iPhone 12 5G/LTE vs 11 Pro LTE - Real World Comparison! By Max Tech

In this video I’m not only going to tell you how much faster the iPhone 12’s 5G is compared to the previous iPhones 4G LTE, but I’ll also compare the iPhone 12’s 4G, because let's face it, not everyone has 5G yet, and with that, I have some incredible results for you including some hotspot tethering comparisons. I tested throughout the day and all over town to give you a real-world comparison both in spots with great reception both peak and off hours, and places that used to be dead zones for me but thanks to the iPhone 12 they aren’t anmore. With that said, the 5G that I'm going to showing you guys is sub 6mm 5G, because well, that's the one I have here in my town, and chances are if you have 5G that's what you have too. Before we jump in its very important to note that both the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro have the identical antennas where last year the non pro had worst reception, and that the modems are also the same exact top of the line Snapdragon X55 so Apple didn’t cheap out on the 12 and 12 mini compared to the Pro. I started out early morning outside of my house before the networks were being hit and my 11 Pro Max managed one of the best scores I’ve gotten there, 36mbps download and 25 upload. Testing the iPhone 12 when manually set to LTE only, I got 39 download and 32 upload, so slightly better but not by much.

Switching over to the slowest but most common 5G tech, I got a speed of about 70Mbps and an upload of 28. That's about twice as fast compared to iPhone 11 LTE, but what does this mean in the real world? Well web pages load more quickly and I can actually stream 4K video with these speeds instead of having occasional buffering with 1080P on the iPhone 11. I then headed to my church which is the most frustrating area in terms of cell reception. With my iPhone 11 Pro I only have service in a few spots, and in one of those my speed test showed 6mbps download and and 0.37 mbps upload. This speed is frustrating, I can’t stream any video, everything loads very slowly, and I have issues sending not only photos but even text and making calls.

Popping the same sim into my iPhone 12, I went from 6mbps download to 38.8 and for the upload from an unusable 0.37 to a slow but usable 2.2, and this is using the same exact 4G LTE network not 5G. Switching 5G on resulted in an even faster 48.3 download and 4.3 upload. Thats 8 times faster download speeds and 12 times faster upload speeds, and that means I went from a frustrating experience to an actually decent one for everything including streaming video. The next place I tested was at my office which is a concrete building next to a ton of other businesses that use the network. My iPhone 11 Pro got a slow download speed of 20 and upload of 11, while iPhone 12 4GB LTE managed 32 download and 13 upload which is a noticeable but not huge improvement.

Switching to 5G resulted in a much faster 52 download and 23 upload, so more than twice as fast upload and download speeds. Now before I move on to another frustrating deadzone in my city, I want to pause for a second and share another test here at the office that might be very relevant to you. When we first got the iPhone 12’s in we had a major snowstorm, and even thought the 5G had lower bars it wasn’t really affected by it like the iPhone 11 was, getting 45Mbps download where my 11 got an unusable 2mbps. I retested both using only LTE, and this time the 12 scored a faster but still slow 4mbps compared to 22mbps. So how in the world is this possible if the iphone 12 was actually showing lower bars? As I mentioned at the start Apple didn’t cheap out and is using the very best Snapdragon X55 modem which is what connects to the towers.

The older iPhones are have been using intel modems which are much slower even though it shows more bars of reception. In the afternoon I tested another annoying deadzone on the way to my house, where even podcasts will stop playing as I drive by. I pulled over in the general area and my iPhone 11 pro got 10mbps, the iPhone 12 using LTE got 12, so not much better here. Switching to 5G resulted in almost 18 download, so not twice as fast but getting there. Even though I was expecting more here, I want to add that I’ve been driving by this part of town at least twice a day for two weeks and not once has my podcast or music buffered which is so nice.

Next I drove downtown in the evening during peak hours, and the iPhone 11 got a really fast 60mbps with 6 upload, to 70 download and a massive 55 upload this time. Switching on 5G resulted in 114 download and 90mbps upload speeds. I have to say that I’m glad Apple added 5G to all of their new phones, even the 12 mini, because if they didn’t go for 5G then they would still be using intel modems and we wouldn't be seeing these great speed improvements. And for the final test before talking about tethering I tested in the evening closer to a tower and my iPhone 11 got a very fast 85mbps download and 54 upload. This is the best I’ve gotten on my iPhone 11 Pro Max in my town and speeds I was thrilled with before testing the iPhone 12 that is.

Testing standard LTE, It was around the same speed being outside and close to the tower, with the download being slightly slower this time, but switching on 5g resulted in an crazy 205Mbps download and 81 upload. Keep in mind this is the slowest 5G out of the 3 different kinds. If you have mid-band 5g in your city you would be getting 400-600Mbps at this point, and with mm wave it would be over 1000. Thankfully unlike many androids all iPhone 12’s support every kind of 5G so once your city ads it you’ll have full access. I also want to point out that some of you already have faster LTE speeds in your cities, and some have slower speeds, it really depends on your carrier and how many people are connected to that tower.

If your iPhone 11 speeds are already better than mine, it just means that if you have an iPhone 12 it will be even faster, based on my tests in many cases much faster even without 5G. And now let's get to a test that really shocked me even more than the others, and thats tethering. I often use the wifi hotspot on my phone to share data with my MacBook and unfortunately it's really slow. Testing my iPhone 11 in the evening I got a painful 3mbps download and less than one upload, meaning streaming video is only possible with really bad quality and forget about uploading. Switching to the iPhone 12 I got 36mbps download and 18mbps upload which is a massive difference and similar to the speed many people have with their regular wifi.

With this speed you can stream and even upload videos and in general its a decent experience. Overall I’ve been absolutely trilled with the cell reception of the iPhone 12. Not only 5G but even the 4G LTE. The max speeds are much faster and in areas where I had little to no signal I can now use my phone like I normally would. This alone makes the iPhone 12 a worthy upgrade from any previous iPhone, but of course there are much more differences so if you want to see my full comparison or two weeks later review click right over there.

Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below and If you enjoyed this video why not subscribe by clicking the circle above. This has been Max and I’ll see you in the next video.

Source : Max Tech