All smartphones are not created equal even when it comes to the high-end phones. According to a report by OpenSignal, it discovered that across countries, Samsung users tend to experience faster download speeds than Apple or Huawei users.
Just as different smartphones offer a variety of camera qualities or screen sizes, they also differ in the network communication features which enable faster download speeds and smoother video streaming.
Newer and more expensive smartphone models usually support more network capabilities such as newer versions of the 4G standard, and in a few cases, even 5G. Consumers with less-capable smartphones will not be able to enjoy the best mobile network experience that their mobile operator provides.
The handset network technologies which can affect the network experience including the download speeds include:
- The ability to connect to more frequency bands (though with over 40 4G bands in use, even industry veterans often struggle to keep track of the importance of every one).
- The ability to connect to more than one radio band at once –called carrier aggregation.
- Technologies that improve the performance on any given radio frequency such as the modulation type(e.g. 64 or 256 QAM) and the use of multiple simultaneous antennas (e.g. 2×2 or 4×4 MIMO).
- The choice of modem supplier and chipset (for example, Qualcomm, Intel, Huawei HiSilicon, Samsung Exynos or Mediatek)
In the report, Opensignal used over 18,000 unique smartphone models from hundreds of smartphone manufacturers . It noted that most of these smartphone brands are niche, and even many of the well-known brands such as Sony or Motorola are no longer truly global. Similarly, large rising stars like Xiaomi, OPPO, Realme and Vivo are still expanding their international footprint and do not operate everywhere. Most small smartphone manufacturers focus on just a few countries.
They has use the top three commonly used brands for this comparison, looking at smartphone makers by shipment volume —Apple, Huawei and Samsung —because their users are present in sufficient volume in many countries (in the case of Huawei, even in countries where mobile operators do not sell their handsets it was hard to measure the download speeds in these countries).
Download speeds by brand
From above graph you can see that Samsung users experienced faster download speeds than Apple and Huawei users in 35% of countries (40 countries were benchmarked), Apple users were faster in 17.5% countries, and in the remaining 48% two or more of the brands tied in a statistical dead heat. While none of the countries saw Huawei users experience the fastest download speeds, Huawei was joint first in 17.5% of countries.
Unlike Apple, Samsung makes a wide range of models from cheap to premium, while Apple only offers premium-priced models, and this is an even more impressive result.
However, these 40 country differences represent other factors beyond the network capabilities of individual smartphone models. Huawei users experienced notably slower download speeds in the U.S. and Japan most likely because they are not strong markets for Huawei, and in those countries their users have chosen cheaper models with less capable modems. Apple’s success in markets like Brazil, Taiwan and Costa Rica likely reflects a tendency of their users to be more weighted to premium-priced devices and premium mobile tariffs than in other countries where iPhone adoption is more widespread and mainstream, for example in the U.S.
