[Galaxy S II General] TheSopranos16:
12/28/11 UPDATE:

The reason for the better speeds on the Skyrocket is that it uses the 'pta' apn instead of the 'phone' or 'wap.cingular' ones. The only way to use that apn is if you have an LTE sim card and you have an LTE data plan on your account (you won't get a data connection if you try to use that apn without the sim and data plan). So, I went to my local AT&T store and got a new sim and had them switch my plan and now I am able to get pings in the 50-70ms range and my download speeds have doubled. I'm sure this varies a lot from area to area but we will all need to upgrade to an lte sim and data plan eventually so you might as well do it now and try out the new APN. It made a significant improvement for me in central New Jersey. Good Luck!

Here are the apn settings that I copied from my wife's Skyrocket. Again, YOU MUST BE ON THE LTE DATA PLAN AND HAVE AN LTE SIM CARD FOR THIS TO WORK.

Name: ATT pta

APN: pta

MMSC: http://mmsc.mobile.att.net

MMS proxy: proxy.mobile.att.net

MMS port: 80

MCC: 310

MNC: 410

Authentication type: None

APN type: internet + mms

Any fields not mentioned above should be left blank.

Original Post:

So yesterday I bought my wife the SGS2 Skyrocket (she wanted an iPhone, I wouldn't allow it). I started setting things up for her and did a speedtest to see how it compared to my i9100. WOW, that phone is blazing fast! And we are in central New Jersey where there is no LTE available so this was on HSPA+. I have only tested in a few locations, but at my house she got 6 mbps down and 2 up. I tested mine right after and I got around half that (and I have NEVER gotten 6 mbps down since I've owned my phone). These tests were consistent as I ran them multiple times. Her ping was also consistently around 60ms in many different locations with many different signal levels. My ping never goes below around 110ms. Needless to say, I'm displeased about this. I know there were a bunch of threads from months ago with some ideas about AT&T data speeds (I've read them all) and I've tried some of those ideas but nothing gets me close to what she is achieving on the Skyrocket. Here is what I've tried so far:

1) I noticed her phone is on that 'pta' apn whereas mine was on the 'phone' apn. I tried copying her information over but my phone would not establish a data connection when using the 'pta' apn. I researched it and found out this was because my phone is on the HSPA+ 4G plan and not the LTE 4G plan. This might have something to do with it but I doubt it. Last night I tried switching our sim cards. We were in an area with bad coverage but from what I could tell, her phone was still pulling better speeds. I was even able to use the 'pta' apn on my phone once I had her sim card but it still didn't improve much. I am going to try this again tonight at home where we get good signal. This will confirm that it is not the LTE sim card, the LTE data plan or the 'pta' apn.

2) I tried switching modems, flashed about 5 of them but there was not a significant difference in my speed between any of them. I even tried flashing a modem from the AT&T GSII (not the skyrocket), it still didn't have a noticeable improvement.

3) This thread talks about making some changes to the build.prop file to improve your HSPA speeds. I have tried these changes with no improvement. Perhaps there is some special configuration in her build.prop but her phone is not rooted so I can't look to find out.

I'm not sure what else to try at this point. Something very fundamental must be wrong because I expect an AT&T phone to be slightly better on their network (because the software is optimized for that network only), it shouldn't be twice the download speeds and half the ping time. I would be curious as to how the AT&T SGSII (not skyrocket) performs. Maybe the skyrocket has better hardware for the modem than our phone?

Any feedback is appreciated and if you know anyone with the AT&T versions of our phones, go ahead and compare your speedtests to theirs and report your results. Needless to say, I can't live with my wife having a faster phone than me so I need to fix this ASAP! Thanks in advance!