John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

T-Mobile: $1,000 Says Your iPhone's Slower Than Our Galaxy

T-Mobile says the Galaxy S 4G is faster than the iPhone and it’s willing to pay $1,000 to anyone who can prove it wrong.

From Friday through Sunday, the carrier is calling on Seattle-area iPhone owners to bring their handsets in to one of 10 local stores, where the device will be matched against a Galaxy S 4G in a series of three download speed tests (conducted via an application specified by T-Mobile). If the iPhone (on Verizon or AT&T, which is in the process of acquiring T-Mobile) comes out on top in two out of three speed tests, it will pay them $1,000. If it doesn’t, iPhone owners dismayed by the loss can take advantage of a trade-in offer that will give them up to $300 toward one of T-Mobile’s smartphones.

A bold challenge, and I can’t imagine T-Mobile would have issued it if it wasn’t confident the Galaxy S 4G would out-perform the iPhone (T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network does have a theoretical peak download speed of 21 Mbps). That said, while the company’s 4G network is definitely fast in downtown Seattle, I’m told it can be fairly slow outside that area (it’s definitely not the fastest network in Seattle; see chart below). Which means T-Mobile could end up actually writing a $1,000 check or two.

[Image credit: Chart by Root Metrics]

Twitter’s Tanking

December 30, 2013 at 6:49 am PT

2013 Was a Good Year for Chromebooks

December 29, 2013 at 2:12 pm PT

BlackBerry Pulls Latest Twitter for BB10 Update

December 29, 2013 at 5:58 am PT

Apple CEO Tim Cook Made $4.25 Million This Year

December 28, 2013 at 12:05 pm PT

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”