Consistent with jbcarioca's post I've heard from several reliable sources that all SC's have been shipped the hardware for LTE upgrades. Cost will be $500-600 for parts and labor. A daughter board with the electronics has to be installed in place of the 3G daughter board.
Pardon me for being thick, but what is the real value of upgrading to LTE? Is it just to get faster Internet access? Or are there other benefits? If it's just for the Internet, i think i'll pass as i rarely use the browser in the car and when i do 3G is good enough. But I understand others have different needs. In any event, are there other benefits to getting LTE?
At $600, I would buy, but I would expect only a nominal increase in display performance. I have an LTE hotspot in the car and it feels like redraw is only 10-20% faster.
As it wouldn't have to go through an extra device, it might be 15-25% faster. Still, if it makes a difference on the slower redraws, that would be a big improvement.
My experience has been that Slacker song loading is faster, and map tiles draw faster, but the real benefit has been that coverage is much better with the LTE module. I get connectivity in areas where I never received it before (zero service turned into 3-4 bars LTE). You do not get hotspot functionality (although now that all the other manufacturers are adding it, perhaps Tesla will go to offer that). And no, the browser is not any faster. It's still the same slow,broken-down beast it has always been, running javascript through a real-speed TRS-80 emulator.
Exactly what I'm expecting. Better coverage and thus a better user experience. LTE is the future, that's what you want.
Is wake up from sleep any faster with LTE? Kinda doubt it, but if it can activate the antenna and acquire faster then perhaps.
Vastly lower latency. My iPhone 5 is much more responsive when connected to an LTE tower than a HSPA+ tower.
I lose my 3G connection weekly. Get in the car and it shows bars, but, not 3G. Not even E. Have to reboot the car each time. Was going to take it in to get it looked at, but, maybe I should see if I should just get the upgrade. Will be curious to hear from those that upgrade to see if its a noticeable enough change to warrant the cost.
I don't really see this upgrade being worth it. 3G is plenty fast enough because most of the slowness is the CPU/GPU and software. And if you still feel the latency is annoying, just tether to an LTE phone over WiFi. Don't get me wrong if I bought new I'd want integrated LTE but 500-600 for upgrade? Meh. Now if they offered a CPU/GPU upgrade for 500 or so that might be interesting. The latency bugs me, especially on the navigon turn-by-turn directions on the instrument cluster
That'll come out in October, but only if I order the LTE-Only version now. Sounds like this upgrades some of the First World Problems into 1%er problems. I'm considering it but fear a better upgrade may be offered within a year. Yeah I am an early HPWCer and a paid Parcel Shelfer.
I'm not sure that's the case. I connected via my iPhone's hot spot (LTE) and web sites loaded about four times as fast. I should also note that I installed a Wilson Electronics Mobile 4g Cellular Signal Booster Kit (which works with 3G as well), which has it's own antenna (mounted on the front crash bar under the nose cone). So maybe the slow speed has a lot to do with the poor antenna embedded in the side view mirrors.
Whether I am tethered to LTE, or connected via wifi, my browser is about the same as 3G. Slow no matter what.
