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iPhone - View countries with supported LTE networks - Apple
According to that, the 5S and 6/6S have different bands and the US 5S doesn't appear to have bands compatible with China?
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Thanks, everyone! As pointed out, it does seem like the iPhone 5s models in the US don't work with China Mobile's LTE bands, whereas the iPhone 6 and 6+ models in the US do.
For reference, these were the US model iPhones we were testing out:
- iPhone 5s Model A1533 (GSM) = EDGE when roaming as T-Mobile on China Mobile
- iPhone 6 Model A1586 (GSM) = LTE etc etc on China Mobile
- iPhone 6+ Model A1524 (GSM) = LTE etc etc on China Mobile
To be thorough, the speed differences are very noticeable when on EDGE, so it's not a matter of advertised bands in the carrier bar versus actual speed in this case.
These were the SpeedTest app results when roaming as T-Mo on the iPhone 5s on China Mobile:
- Down speeds: 0.14 Mbps
- Up speeds: 0.04 Mbps
- Ping: 700ms
Looking at the LTE list, it seems like this isn't limited to just China LTE bands (see New Zealand as another example). This is just one more reason to upgrade past the 5s if I plan to travel often with T-Mobile.
Thanks again for the help!
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China is a little unusual. In most countries, you can get by reasonably well if you have UMTS-2100 (band 1).
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The DL speed you got was right where it is supposed to be. 110-115 Kbps. We got that in China and most other countries. Plenty good for Google maps, email, audio streams etc.I don't pay attention to what bands the phones are on.
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Yeah, I just ran SpeedTest on the iPhone 6, and it actually yielded similar results:
- Down speeds: 0.14 Mbps
- Up speeds: 0.18 Mbps
- Ping: 552 ms
Today on the iPhone 5s, essentially the same as yesterday:
- Down speeds: 0.13 Mbps
- Up speeds: 0.05 Mbps
- Ping: 639 ms
It makes sense that they'd be similar despite one reading EDGE and the other reading LTE, since T-Mobile explicitly offers 2G speeds when data roaming overseas.
Naturally, local Chinese services like Baidu, etc are noticeably faster (thought nothing like LTE speeds I'm used to in the U.S.). Most U.S.-based services are very slow at least on the iPhone 5s, and some simply don't load at all (Google Maps) probably because of the fickleness of what's on the firewall.
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Hmmm. We had no trouble w. Google Maps. This was about 18 months ago or more. AND the firewall didn't exist. We were able to get CNN (non-video), NYTimes, and other sites blocked via normal wifi.
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I see – yeah, I'm able to access these services over cellular data (but not Wi-Fi), albeit very, very slowly. Sometimes it just times out altogether, but it's not absolutely blocked through this method.
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The main services we want when traveling is Google Maps and email. Except for China, we can get unblocked news from hotel TV and/or wifi.
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What speed are you getting? (Doesn't matter what band you are on.) Your speeds should be around 110-112Kbps. We had no problems the last time in China Several of us had various phones, but I don't think anyone had an Apple phone. All phones worked fine. Lots of free texting back and forth. And free data that pierced the Chinese Fire wall.
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China Mobile uses some pretty strange LTE bands. There are several models of the iPhone 5s with different LTE bands for each model. Depending on the model it may or may not have band 39, which is used by China Mobile. The A1586 iPhone 6 has both bands 39 and 41, used by China Mobile.