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Among the three largest smartphone makers, Apple users were faster in 17.5% of countries. And in the remaining 48% none of the three were fastest although Huawei users were joint-fastest in seven countries.
However, the country with the greatest advantage for Samsung users was Norway, where Samsung users were 12 Mbps faster than Huawei users, and 14 Mbps faster than Apple iPhone users.
In those countries the download speeds iPhone users experienced were 14.7 Mbps and 8 Mbps faster than Samsung users' speeds.
To analyze the differences, Opensignal split smartphone users into three groups — low, mid and high-tier — based on a smartphone’s mobile network capabilities. Because high-tier models include more network technologies, they are more sensitive to mobile network improvements and are, in effect, a leading indicator of what the mobile network experience will be in the future.
High-tier smartphone users experienced latencies 18% — or 11.1 ms — faster than low- tier smartphone users, and 14% faster even than mid-tier smartphone users. Lower latencies help to speed gamers’ reaction times.
Users in Canada and Singapore ranked just behind South Korean users with speeds of 67.1 Mbps and 65.4 Mbps, in second and third place respectively.
Notably, in Thailand speeds measured on high- tier smartphones were 4.3 times as fast as those measured on low-tier smartphones; in Canada and the U.A.E, 2.9 times; and in Australia, Singapore and Switzerland, 2.6, 2.5 and 2.5 times respectively.
High-tier Samsung users experienced faster speeds than Apple and Huawei users with global download speeds of 26.6 Mbps, 25.1 Mbps and 24.4 Mbps respectively. However, among the mid-tier category, Apple users experienced the fastest speeds of the three largest smartphone brands, while Huawei users were fastest among low-tier users.
