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3G iPhone on the Way?
mooseman93 wrote to point out Forbes is suggesting that if you haven't purchased an iPhone yet, you may want to wait just a little bit longer. Supposedly the next generation of iPhone will offer some substantial upgrades, including 3G capabilities. "To be sure, a 3G iPhone likely won't pop up over the next several weeks. The Unofficial Apple Weblog reported this week that Apple is hiring a television production firm in preparation for a high-profile late February announcement. That event, however, will likely detail the widely anticipated release of a software developer's kit for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch. But the wait can't drag on much longer. AT&T is building out its high-speed wireless network as quickly as it can, announcing Wednesday that it will expand its 3G wireless broadband service to more than 80 additional cities by the end of the year for a total of roughly 350 markets."
You have a choice: you buy a product NOW, or you read the news: oh, there is a quad-GPU graphics card scheduled in 6 months. By the time it's ready, you read again: there is another one with 64 GPU's ready in one year. So, if your choice is to never be happy, don't blame it on tech.
http://revj.sourceforge.net
What is with all of these articles (particularly Apple articles) that have absolutely zero substance? I read the summary and the article, this looks more like guerrilla marketing in the form of speculation piled on rumor piled on speculation via anonymous tip. I'm not trying to flame here but sites like Engadget, Gizmodo, and Digg are completely flooded with this crap and it's sad to see it seeping into Slashdot as well.
It's as though any headline ending in a question mark has a better than 50% chance of being an advertisement or a troll/flamebait piece.
Whatever the validity, Apple should release a 3G iPhone soon. AT&T's 3G network works great. I get 700kbps on a Samsung Blackjack. It would be nice to have a phone with a decent browser to use on the network. 3G beats the crap out of Edge and there is no cost difference in the data plan (at least for a black jack).
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Advertisements don't tell you to wait.
A great point: over in Great Britain 3G has been working (very quickly) for several years now, whilst O2 have only just started rolling out EDGE for the iPhone (mainly). When I tried using an iPhone in an O2 shop a few months ago, it was painfully slow under EDGE (but fine under Wi-Fi).
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
The news for me is that the 3G network isn't already all over United States. Here in there city I live (Porto Alegre) in Brazil there is already a 3G network on 800Mhz and another in 1.2Ghz is expected to start this year, so I was expecting US would be already much more advanced.
This and the e-voting makes me wonder if those news about US being beaten technology by other countries isn't only for Japan/Asia/Europe, seems like in many areas even in-development countries are starting to be better.
It's really a question of cost - I'm pretty sure if you look at actual 3G coverage in Brazil (or Europe for that matter) you'd find a number of areas that lack 3G - but the concentration of population is such that say 80% of the population have it even with the holes. I'd further guess that if you hit Brasilia, then move along the coast (Rio, San Paulo, Belem, etc) with 3.5 you'd get most of Brazil's population of cell phone users who'd want 3G.
In the US, the population density is such that partial coverage by 3G will also get a significant percentage of users so they rollout has been focused there. Given the cost of new antennas, negotiating new leases on towers, ensuring there aren't interference problems it makes sense to go where you get the highest potential return and build out the rest as funds allow. Yes, that means the poor user in The Middle of Nowhere, Iowa will not have 3G for a while; simply because the cost of servicing that user is too high.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Asia also has 3G capabilities already for the last few years as well.
If Apple would release it in Asia, Jobs would be often saying "boom!" with each sale.
I thought this was news for nerds, Iphone = nerd newsworthy, a 3G Iphone = Definitely nerd newsworthy, 3G Iphone in many markets where geeks have been waiting for them to arrive PLUS that the 2g one might be available cheaper therefore allowing gadget freaks all over to get one? Nerd Newsworthy.
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Check out softbank and docomo's web pages. My "free" handset from Softbank has a 320x240 display, two 2-megapixel cameras, bluetooth (duh), and is of course 3G with a nice high speed data connection. The current gen of phones, before you even have to pay extra, have "PC-style" (stupid marketing term) image capable web browsers, QC-code readers, kanji dictionaries, and do on. Then come the phones you pay extra for, which get super awesome pretty fast. (Link is for a phone series with a TV tuner, DVR, 3" 16x9 VGA+ display, GPS (and sweet-ass moving map app), 4Mbit data rate, etc).
Docomo is offering FOMA, a 4-7Mbit data service, which pretty much renders wireless hotspots superfluous, since you can buy PC-card FOMA modems that work with your docomo data plan at lots of places, even convenience stores I think.
