Category: Reviews
Pixel XL, four months later
The Google Pixel has been one of the most celebrated smartphones of 2016. Four months after launch, Google’s latest flagship is still considered to be one of the best smartphones available on the market. For the past several months, we have been carrying the Google Pixel XL as one of our daily drivers, testing all four major operators, and collecting vast amounts of data. In addition to field testing, we have done extensive lab testing utilizing state of the art Rohde & Schwarz CMWflexx setup for Over-the-Air (OTA) RF measurements. Google ships two Pixel variants […]
Samsung Galaxy S7, the first 4×4 MIMO smartphone
Samsung’s six month old flagship, the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, has just become a first of it’s kind LTE smartphone. T-Mobile users recently received the September Over-The-Air (OTA) update which appeared to be a routine security patch with some enhancements to Samsung Cloud backup, but it included a hidden gem. The OTA update also included a baseband firmware (G935TUVU4APIA) update which enables 4-Way Receive Diversity, as well as the ability to process four independent spatial streams, 4×4 MIMO. This milestone carries a significant weight in the world of mobile telephony and crowns the Samsung Galaxy S7 as the first commercially available 4×4 […]
5G, The Long Road Ahead
Over the past year or so, 5G has become a hot topic of discussion in telecom industry, with several operators rushing to make premature announcements. But in reality 5G hasn’t been defined, and commercial user equipment is not expected to hit the market until at least 2020. Initially, Verizon had a rather optimistic 2016-2017 timeline for their 5G commercial product, but quickly reverted to a more relaxed projection involving a fixed broadband solution targeted for 2018. Why all the hype then? Well for one, competition in the wireless industry has never been more fierce, and any perception of technological competitive advantage could be used for […]