The curious case of LTE

My favorite feature of iPhone 5 is the LTE.

I tweeted this earlier today:

Seeing how fast Verizon’s LTE is around town is the best iPhone game I’ve played in years. New top score: 36 down with 9 up.

While I was partially joking, I partially wasn’t.

LTE seems impossible to me. I’m consistently seeing speeds around town better 20 and 40 Mbps down, with 10–15 up. That’s a good bit faster than my U-Verse at home.

In other words, the cell phone in my pocket has a considerbaly faster than my home Internet connection.

I know many Android users have known this for a while, but holy cow, I don’t ever want to go back to 3G.

That said, Apple still has many things in iOS that “require” Wi-Fi, like backing up to and restoring from iCloud or downloading apps larger than 50 MB. I know most people aren’t on unlimited data anymore, so maybe Apple’s trying to protect them from crazy overages, but I’d like to see a toggle in iOS that would allow anything to take place over LTE.

Come on, Apple. Spread the magic around a little more.