Apple smartphones, on average, achieved faster download and upload speeds over Wi-Fi in Q3 2025 than Android devices in South Africa. Meanwhile, Android devices recorded better average latency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MyBroadband Insights compared the data from the MyBroadband Speedtest app on Android and iOS devices during the third quarter of 2025 to see which devices performed better on Wi-Fi networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MyBroadband\u2019s speed test servers are hosted in Teraco\u2019s vendor-neutral data centres to ensure a neutral testing environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NAPAfrica provides all network operators at its peering points a free 10Gbps connection to the MyBroadband Speed Test platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As network speeds are highly dependent on the actual Wi-Fi connection, we needed to compare devices on the same networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We first downsampled all the data to unique devices on specific ISPs, so that one device doing multiple tests on a very fast or slow network would not skew the data too much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After this, we found the ISPs or IP groups where the most unique devices had performed tests on both Android and iOS, and averaged these top results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On average, the iOS devices outperformed the Android devices in speed, but not latency. This was consistent across most of the large ISPs, where multiple devices have performed many tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Android devices recorded an average download and upload speed of 41Mbps and 38Mbps, while iOS users recorded 55Mbps and 48Mbps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apple users had an overall average latency of 55ms, while Android users recorded a latency of only 44ms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One possible bias in the data is that the average Apple device is more expensive than the average Android device, and would more likely be used to connect to a more expensive Internet package, offering higher speeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The filtering methodology should compensate for most of this bias, but it cannot be entirely dismissed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because much cheaper Android devices exist, these could also account for the lower speeds, as they might not have the same level of Wi-Fi hardware as more expensive Android and Apple devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Considering all this, the biggest surprise in this comparison is the better average latency from the Android devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The table below shows the average speeds for Android and iOS devices in the third quarter of 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MyBroadband Insights found that Apple devices generally record higher Wi-Fi speeds, but poorer latency compared to Android devices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341074,"featured_media":519669,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,17934,13],"tags":[397,605,691,97238,14609],"class_list":["post-614856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadband","category-smartphones","category-wireless","tag-android","tag-apple","tag-ios","tag-mybroadband-speedtest","tag-wifi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614856"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":616520,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614856\/revisions\/616520"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Operating System<\/th> Download speed (Mbps)<\/th> Upload speed (Mbps)<\/th> Latency (ms)<\/th><\/tr><\/thead> iOS<\/strong><\/td> 54.53<\/td> 47.91<\/td> 55.46<\/td><\/tr> Android<\/strong><\/td> 40.87<\/td> 38.22<\/td> 43.52<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"