting
I'd like to get a full 1mbps down over 4G. And once again...Sprint loses; it sucks to be first, I guess.

Sorry YOUR area sucks. 8-9Mbps here.

Of course Verizon's LTE is going to be fast, there probably isn't any traffic really going through it.
I'm sure it will go down some but those speeds are fast.
I get 5-10 depending on where I am.

DirtyShroomz said:
Sorry YOUR area sucks. 8-9Mbps here.
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Click to collapse
Yeah, one of 10 areas that Sprint actually had rightish. Haha. What I don't get is, Clear is here and they have upwards of 5 - 10, so why have I never seen over 2, and 80% of the time, don't get one? I'm sure they throttle Sprint's traffic.

I have yet to even get 4g in my area...there is only one city in my state with 4g and I'm nowhere near it.
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Hrshycro said:
Yeah, one of 10 areas that Sprint actually had rightish. Haha. What I don't get is, Clear is here and they have upwards of 5 - 10, so why have I never seen over 2, and 80% of the time, don't get one? I'm sure they throttle Sprint's traffic.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe your not in a real good area, hell on my 3G with 2 bars im getting 1.4mbps down.

At home, pulling down around 5mbps, which is the same speed as my home wifi.
My max has been 8 mbps in Houston off Westheimer.
This thread is stupid.

I'm on T-Mobile pulling down 7.5 to 10mbps on average(MT4G), on my 3G Moto Cliq XT I'm getting 3.5 to 5mbps. Uploads for both are around 1.5mbps
XDA ICE GLACIER - THEMED / Never stock

I get between 5-8mbps in Columbus, OH. Haven't checked 3g speeds in awhile.

Hrshycro said:
Yeah, one of 10 areas that Sprint actually had rightish. Haha. What I don't get is, Clear is here and they have upwards of 5 - 10, so why have I never seen over 2, and 80% of the time, don't get one? I'm sure they throttle Sprint's traffic.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No throttling going on with wimax. You will see throttling on lte though.
Sent from my Evo powered by moar gees.

DoctorComrade said:
No throttling going on with wimax. You will see throttling on lte though.
Sent from my Evo powered by moar gees.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's what I've read, but I have a hard time beliveing it, since I was at a clients house (she has clear w/ new modem), 1/2 mile away from a sprint/clear tower, modem had 5/5 bars, evo had 2/4 bars: I got .7 down, she got 4.8 down. :| Either it's throttled, or Sprint's servers suck ass.
RootUserDWR said:
I'm on T-Mobile pulling down 7.5 to 10mbps on average(MT4G), on my 3G Moto Cliq XT I'm getting 3.5 to 5mbps. Uploads for both are around 1.5mbps
XDA ICE GLACIER - THEMED / Never stock
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd be perfectly happy if I got 5/1 on 4G.
r916 said:
Maybe your not in a real good area, hell on my 3G with 2 bars im getting 1.4mbps down.
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Click to collapse
Yeah, .5 million people in the valley (Boise, Idaho), and 3G has been 30kbps for months. This past week, however, I've seen 600/600 on 3G in a few areas, but then it randomly drops to 1x, too.

I've gotten 7-8 down a few times here but it's usually around 6. That being said, I can get 7 down on one server and .5 down on another not thirty seconds later. It all depends on the server and how many connections are between you and it. Closer is not always better either.
edit: That is pretty damn impressive though, Sprints definitely needs to widen the bandwidth or do something. I would love pings like that too...

xHausx said:
I've gotten 7-8 down a few times here but it's usually around 6. That being said, I can get 7 down on one server and .5 down on another not thirty seconds later. It all depends on the server and how many connections are between you and it. Closer is not always better either.
edit: That is pretty damn impressive though, Sprints definitely needs to widen the bandwidth or do something. I would love pings like that too...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. I think Sprint's servers are just f'ed up.
I know!

It went from about 11 mb down here to like 2-3.

I have seen 8-9 in town but typically at the house I see from 2-3. I live right outside of Austin tx.
Sent from my rooted HTC EVO using the xda app!

i usually see 5-7 when im on 4G around here.

You sprinters getting getting 6-10 down: how long does it take you to load say engadget.com (full site)?? K Now do the same on strong signal 3G. What's the difference in time.
Here in Chicago the difference is zero.
Speedtests are worthless....AS IS WIMAX.
(Note: I get strong 3G here)

rockky said:
You sprinters getting getting 6-10 down: how long does it take you to load say engadget.com (full site)?? K Now do the same on strong signal 3G. What's the difference in time.
Here in Chicago the difference is zero.
Speedtests are worthless....AS IS WIMAX.
(Note: I get strong 3G here)
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Click to collapse
im not even going to attempt this cause 3G in my area is worthless at this point, were talking dialup speeds or less lol.

Oh my that's fast. I could stream Netflix with my phone through my Xbox....in HD. So jealous.
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Just ran 2 speed tests in downtown Chicago - full bars:
3G: .33 down, .23 down
4G: 2.49 down, 1.48 down
Yeah - that's premium data all right...