On Aug 16, 2022, at 8:13 PM, charles meyer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> My esteemed listmates,
> 
> Cell phone cos and providers haven't made this easy.
> 
> I'm trying to help a patron discover if they have an 3G or 4G phone.
> 
> I visited this site www.imei.info, enter your IMEI number and it reveals
> lots of  info but LTE is says nothing about 4G or 3G. Just lists a bunch of
> numbers.
> 
> Has anyone enjoyed success ascertaining if a Samsung is 3g -vs- 4G?


LTE is a sorta baby 4G.

Basically, I when the 4G standard was set, one of the companies (I don’t remember which at this point) was like ‘we have 4G!’ And other people responded ‘but isn’t 4G supposed to be faster than that?’

‘But it uses the technology and concepts from 4G, so it’s better than 3G, and no one else has 4G yet, so we’re going to call it 4G in our advertising!’

And there was pushback, and so there are two different varieties of 4G: LTE and LTE-A aka LTE+.

LTE-A / LTE+ was the original 4G specification that was proposed.  LTE is a partial implementation of 4G.

-Joe