In the not so distant past, iPhone users had limited options when it came to their choice of cell providers. Until Verizon received the iPhone 4 in February 2011, AT&T was the only contender in the iPhone market. With the recent release of the iPhone 4S on Sprint, consumers now have another option, but each option comes with trade-offs.

We at Blazing Cloud are excited by the new iPhone 4S; however, we’ve found the decision on which provider to choose to be challenging. Many of us currently have AT&T, and consequently can’t make a reliable call or receive data in the office while off wi-fi. With the initial excitement around the iPhone 4S on Sprint, we ordered a few devices and signed up for a group plan.

When a late lunch led to missing the delivery of our devices, some of the more eager employees at Blazing Cloud took off in a mad dash towards what they suspected was our UPS truck. Luckily they caught the right UPS carrier at the right time and returned with our new iPhone 4Ss. After trying out just about every appropriate and in-appropriate combination of phrases with Siri, we got into more day-to-day use and discovered what many others were discovering- slow data speeds.

After a week of poor voice calls on Sprint, we decided to take a methodical approach to comparing the providers. To conduct a test of data speeds, we took a Verizon iPhone 4S, Sprint iPhone 4S, and an AT&T 4 around town to test popular locations. We’ll update this post when we get ahold of an AT&T iPhone 4S since speeds should be higher with the new device.

We found that even with the slower iPhone 4, AT&T blew Verizon and Sprint out of the water. We ran a speed test using the mobile Speedtest.net app which is free on iTunes.

Japan Town:
Sprint 4S: .26 Mbps
Verizon 4S: .16 Mbps
AT&T 4: 3.39 Mbps

Union Square:
Sprint 4S: 1.08 Mbps
Verizon 4S: .46 Mbps
AT&T 4: 2.77 Mbps

Powell and Market:
Sprint 4S: .41 Mbps
Verizon 4S: 1.09 Mbps
AT&T 4: 3.85 Mbps