Gadgetory

hey everyone I'm Jeff Bakalar for cnet.com we're here today with Bonnie cha our cell phone expert senior editor and today we're talking about AT&T and the announcement they made that they've fully upgraded their 3G service here in New York City and while it's tough to judge and measure that claim we decided to put all the cellphone carriers up against one another starting right here at our CNET Labs here in New York so Bonnie how exactly are we conducting these experiments here today so we've downloaded the speedtest.net app to four devices the Nexus One for t-mobile that Apple iPhone 4 for 18 T got it on the Evo 4G for Sprint as well as the joint X for Verizon and we're gonna conduct three tests at each location and take an average obviously there are a lot of variables that go into these fita so I'm just gonna give it a shot and see what we get so shall we start let's do it Bonnie what were the results again I'd like to reiterate this isn't formal scientific testing but looks like from the test here that 18t had the fastest upload and download speeds interestingly a Verizon and t-mobile around the same but t-mobile was running on edge so it's pretty interesting result cool all right we're going to brave the heat and venture outside our next stop Columbus Circle so Bonnie there's a lot of people here what do you think is going to happen in our speed test well it should be interesting to watch but you know with more people I'm sure a lot of people are on their cell phones so data speeds might be slower but we'll have to check it out all right let's see what we get here at Columbus Circle okay so we average the three tests and t-mobile had the fastest download speeds which actually doesn't surprise me because I've gotten grade 3G speeds with t-mobile here in New York sprint and came in last that is a bummer for me because I have an Evo but alright but you know just informal testing here sure and Verizon and AT&T were similar in as far as download speeds but the upload speeds for 18 T were a little on the floor side you know we've had that issue this week we've heard about it so it's apparently a software issue so hopefully we'll see it fixed soon all right our latest trip brings us to Times Square in New York City Bonnie Chow what do you think's going on here so many people so much traffic what can we expect well yeah a lot more people than Columbus Circle I think that's going to put more of a strain on the network so I'm expecting some slower data speeds here but let's see who can handle the heat we're done spinning here in Times Square in New York City finally shall we have our results what did they say we got some mixed results this time chima was still in first place was the fastest download and upload speeds sprint actually came in second so they're coming on up Verizon came in last in 83rd all right we're here at our final location for testing Union Square well actually this is the location I was most interested in because when we posted that ATT story we've got a few complaints from readers saying the Union Square area was the worst in reception so 18t came in third wasn't the worst sprint was the worst you know I'm really upset about everywhere we go except for Times Square Sprint performed terribly sorry about that it's okay it's not your fault it's not your network you know again these are informal tests a lot of variables happening as far as first t-mobile still comes in first and Verizon came in second I think I think you know we learned a lot and I think surprisingly t-mobile having by far the best performance scores is there anything else that contributes to them again it could like we said it could be the number of subscribers but you know t-mobile just hasn't really advertised there 3G network as much as the other so people might not be aware about how fast this network is um what else did we learn today really I feel like you regardless where you go in Manhattan your results are gonna vary you know we got ups we got downs different locations changed is there anything else we could sort of conclude after all this I mean the mixed results you know there's so many variables it could be your location there's a time of day you know so you know just if you're looking for a carrier talk with other people to see what their experiences and choose from there I decide from there well thank you Bonnie cha our cell phone expert senior editor here at Zenith accom we've braved the heat we've jumped all over Manhattan testing the various cell phone providers and their data speeds I'm Jeff Bakalar for cnet.com as well thank you so much for watching we'll see you guys soon