AT&T tuning EDGE network for iPhone?

Heard of wifi-X read & Think people!

NOTHING is worth a two year contract, NOTHING! When they all stop with that "come-on" crap, charge what the phone is worth and come up with reasonable rates, I'll switch from my (SprintNetowrked) Virgin Mobile service. Branson is greener than the rest, to boot! I'd like to see Apple redeploy/recycle their products the way Virgin does. Anyone care to buy my BlackBerry 7100i?

What I find really funny, besides some of the absolutely ridiculous "wishlist 3rd party apps"*** is the fact that I have yet to have a single person tell me exactly what mission critical thing they are going to be using "broadband" speeds for on this particular phone.


Let's see...Video? Um, its an iPod.

I know...MUSIC!!

Oh wait...

I mean look, I have a 3G phone, live in an area with blanket 3G coverage, I even have a "not-so-baby internet" web browser on the thing...and I've turned 3G off.

Ya know why?

Because CDMA tech Drains Phone Batteries Dry. And as my 3G phone is super thin, and not big and bulky, getting thru a day on a full charge is *laughable*...especially if I want to do something *crazy* like using bluetooth too.

Seriously...I mean what exactly is supposed to be going on on *this particular its-so-not-a-laptop* handheld that demands more than 50-80kbps?


***After seeing some of the absolute ridiculous "dream" and "killer" apps folks are ruminating over, Im starting to side with Apple here. There seems to be a serious lack of restraint and good sense about what would work on something that aims to be a PHONE with features, as opposed to a PSA with telephony tacked on.

i think the "killer ap" for a future 3G iphone (or any 3G phone for that matter), will have something to do with google street view integration with built-in GPS.

imagine street view where you can pull down a view of your exact location and see exactly where your destination will be. not to mention how you can overlay commercial locales (like how he calls up the Calamari place on the iphone advert), but in 3D.

Sprint's Power Vision 3G service is $15/month for unlimited usage. So why would I want to switch to AT&T?

Lending my voice, I personally think people complaining about 3G generally don't know what they're talking about. Most have never used EDGE, and or started off using 3G and assumed it was all they could ever want for their phone. To me, this kind of thinking is sad. "How could Apple make this mistake???" they moan, imitating the classic painting, "The Scream". The truth is that EDGE will likely be far more consistant and useable than 3G at this time, and that most people will still opt for the faster-than-3G Wi-Fi quite often. It's really sad. There are people who are actually getting the maximum 200 kbps speed on their EDGE services.

3G doesn't even guarantee you consistant service, even when its available (much less than EDGE). Let's just wait and see before pretending we know what's ok, and what's not. A very LARGE aspect of EDGE is what class of device you're using and its software. Also, some people who have had EDGE have such little information to go on, they languish in GPRS speed, not knowing something else is wrong with their config setup. Right about now, people are wearing ignorance of this on their sleeves, and its only disconcerting for people that know what they want, trying to parse out the TRUTH or at very least, the FACTS.

Fact is... I'd be happy with anything over 100kbps-120kbps, twice as fast as a 56k modem (although latency issues worry me), but looking at the coverage map for Massachusetts, it would seem that I'll probably get much better service than that. Aside from giddily running videos, I'm not sure why people think 3G (as inconsistant as its availability is) is an issue. I actually wonder... and this is a kicker, if combined with variable performance, EDGE/Wi-Fi isn't a much more practical and useable solution, especially with the network tweaks.

Anyway. Chatter away.

GPS has been mentioned as being the only thing missing in the iPhone. Personally I am happy the device has no built in GPS antenna that only drains battery.

The iPhone has Bluetooth, remember? So if I need GPS I could always (provided they thought about it) connect an external GPS receiver. So I would have a fully fledged GPS unit that is still a lot slimmer than it would be should it be built in!

Nokia used that tech and also created such antennas that are fully Bluetooth compatible.

I like the idea of a slim device, and the external Bluetooth GPS antenna is even better than the built in one. I can put such an antenna in my car where it gets an exceptional signal, transport it wherever I want... I see no problem in that.

As said: I prefer a slimmer and lighter iPhone with external bluetooth GPS antenna, compared to a bulky phone that does it all (but not properly) and weights a ton in my pocket.

"what's been missing so far in all the iPhone hype is the killer app. That could just be GPS. My bet is it'll be present in rev.A" - mentalsticks

The lack of GPS is my only real disappointment with the iPhone. 2.5G? No prob. No removable battery? I don't care. But no GPS??? Talk about failing to put the cherry on top of the sundae.

Imagine if the iPhone could serve as a full-blown touchscreen in-car navigation system. Music, telephone, PDA, Web, photos/video, and navigation in one sleek little package. It would have been the ultimate device.

And since no mention has been made by Apple regarding GPS, I seriously doubt it's secretly in there. Though I'd like to dream.

Did I mention how my Sprint EVDO card in my MacBook Pro rocks!? I don't even bother looking for WIFI anymore when I'm on the road. I'll take the solid 1.5M down and 512k up anyday over screwing around with WIFI.

While I want an iPhone, going back to a slow network on an "internet communicator" is really going to blow. I mean, SERIOUSLY Steve - what the heck were you thinking!? Build a killer device and then marry it to a crappy internet service?

If anything is going to doom the iPhone, its the AT&T network.

Such a shame.

3G phones CAN Be very slim (In the UK anyway) new sony ericsson fits INSIDE an empty CD case...http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?cc=gb&lc=en&ver=4000&template=pip1&zone=pp&pid=10653
AND the battery life isn't too bad.... but the fact is 3G needs different hardware, I thought...