AT&T’s iPhone 4 Beats Verizon’s

In the phone wars between the two big carriers, it looks like AT&T wins this round. The iPhone 4 on AT&T’s network downloaded data twice as fast, on average, as the iPhone on Verizon Wireless, according to thousands of recent field tests in five U.S. cities performed by Metrico Wireless, an independent mobile device performance evaluation firm.

Metrico’s tests looked at several other variables, however, and found the average Web page load time was nearly the same on iPhone 4 on both networks, a Metrico official said.

Also, when the iPhone 4 was in a moving vehicle, the AT&T model successfully finished about 10% more download session than Verizon’s. But when the iPhones were stationary, the Verizon iPhone had a 10% better success rate in uploading data than the AT&T iPhone, Metrico said.

Metrico did not reveal actual time measurements for any of its results, including the data downloads and uploads or Web page loading times, prior to publication of its full study.

Some of Metrico’s findings are at odds with several smaller spot reports conducted last month that found Verizon’s iPhone performed better on several criteria. But a Metrico official noted that those quick studies were based on only a handful of test samples, often in a single city, including San Francisco, where AT&T’s coverage for the iPhone has been consistently criticized.

AT&T admitted more than a year ago that it had network problems in downtown San Francisco and Manhattan and had begun infrastructure updates.  Read More….