3G on Lte mode of Nexus 5 is faster than 3G mode.

[choding]

I have 3G 4.5 GB data plan.

I have to choose the option to select 2G, 3G and Lte.

I tested which mode is faster on 3G Plan.

Lte I had this plan on Lte on the phone is very fast, but now I have changed 3G plan.

It is not bad for me, but I want to compare the speed of 3G plan on Lte and 3G Mode.

Lte mode is a litte bit faster than 3G mode on my phone.

As you have any options of it, you try it.

[youbme]

---

@sheytoon wrote:

I think the terminology should be clarified here.

3G speed, whether your phone is in "Auto LTE/3G" mode, or "3G only" mode, will be exactly the same.

On a Public Mobile "3G" plan, 3G speeds can be faster than LTE because it appears 3G is not limited to 3 Mbps.

---

Thanks for this @sheytoon!

I have a 3G plan and have been experimenting with speeds on my Pixel XL and have found consistent speeds around 12mbps when on 3G only. On LTE, I get a max of around 3.5mbps. In terms of latency, they are similar, LTE is marginally better. This has been through Speedtest, but for real world experience I have not noticed a significant difference - at least for streaming music, which is the majority of what I do with my data.

It might be worthwhile, however, to switch to 3G when trying to download a large file.

[choding]

I already changed the same plan of my wife from no data plan. after checking the speed, i changed my plan. the speed of mine is as same as my wife. I don't know the reason why P.M changed the data speed 72 hours later. I am so happy to change the plan. thanks for your reading my post.  

[srlawren]

@choding how recently did you change from a full-speed LTE plan to a "3G-speed" plan?  It can take up to around 72 hours for the throttling to be applied, so if it's been less time than that you may be testing too soon.  

[will13am]

---

@sheytoon wrote:

I think the terminology should be clarified here.

3G speed, whether your phone is in "Auto LTE/3G" mode, or "3G only" mode, will be exactly the same.

On a Public Mobile "3G" plan, 3G speeds can be faster than LTE because it appears 3G is not limited to 3 Mbps.

---

I can vouch for these results.  I think the idea for these so called 3G plans is to throttle speed universally to 3 mbits/s regardless of preferred network type connection.  During the implementation, it looks like the throttle was only applied to a LTE connection.  I have reach speeds up to 22 mbits/s on 3G.  The higher speed comes at the expense of latency.  LTE latency is generally very uniform and low.  3G is a little more variable and can be higher.  For large downloads, it might be worthwhile to switch to 3G mode.  For daily usage LTE is the way to go.

[sheytoon]

I think the terminology should be clarified here.

3G speed, whether your phone is in "Auto LTE/3G" mode, or "3G only" mode, will be exactly the same.

On a Public Mobile "3G" plan, 3G speeds can be faster than LTE because it appears 3G is not limited to 3 Mbps.

[jaayw]

3G on Public Mobile throttles after a couple of days down to about 3Mbps which is similar to a few years ago known as 3G Lite. Normal 3G (with no throttling) gets way higher speeds that you would normally see which is closer to LTE (4G) but not quite as fast. Speeds you should see for normal 3G is about 5-50 Mbps.

I also got the 3G 4.5 GB plan and it works great, but expect to do normal web browsing and streaming video reliably for 720p.