Is felix mobile fast enough?

Anula Wiwatowska - Offsite Editorial Lead

Last updated 11 January 2021

At the moment we’re bombarded with super and ultra fast speed guarantees, but new telco felix mobile is going against the grain and promising speeds of 20Mbps on your mobile phone with endless data.

Unlimited data on a mobile plan is a tempting offer - you’d say goodbye to bill shock for good. However felix's initial offering had a speed cap of just 5Mbps, which was quite the caveat to this tasty morsel. At the time of publishing this article we asked whether 5Mbps was enough to do everything that you need on your phone. Considering that it only took felix a little over one month to increase the cap to 20Mbps, the answer seems pretty clear.

Nevertheless, below we are answering the question - is felix mobile fast enough?

We dedicate a lot of our time figuring out how fast your internet connection needs to be in order to be viable. On paper 5Mbps seems downright slow, it’s closest NBN equivalent is an NBN 12 plan which we would be hard pressed to recommend. The speed jump to 20Mbps is significant, it pushes the speeds closer to an NBN 25 plan which in itself is enough for one to two people households.

But these are broadband connections that power multiple devices, not a mobile connect which is primarily responsible for just the one. Theoretically there is a lot that you can do, even with the 5Mbps download speeds, it’s just going to take you longer to get them done. According to Netflix, 5Mbps can stream your current obsession in HD. Playing music on Spotify shouldn’t be a problem, and scrolling through social media was a similar experience between an OG felix and a Telstra 5G SIM.

Sure enough, we didn’t have a problem with any of the above, but where the real difference lies is when you start downloading to your phone. In the video above you can see just how much slower the felix SIM performed downloading an app. That’s to be expected though right? After all it’s looking at download speeds comparable to a 3G connection versus the fastest 5G currently available in Australia.

For a bit more context, here are some comparisons between how fast you can expect a 1GB file to download on your phone depending on which generation connectivity you’re using.

	Typical download speed	File size	Download time
OG felix mobile	5Mbps	1GB	28 minutes, 37 seconds
Current felix	20Mbps	1GB	7 minutes, 9 seconds
3G	4Mbps	1GB	35 minutes, 47 seconds
4G	20Mbps	1GB	7 minutes, 9 seconds
5G	200Mbps	1GB	42 seconds
NBN50	44Mbps	1GB	3 minutes, 15 seconds
NBN100	88Mbps	1GB	1 minutes, 37 seconds

felix’s original speed cap is a far cry from other readily available connection types, but now it's sitting on par with an average 4G connection.

So is felix mobile fast enough? Originally, we would have to say no. 5Mbps may be workable but it's simply not up to scratch with what we've grown to expect. Now however, with it's new download speed of 20Mbps it most definitley is! Unlimited data, on standard 4G speeds? That's solid value.

Pick up your own felix SIM below.

Carrier	felix mobile
Data	Unlimited Data
Type	Prepaid (1 Month)
Current Deal	Get 50% off your first 3 mths when you switch to felix. $20/mth for first 3 mths, then $40/mth. Use promo code FELIX50. T+Cs apply
Total Price	$40 per month $20/mth for first 3 mths
	Go to Site

Anula Wiwatowska

Offsite Editorial Lead | Instagram

Anula is the Off-Site Editorial Lead for WhistleOut Australia, and an award winning tech journalist. She has been writing about the Australian telco industry, and consumer technology for over five years, and has been known to tell her Uber driver which phone they should upgrade to next.

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