Phones do vary in performance, says researcher

There's an explanation, at least in the opinion of Aalto University in Finland, whose Netradar application monitors download and upload speed, latency and signal strength for a range of mobile phones. Using this app, Netradar has amassed a database of 2.4million measurements for 1300 different phones, created by 76,000 users of its app. "People often say that their wireless operator is bad and has a bad network. However, the problem is often in the mobile device they use. There are huge differences in the quality of the devices, not simply in the screen size, processor or storage, but also in the radio hardware and antenna. The difference can be seen as slow and unstable data connectivity," says Aalto University Professor Jukka Manner. "A higher price often gives some confidence that the device can also give good and stable data rates," said Sebastian Sonntag, part of the research team. "Yet we can identify devices that are moderately priced and still give great speeds and, on the other hand, expensive devices that have very poor performance." According to the data, the best performance from a commercial LTE network has been achieved by an LG G2 D802, which downloaded data at 113.6Mbit/s. If you're wondering which of the top 150 models in the database performed the worst, follow the link below. Looking at the database as a whole, the average download rate is 6.67Mbit/s, the average upload rate is 2.37Mbit/s and the average network latency is 154ms. If you're interested, you can also download an app for your phone which will not only provide you with the information, but also populate the Netradar database.