I’ve taken to testing my cellular phone in a 360 degree rotation when I camp out at a restaurant with my laptop. I’ve discovered that I can get a 4x speed improvement by pointing it the right way.

The punchline is that the best upstream and best downstream bandwidth seems come from different directions.

Update: Whether the phone is face down or face up also affects the result. Ping times also vary a lot by directionality. I had best results with the phone face up, and the bottom pointed in the direction of the least signal blockage (my guess).