Internet Browsing Slow. Is 1XEV the best?
 

Can someone explain to me the difference between 1XEV, EVDO, G3 and such. It seems that everywhere I go on the Verizon network I have a 1XEV connection and in my opinion web surfing on the Storm is slow. Is there a faster speed and how would that be indicated on the phone. Does Verizon have a map of coverage areas that are 3G?

Thanks for your help.

Jerry

I think it's your phone. Verizon's 3G is everywhere.

Wirelessly posted (Verizon 8830)

Dial *228 and choose #2. This will update your device with the area cell towers. See if that helps your connection speed.

My Storm is always on 1XEV everywhere I go. Does that mean I'm on 3G?

1XEV is 3G, i find the BB browser to be a little slow especially with javascript enabled. you can try turning off javascript and see if that speeds things up a bit. although alot of sites require it now or else things dun work right.

Cool, Thanks!

Turn off Java
Repeat revolving pictures to 1 (i think thats what it is)
Set image quality to medium

I'm sorry to ask this , but where do you do these changes?

Thanks
Rick

Under options inside the browser. Look for browser config and general, all of these settings are under these two.

The slow speed is mostly due to the BB browser, not the speed of the network itself. If you use another browser such as Opera you'll see how much faster it is

But with the BB browser, turning off javascript support helps a lot with the speed. What you can do is have it prompt you when a web site needs javascript so you can turn it on for that instance that you need it.

re sloow
 

I have had 7 different pda phones, 5 with evdo. This is by far the slowest browsing device i have ever had.

I'm hoping that opera comes out with their "MOBILE" browser for the storm, i have opera mini, but the mobile version is mmuuuch better and im willing to pay for that one.

I love the phone, but wish a xmas update comes out to fix the browser load time as well as a hand full of other small things.

PS. I live in seattle and have a solid evdo connection.

its the broswer. Try setting the image quality to low...

What does changing this setting do? I currently have it set at 100.

True story. I grabbed Opera Mini just to test it out and I can't believe the speed difference. C'mon RIM, I know you have it in you to make this phone the best phone ever!

Opera rocks. What they do is process the web page you're accessing on their own servers, and send it to the phone compressed and pre-processed. Is it possible to do something like this with a BES setup and the default browser?

So why does the BB manual differentiate from 1XEV and 3G and state that more functionality is available in a 3G setting? I.E. the ability to send/receive e-mail while on the phone.

This is my understanding of the matter:

1XEV is Verizon's version of the 3G networks so widely advertised by every carrier these days. It is CDMA EV-DO, either Rev. A or Rev. 0.

The 3G indicator in the manual refers to GSM 3G. It runs on different bandwidths than the CDMA technology and therefore is different and capable of different things.

I'm sure someone has a much more technical answer.. or even a better, clearer answer than mine and will be posting it shortly.

You're correct. A limitation of EDGE, 1x, and EVDO is that you cannot do data functions (like sending emails or browsing) while on a voice call. You can on GSM's 3g and upcoming LTE.

My experience (yesterday in a medium/fair Verizon coverage area with OLD towers) is that the browser is so fast that the mobile speed test (http://www.dslreports.com/mspeed) fails - even on the largest file. I think it downloaded 1MB in 1.2 seconds.

So my comment to the OP is that either:

1. You are on a corporate network and using that browser (unlikely with the majority of Storm owners)
2. You have a bad phone (radio is bad)
3. You have a lot of crap (software) on your phone that is slowing it down
4. You have a memory leak that is causing browser to be adversely affected

That's about all I can think about...

I am quite new to the world of BlackBerry's so my input here should not be construed as the Gospel! But here's what I've found on my phone.

I am the only BB user in our very small company. And while we are small, we do have our own Exchange server with BPS server now running on top of it so that I can access our corporate email, utilizing the 1 free license that comes with BPS. The server is rather old and a bit slow by today's standards. Our office Internet connection bandwidth is a mere 1.5Mbps on both the transmit and receive(full duplex). While this doesn't sound like much compared to what others are able to achieve with Broadband cable or DSL, it suits us very well and we are transferring a boatload of images throughout the day.

Since I am connected through "Enterprise Activation", any requests through the BB browser go from my device, to my server over our office connection, then out to the site I'm trying to get to. The returned HTML pages then come back through to the server and then out to my device. This whole process in inherently slow. I suppose if I had a super fast server and a 10 Mbps Internet link at the office things would be different.

When I tested my Storm at dslreports.com using the BB browser, the best I achieved was 350 kbps throughput. Doing the same exact test with the Opera Mini browser achieved 3600 kbps. Over TEN times faster as it does not get routed through the Exchange/BPS server. It goes directly to the intended site. I get better Internet throughput on my wireless cellphone than I do with our companies "hard" link.

You may want to see if you might be running into some of the same issues I have found...

MW