s4andiphone5

Samsung Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5 are LTE Category 3 Devices

Advanced units sold today such as iPhone 5, HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 are Category 3 LTE however components supporting the next speed step in 4G devices Category 4 LTE corresponding to 3GPP Release 10 have been announced and some trial devices supplied to carriers.

Telstra in February reported testing with a Category 4 LTE device which yeilded 100 Mbps in lab testing and in the field in Perth where they have 20MHz of LTE 1800 spectrum it yeilded 90 Mbps. Telstra reported that it expects to have a LTE Category 4 phone and a USB dongle later this year.

qualcommMDM9x25

Qualcomm MDM 9X25 Family Announced in February Support Category 4 LTE

Theoretically Category 4 devices can hit 150 Mbps downloading using the current maximum channel bandwidth of 20 MHz. This compares to the existing marketed Category 3 devices 100/50 Mbps. There is a useful statement of LTE speeds achievable with different channel widths at LTE University here.

Comments are closed.