That said, Apple is missing out on a major market here; the iPhone would sell like crazy.
I am a classic Apple fanboi, and a UK resident. Often, I find these two facts in opposition with each other - particularly over the iPhone.
Apple's continued US-centricity is a ridiculous holdover for such a large company with even larger intentions. Their insistence on selling first to a US market which has always lagged behind the rest of the world in terms of mobile phone infrastructure is a case in point.
If Apple instead decided to throw their weight behind launching the iPhone that the rest of the world wants, it would force the US phone market to modernise, kicking and screaming on the way.
We already have data that iPhones exist (illegally and unlocked...) in most countries around the world, even some surprising locations. This shows what a strong global brand and product Apple has sitting ready to be unleashed. But instead, they insist on catering to the often backwards, domestic US market first.
Even worse, they have then tried to force a US-based model for phone subscription services on the rest of the world, where such practices don't exist.
I posit that the slow uptake of iPhones in Europe is due to a combination of initial outlay for the phone, high subscription rates not in keeping with the service provided, limited number of networks you can legally sign up to, and ultimately network lock-in. Each of these devices exists in the US. The do not exist in Europe for any phone other than the iPhone, and this is what the market is finding hard to swallow, even though we really love the product.
So my final message is this - Apple, get your head out of your arse and realise that there is a world outside the USA.
Here are some questions that Forbes should have asked:
Again, Forbes shows that journalism takes the back seat. There are plenty of great articles that could be written. Instead, we get an article that isn't even worthy of an unpopular rumor blog. Like mine.
This only point of this article seems to be don't buy an iPhone. Even the headline is designed to taunt people that already bought one.
What evidence does the article provide?
- AT&T said a new iPhone was coming in 2008. Of course this leaves 10 more months assuming that AT&T even knows what Apple is working on which previous reports have said they don't. http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/16-02/ff_iphone
- Apple recently hired a television crew for... something. According to a Mac rumors site.
- Broadcom has started sampling a new lower power 3G chip. Which is implied to be a panacea, completely ignoring that redesigning the iPhone is more complicated than popping in a new chip -- there are antennas to redesign and software that has to be rewritten just to start -- and the chip isn't even shipping yet.
- "Apple can't wait much longer." The author uses this argument several times, backing it up with AT&T's plans to roll out 3G to more cities by the end of 2008.
Hasn't it occurred to anyone that it's going to take 6 months for the FCC to test a new iPhone and no one has turned up anything to show the FCC has even started this yet?
But if I can't save or work with attachments from email or even do simple things like copy and paste, it gets pretty worthless.
If people want a reason to wait, then they should wait for the "business iPhone" that has been predicted by some previous iPhone related article that made its way here some time ago. As a Blackberry user, I have grown accustomed to certain levels of functionality that, if not duplicated, will make iPhone feel broken somehow... and I'm sure one will come out because Blackberry has been working on competition for iPhone and I can't imagine it will take long to release.
There are some coverage maps here. The world map has a big yellow 3G blob over Europe, but not the USA. The detailed European map shows almost universal GSM coverage (even in middle-of-nowhere places) and 3G isn't limited to cities. (The detailed USA map is a couple of years old, so it's difficult to compare directly.)
Yes, but you guys actually have competition and choice in the mobile space. You can go buy whatever phone you like, then go to a carrier, buy a SIM card and be up and running. If you don't like the service you can switch to another carrier.
Here in the US you get to choose between 4-5 major carriers. However, most of them use different signalling technologies that make their phones incompatible with most of the other carriers. Because of this you can't just buy a phone somewhere and hook up with a carrier. Instead you have to get the phone from the carrier, and it's usually locked to their network. They do give you the phone "for free" if you sign a 2-year contract for their service. Obviously the phone isn't free, it's subsidized by the contract fees. If you terminate the contract early you're charged a several hundred dollar penalty. Of course once you've completed the terms of the contract you still usually can't take the phone to another carrier, so if you want to switch the whole process starts over again.
So while consumers do have a choice between multiple carriers, the carriers all design their services in ways that make it next to impossible to switch service if you are dissatisfied. This lowers the amount of competition, which means that the carriers don't have to spend as much money building out/improving their network or adding new features to bring in new customers. Let's face it, if you want mobile service in the US it's like choosing between three shit sandwiches. You don't want any of them, but you still have to choose.
