LTE is the Best Feature I Can’t Use

July 29, 2012 in Commentary

Data Sucks

A month ago I went back on what I said, and bought a Galaxy S3. 聽Last November, when I went to the Galaxy Nexus, I told myself I would be sticking with Nexus devices exclusively from that point forward. 聽I made it through the HTC One X release without even being tempted to purchase one, though to be honest I didn’t find that phone to be the least bit intriguing. 聽Fast forward to the release of the Galaxy S3, and to make a long story short, I found it too attractive to pass up. 聽That said, I am pretty satisfied with the phone overall except for one thing, the LTE functionality. 聽Let me be clear, I love AT&T’s LTE network as it provides me with some very impressive data speeds. 聽I tend to average between 12 and 15 Mbps, and have experienced data speeds as high as 60Mbps. 聽Where the problem comes in is, AT&T’s lousy data offerings. 聽As you are probably aware, AT&T only has one data plan that makes any sense, the 3gb/mo plan. 聽If you’re wondering why I didn’t mention the 5gb plan, it’s because it doesn’t make sense to enroll in it. 聽Getting back on topic, 3gb of data simply is not enough for a high-speed connection such as LTE. 聽To put this into perspective, consider the fact that even before 3g came along, cell carriers offered unlimited data plans or had a 5gb data cap. 聽Today we have LTE, which is ridiculously faster than the 2g data speeds of yesteryear, yet the data limits have gone down instead of increasing with the data speeds. 聽AT&T advertises all these different devices, and markets their ability to be used as a multimedia convergent device, yet their data plan offerings don’t support the very features they advertise. 聽For example, if you use your phone to watch videos each day, you will quickly go over your data limit. 聽To be fair, AT&T is not the only carrier guilty of offering terrible data plans, as T-Mobile and Verizon are both in the same boat also. 聽When I’m trying to show a youtube video to a friend, I shouldn’t have to think about what network I’m connected to before I push play. 聽I should be able to simply play the video I want to watch, without having to think about it. 聽It’s ridiculous that I bought a phone AT&T told me I could game on, yet I can’t use AT&T to download the data for the very game they told me I could play. 聽The game Order and Chaos has a download of over 800mb, so I have to make sure I’m not connected to AT&T when I download it, otherwise I’ll use 1/3 of my data allotment just by downloading one game. Keep in mind, one of the Galaxy S3 features AT&T pushes, is the fact it’s good for gaming…just don’t download it on their network. 聽That is completely ridiculous, what good is LTE if I can’t actually use it?

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