Gadgetory

why does this guy have two briefcases full of smart phones in his trunk no this isn't a shady Craigslist deal or some undercover operation with the police this is Randy and he works for route metrics based in Washington state route metrics send scouts all around the country to test the coverage of the four major carriers in addition to measuring download and upload data speeds it has calling and texting performance its reports are also cited by carriers themselves usually when the results are favorable of course they swung by Cena and took us on a ride-along you usually do testing on the street to where well our Scouters go all over the country so we have 125 Metro markets that we test twice a year when you know you talk to friends do they ever ask you you know what's the best Network what network should I get absolutely all the time we kind of look at it from a sort of nation to neighborhood perspective so we're measuring the country all 50 states but also we're looking at different aspects of mobile networks depends on how you use your phone so consistently would you recommend a network like if someone said just flat out I'm in San Francisco what should I get well I point them to the our latest route score report for San Francisco where Verizon won our overall ranked nationwide Verizon scored the best and overall performance in the latest round of testing it also led a network reliability speed data and call performance but don't feel too bad if you're using the other carriers AT&T often comes in as a close second in the same category and while t-mobile doesn't usually win on a national or state wide scale route metrics says it does notably well in densely populated metro areas as for Sprint its third in overall performance and it's making significant headway for its LTE coverage but given all these numbers and stats what carriers do the people at route metrics actually use a Verizon I use a TNT so how are these tests conducted in general a Scout heads to one of the predetermined locations set on a GPS and uses phones that work best with each carrier Randy here is carrying a galaxy s6 edge for Verizon a galaxy note5 for AT&T and t-mobile and a galaxy s6 for Sprint to test the networks at this local grocery Randy leaves one set running in a van parked outside he then goes inside with another set all phones are making calls sending texts and measuring download and upload rates the data is then being back to their servers in Washington where the numbers are crunched we were curious to see what networks have the fastest data speeds in our own building I assume Verizon was going to be the leader but it only scored the fastest upload speed for the fastest download speeds however t-mobile dominated the competition of course our office is just one location and tests were conducted at a single random point in the day the best network for our building city or even state isn't going to be the same for another knowing what network to choose is difficult especially when you consider pricing and family plans and data buckets and throttling but when it comes to performance it's nice to know there's a third party out there that's doing the dirty work