Survey suggests this is the slowest carrier if you have a cheap phone

Joe Maring / Android Authority

TL;DR Verizon recorded the biggest gap in cellular speeds between flagship and budget phones, according to a new survey.

T-Mobile had the smallest gap in speeds between high-end and cheap phones.

The survey also showed that Verizon recorded the lowest average speed for cheap phones in general.

The latest flagship Android phones are often equipped with blazing-fast cellular speeds owing to more advanced modems. But a new survey suggests that the speed gap between flagship and budget phones can also be accentuated by the carrier.

A survey by Recon Analytics (h/t: PhoneArena) yielded over 4,300 speed tests across US carriers. The survey found that flagship phones often had faster speeds than budget devices on the same network. That isn’t a surprise on its own, as high-end phones tend to get faster modems.

Have you noticed a big difference in cellular speed between budget and flagship phones? 2 votes Yes, flagships are much faster 0 % No, but I have noticed a small difference 50 % No, I haven't noticed a difference at all 50 %

What is interesting, though, is that Verizon recorded the biggest gap between flagship and budget phone speeds. Recon Analytics reported that high-end devices averaged 124Mbps versus just 89Mbps for cheap devices. That’s a 35Mbps difference. By contrast, AT&T offered 153Mbps versus 133Mbps (a 20Mbps difference).

There’s good news for T-Mobile users, as flagship devices reportedly averaged 161Mbps compared to 156Mbps for budget phones. This was the smallest gap between flagship and budget devices.

So why is there such a huge gap on Verizon compared to T-Mobile? I can think of at least one potential explanation. Verizon makes aggressive use of mmWave 5G on its networks. However, phones require mmWave antennas and other equipment to actually use mmWave 5G. These hardware additions aren’t cheap, which means we don’t usually see many budget phones with mmWave. This could potentially explain the large gap between flagship and budget phones on Verizon’s network.

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