Study Says AT&T's iPhone Faster Than Verizon's

Metrico Wireless, a company that tests electronic device performance, has just completed a comparison of AT&T's and Verizon's iPhones, a study that is destined to become the fodder of countless TV commercials.

The results, says Metrico, depend entirely on how the customer is using the device. For instance, the AT&T iPhone experienced double the mean data download speed of the Verizon iPhone, but the mean load time for an average Web page was about the same on both devices. 

So, while AT&T will trumpet the "double the download speed" part, Verizon will counter with, "what's the big deal, Web pages load at the same speed?"

Moving around makes a difference

In addition, the findings showed that when the iPhone is mobile, the AT&T iPhone successfully completed around 10 percent more data download sessions than the Verizon iPhone. The results were opposite when the iPhones were stationary; the Verizon iPhone was more consistent uploading data when stationary in comparison to the AT&T iPhone, with a 10 percent better success rate.

"The mobile industry is competing on performance, and anecdotal performance information isn't good enough to drive management and marketing decisions," said Richard McNally, VP, Information Products, Metrico Wireless. "Metrico's Smartphone M.E. program provides carriers and OEMs with an information resource that establishes an objective and scientifically derived user-experience performance baseline."

The iPhone is fast

As part of the study, Metrico also compared the AT&T iPhone to 22 other AT&T smartphones. In that comparison, the iPhone ranked near the top on data download and upload speed, with comparable performance to the Sony Ericsson Xperia, the LG Quantum and the HTC Surround - other phones that operate on the AT&T network.

At the same time, the AT&T iPhone ranks below average in Bluetooth speech quality behind top rated performers like the Blackberry Torch and Blackberry Curve.  The AT&T iPhone ranks in the middle of the pack on call performance behind top rated performers like the Samsung Captivate and the HTC Aria, the study said.

Other Verizon phones are faster

When it comes to the Verizon network, however, the iPhone ranks below average in data download speed relative to other Verizon smartphones like the HTC Incredible. The iPhone only ranks average among Verizon's models in speech quality, behind top performers like the LG Fathom.

To collect performance evaluation data for the report, Metrico said it performed over 10,000 Web page downloads, ran more than 2,000 data download/upload tests and made nearly 4,000 voice calls.