Hands-On with HTC Mogul Rev. A Upgrade

When the HTC Mogul was originally released on Sprint’s network last year in June, we were told only that Rev. A support for faster download and upload speeds would be coming at some point in the future. Today is that day, and the download, which will enable both Rev. A support and GPS functionality for Sprint Navigation, will be available on HTC’s Web site later this afternoon.

We performed a series of tests before and after the upgrade to give you a sense of the types of speeds you can expect. In our tests, we ran a download/upload benchmark called JBenchmark Net, and also downloaded Spoon’s “The Way We Get By” using the Sprint Music Store. In our New York City office we saw the following averages after three tests:

Download: 528.6 Kbps
Upload: 98.6 Kbps
Music download time: 25 seconds
CNN.com load: 13 seconds
NYTimes.com load: 7 seconds

The install file is a 60MB download and it took us 12 minutes to finish the initial installation. Sprint claims the new speeds are in the area of 600Kbps to 1.4Mbps for downloads and 350 to 500 Kbps for uploads. Updaters should back up any data using Microsoft Active Sync ahead of time, as the download gives the phone a clean wipe. Here’s what we found:

Download: 471.5 Kbps
Upload: 204.5 Kbps
Music download time: 8 seconds
CNN.com load: 5 seconds
NYTimes.com load: 6 seconds

As you can see, we actually experienced slower download times in our JBenchmark Net test. However, our our Web page load times and song downloads were noticeably quicker. Also, note the whopping 105.9 Kbps increase in our upload speeds.

The Mogul’s new capabilities are beneficial for two reasons: First, it makes downloading songs and sending off larger e-mails much faster, and Mogul owners who use Sprint’s Phone as Modem capabilities will find a faster browsing experience using a tethered laptop. Sprint’s EV-DO network is available in 13,453 cities where over 234 million people have access to it, and Sprint claims most will have access to the faster Rev. A network.

Other things we noticed:
The Sprint Music store has a fresh and cleaner look. Menus are much more fluid and graphics replace the boring menus that once existed. There’s even a fancier new Sprint splash screen during the phone’s boot-up.

The phone now has Sprint Navigation support by TeleNav ($9.99 per month after a free trial), and it’s installed in the Programs folder of the phone. The GPS provides solutions like traffic advisories, routing, and even pinpointing your current location. We asked the phone to locate us and it put as at the corner of 39th and Broadway after zooming in—right on the nose. We’ll bring you a separate update on this phone’s newfound navigation capabilities a little bit later.