Comments on: Always wait for something better. ALWAYS.
3G is faster, but a bird in the hand...
Most Popular
15 sites that went kaput in 2009
Web sites launch all the time, but they also shut their doors. We highlight 15 that bit the dust this year.
Top 10 news stories of the decade
Let the debate begin: Was the iPhone more important than iTunes? Was anything bigger than Google finding a great business model? CNET offers its list of the 10 most important stories of the '00s.
About The Macalope: An Apple blog
Born of the earth, forged in fire, the Macalope was branded "nonstandard" and "proprietary" by the IT world and considered a freak of nature. Part man, part Mac, and part antelope, the Macalope set forth on a quest to save his beloved platform. Long-eclipsed by his more prodigious cousin, the jackalope (they breed like rabbits, you know), the Macalope's time has come. Apple news and rumormonger extraordinaire, the Macalope provides a uniquely polymorphic approach. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Add this feed to your online news reader
The Macalope: An Apple blog topics
Bluetooth/email/calendar/camera/Windows Mobile 5). What do I use 3G for?
The occasional web browsing nothing else. Its 'killer application' was
supposed to be video calling but that's a novelty that wore off for me pretty
quickly. I could do all I need to on the web from a hot spot, there are loads of
them throughout most UK cities but they're expensive to use so I don't. The
£35 O2 tarriff is pretty competitive, UK data tariffs are expensive, but the
master stroke is bundling the wifi access. For me this pretty much takes the
heat out of the 'no 3G' argument.
Will I buy the iPhone? Probably.
should have a word with a few of your deer friends from this side for a
second. You might find that they care about 3G more than you expect. I'd
suggest they might come up with a couple of reasons:
Firstly, 3G is the expected baseline for a high-end phone here. 3G networks
are more common than Edge anywhere in Europe. We missed that tech out
and went straight for the good stuff, y'see. Moreoever, phone manufacturers
here have got it working - even my cheap little 3G phone has a week in
standby and 8 hours talk time.
That gives us the feeling that Saint Steve is dumping his rev.1 product on us.
His excuse for not selling a 3G phone doesn't ring true. When he said that 3G
doesn't do 8-hour talk he means *his* phone doesn't.
We're not stupid over here. We know when we're being lied to.
Secondly: since Edge has to be back-fitted here, it means that a good
proportion of the time you'll be browsing the web via GPRS. And you gotta
admit that sucks.
To make up for that, Steve cuts a deal to get us free WiFi with The Cloud. But
have you looked at their presence? Granted, it looks pretty good. But you'll
note that a lot of it is based out of call boxes.
So we can stand in a call box, inhaling that particular smell that street people
always lend to them, or we can stand outside in the street, getting rained on.
A less cynical person than me could put the free wifi deal not down to a need
to make product be more appealing, but straight down to maliciousness!
(Guy from Europe) "Lack of 3G's not a problem."
Actually, the Macalope specifically acknowledged that lack of 3G would be an issue for many in Europe. But Borlind's saying that the fact that Jobs said a 3G phone would be coming later means that ALL demand for iPhones will suddenly dry up. That's absurd. Everyone expected there would be a 3G version at some point. No one would ever have bought an iPhone if they didn't think they could bear to live with the scourge that is EDGE until 3G came out.
But I think it's an interesting point that the iPhone is seen as really able partly because it always has a connection. In the UK, I wonder if the frustration level will be high because outside of certain cities, you will have to find a Wi-Fi connection before doing anything.
In the US, not so much an issue (I've been EDGEless in Seattle only a couple of times). But it might blunt demand in Europe for that reason; EDGE was kind of a half-assed US thing for bridging the 3G gap, but it turns out to have legs because it's so damned cheap to install on existing 2G networks.
standby and 8 hours talk time... When he said that 3G doesn't do 8-hour talk he means *his* phone doesn't.
Of course he means *his* phone doesn?t. Apple could have made a cheap little 3G phone that gets 8 hours talk time, but instead they chose to make the iPhone, which gets 8 hours talk time *and* sold a million in 74 days.
You might be right about the lack of 3G turning off UK purchasers, but come down to the Apple Store on Regent Street on 9th November and find me in the queue. We?ll see how long it is.
Actually, I might get a t-shirt printed up for it. ?No 3G. Fewer megapixels than an N95. Lame.?
> The Macalope has a 4 GB iPhone
Man. To think I used to respect you.
To present this like an unsolveable problem that only the future can solve is silly. 3G is in 75% of modern phones sold now so pretending Apple can't figure out a solution is embarassing both to them and to th consumer.
replaceable batteries, ESPECIALLY on a small device like a cell phone, make
the phone thicker and clunkier. And who wants to swap batteries every hour
anyway?
No the solution to the 3G problem is either wait until semiconductor
designers come up with a lower power solution, or upgrade to 4G (or
whatever its called), which has lower power than 3G and is faster. Look
people, EDGE is fine when looking at the whole package. Yeah, faster is
better, but not at the expense of way worse battery life.
And Apple will never change the keyboard- that's the whole point of the
iPhone- no keyboard, all touch. And I love it.
worthless if you can't find it! Are you new here?!"
Because it's not like you can auto-fallback from 3G to EDGE or anything. I
think the iPhone's great, really, but there are many ways to make a 3G device
that also has good battery life. I remember seeing tests done with a Samsung
Blackjack that showed that 3G data actually used less power than EDGE,
although 3G calling used more. Anyway, here are some ideas off the top of
my head to have your 3G cake and eat it too: When the screen is turned off
and you're not using the iPhone, have it switch to EDGE for basic things like
checking for email. When you unlock it or when a call comes in, have it
switch back to 3G if available. Or, if the user decides that they'd rather have
longer battery life at the price of slower data, have an option that makes the
iPhone only use EDGE.
It just seems silly to me to have a device that lets you do anything on the
internet, anywhere, anytime, and then have a caveat that, well, it really works
best when you're at a wifi hotspot and youtube is painful to use otherwise.
Wifi is far from ubiquitous unless you're in a very dense area. Though it's
great now, I don't think the full power of the iPhone will be unlocked until it
has 3G. HSDPA makes wifi almost unnecessary, or at the very least, much less
needed.
That being said, I'll probably break down and get a non-3G iPhone (:P), but it
would just be so perfect if it had 3G.
Oh, and the rest of his points are just ridiculous. Removable memory? Are
you kidding?
Once again I conccur with the furry one. I like your style Mr. Macalope! Keep it goin'.
- 3G=Battery Life measured in minutes
- by mrhappyct September 22, 2007 10:19 AM PDT
- Has no one else suffered the pain of a 3G Smartphone with an ability to
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(11 Comments)empty a battery faster than a blackjack table can empty your wallet? Of
course you had to have a replaceable battery...A year with a Moto Q on
Verizon quickly became a ritual of carrying one or sometimes two extra
batteries to get through a full day of calling and data usage with Wireless
Sync turned on. But when all of the data service was turned off on the same
phone--one battery could last for three days of voice calling.
Same usage patterns on an iPhone net me two full days of usage on a single
charge. And frankly from an unscientific usage standpoint, EDGE doesn't
seem that much slower than EV-DO did, and there were just as many places
where you would see a "1X" indicator instead of the EV-DO signal being
available.
As always, this was my experience...your mileage may vary.
Would it be great to have a faster wireless data connection on the iPhone? Of
course--but it isn't like the iPhone is unusable because it doesn't. Hundreds
of thousands of users in the US would seem to agree.