That's one of the reasons that AT&T has suddenly started doing so well in the US market. Because they were the exclusive US carrier of the iPhone they actually had something different that people wanted, so millions of people switched to their service. But even that works to tie consumers to AT&T, because even if you can unlock the iPhone the only other US carrier that supports that signalling technology (GSM?) is T-Mobile, and they don't have anywhere near the market penetration or coverage area that the other big carriers do.
Incidentally, the same sorts of entrenched interests that make the US lag so far behind the rest of the developed world in the mobile communications space are responsible for making the US lag so far behind the rest of the world in other communications formats, like broadband Internet access.
Take a look at http://www.worldtimezone.com/gsm.html, then tell me: who's the oddball. Japan is special because there's no GSM coverage (their second generation network is PDC, which exists only in Japan), but their 3G network is the same kind you'd find everywhere else in the world, except in the US.
I like that. I'm going to use it to break the ice at parties in future. Thank you.
While the UK mobile system is far better than the US system, it still has its flaws. For example, some providers have the habit of 'locking' a phone to its provider, and demanding an unlocking fee to unlock it. If you want to transfer your number from an old to a new SIM, you have to phone both providers and go through rather intrusive security checks.
For example, last month I switched providers from Tesco Mobile to 3, and wanted to transfer my mobile number over. I had to phone Tesco Mobile, tell them my postcode, the location, amount and date of the last top-up, and then tell them who I was moving to, why I was moving to them, and why I wasn't moving to Tesco's own Extra tariff before the lady on the other end of the phone would give me the PAC code.
(For those on the other side of the pond, over here Tesco is like Wal-Mart in its relative size, popularity and rubbishness. I only had the SIM because it was given to me someone else a few years ago.)
If the US's market is a choice between shit sandwiches, then the UK's market is like choosing between a pleasant, lightly toasted, warm bread-and-butter sandwich, or a sandwich made of cardboard and artificial margarine. The problem is that they're all hidden within opaque sealed boxes, á la Deal or No Deal.
There are contracts in the UK, but the cancellation fee is usually quite modest (around £30-50, which is equivalent at the present exchange rate to ~$60-100).
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
What am I to be sorry about? I've been using a really great phone since August. My option was to not be using a really great phone over the past seven months. Gee, Forbes really nailed this one!
in large part that's because the term "3G" has been diluted in common use. the US has nearly-ubiquitous EVDO and EDGE coverage; both of these are 3G technologies as defined by the ITU in IMT-2000. both the 3GPP and 3GPP2 recognize IMT-2000 as the definition of 3G that they're working in. five years ago, nobody questioned that EDGE was 3G; now, the marketing focus on how ubiquitous 3G would change everything has just stuck around (since very little changed with 3G's arrival), pushing 3G perpetually into the future.
what people seem to mean when they talking about 3G's "pending" arrival is that data rates will increase. this has nothing to do with the underlying technology, really; with EDGE, for example, it's simply a matter of how many channels the operators would like to dedicate to data traffic.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
AT&T currently offers about 18 different phones that are 3G capable. While I'm sure that AT&T is looking forward to a 3G-capable iPhone, I think it's much more likely that their ongoing 3G expansion is more about supporting their current customers and current product lineup than about supporting future products.
You're missing the point. iPhone over EDGE is a premature product, because the phone is meant to serve as both mobile phone and internet browser. You won't get that benefit before you reach 3G speeds.
That's odd, because I seem to be using maps, browsing the web, and checking in for flights online just fine today and I have been ever since I bought the phone at launch. Both over WiFi and Edge. A few million other people seem to agree with this assessment.
Yes 3G will make some of those things faster, but Google Maps is already plenty good as it is on Edge. Hardly missing any kind of benefit thanks.
Will I upgrade to the 3G phone when it comes out? Probably not, I'll wait a year or two for further improvements. 3G is not as required as some would like to believe, even if you buy the device for constant network connectivity.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well, if your phone and networks support it, the transition goes from 3G to EDGE to GPRS, and of course other ways round, from GPRS to EDGE to 3G. In Finland we have 3G networks in all towns and urban areas, and when leaving to more rural areas you get EDGE and when being in the middle of nowhere you get GPRS. To a user the switch from network to network is seamless. Of course in some countries, as it seems in USA and UK, it's either 3G or EDGE and there are no previous generation techniques like GPRS available. So it's more about have the operators invested to networks and thus can provide ubiquitous cover.
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