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In Rural UK, Old 2G Phones Beat 3G Smarphones For Connectivity
hypnosec writes "A new research has showed that smartphones are worse in connectivity than 2G enabled mobile phones in remote areas in the United Kingdom. The research conducted by telecom watchdog OfCom has revealed that users should invest in mobile phones different than latest Smartphones, if they prioritize best reception for calls. 'As would be expected, all the 2G operators have widespread coverage of the roads that were surveyed with relatively few not-spots. 3G coverage is much lower on the roads driven, likely reflecting the stage of network roll out in Devon at the time of the study,' the OfCom has reported."
Iphone is suprisingly fussy about mobile reception in a congested city. If you have 3g enabled and are in one of the many odd spots it just won't ring. Calls just fail to get to you even with a good signal. Its very odd an absolutly infuriating when you miss an important call. And with 3g turned off you wonder what your paying the high subscription for?
So there is more 2G coverage than 3G coverage? I am shocked. And can't many phones turn off 3G service and fall back to 2G?
Obviously, in areas with comparatively early cell build-outs, there are very likely going to be areas where less-than-bleeding edge is all you get. So, if you live in one of those, paying a premium for some zOMG 4G++!!! burn-through-your-monthly-data-cap-in-10-minutes device is not a good plan. Ok. So much is obvious.
The relevant question is, do recent devices fall back gracefully, and how do older or 2G only devices compare to their contemporaries in terms of things like antenna quality? Having a 3G device; but being limited to 2G capabilities in a 2G area is simply an inevitable inconvenience. If, however, 3G devices that just silently fail outside of 3G areas, or take excessively long times to fall back, or do some silly little dance where they switch between a hopelessly weak 3G signal and the available 2G tower every couple of seconds, or if contemporary RF design is based on the theory that all customers loath antennas and live 300 meters from a cell tower, then the fact that some areas are 2G only starts to factor into your buying decision...
The UK includes Scotland, some parts of which are fairly remote.
Don't forget that its not just 'as the crow flies' distance, but also topography. The UK includes hills and mountains which tend to block higher frequency wireless transmissions. Its not all flat like parts of the USA.
I used to watch a British drama/comedy about a Scottish policeman on a small island. It was called Hamish Macbeth and starred Robert Carlyle. He was last seen on a show that was set in the most remote location (SGU)
It's because we didn't constantly fuck with our phones back then!
An iPhone 4 can easily go a week without charging it if you turn off all the push functionality, e-mail checking, ONLY use it for calls and don't spend a lot of time on the phone.
But because we want to do so many things with our phones now, of course the battery life won't be as good as it used to be. :)
The 2G phones were designed at a time when the manufacturers still thought people gave a shit about coverage or battery life.
Apple has shown us all that they don't..
I think history disagrees with you. The first iPhone was 2G despite 3G radios existing and working in the wild. They didn't put a 3G radio into the phone until they were small enough and efficient enough. The tradeoff was low-bandwidth vs battery life, and Apple decided battery life was more important. There is nothing particularly cutting edge about any of the iPhone's hardware at all. They use solid parts with good specs, but they are never "the best" that is available at the time. They do this specifically to improve battery life and ensure basic functionality.
You can complain about the UI and App Store all you like, but I don't think Apple has ever made a phone that sacrifices coverage and battery life for the sake of wowing customers.
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
Sometimes, but you have to be careful when comparing to understand the context.
;)
For example, 2G is usually deployed at 900 MHz while 3G is deployed at 2.1 GHz. The lowest the frequency, the better the propagation characteristics. But 3G at the same frequency is way better than 2G, so when operators "refarm" old 2G frequencies by switching them to 3G, then 3G coverage improves.
LTE will be a mixed bag here: the most common frequency bands will be in 2.3 or 2.6 GHz for dense coverage (urban), but in the "digital dividend" bands (old analog TV bands) at 700 or 800 MHz depending on the countries the coverage will be excellent. While 2G had to stay around to provide an umbrella coverage to the higher frequency 3G, an operator with LTE in both 2.6 and 0.8 GHz (should be common in Europe) will have both capacity AND coverage with LTE alone. So there will only be a need for 2G and 3G for legacy devices, but the switch may be faster (once they have deployed. Which they're in no hurry to do, as they want to milk their 3G network whose licenses cost them so dear).
Another factor is the maximum allowed transmit power. Old standards used pretty high max power compared to more modern standards. 2G maximum is 33 dBm for example, while 3G is 23 dBm typically (from memory, I may be a bit off there...). 4G is also at 23 dBm, which is the "new normal" and shouldn't change.
And then of course, there's the form factor. The huge analog brick phones had large external antennas with better gain than the more modern compact phones.
But people want small products that do not fry their brain, and the remaining frequencies tend to be the high ones. Still, if you compared both systems at equal max transmit power and form factor and frequency, the performance of the most recent standards would be better (particularly for non line of sight operation). The tech underneath is truly superior, but the products are optimized for other demands than old analog phones (which had to handle spotty coverage, while 2G products are designed with a good coverage in mind). And it's fair to say that 2G and 3G phones are not designed for the situation you described
Keep in mind that those may be two different things.
For Verizon and Sprint customers, 4G is a completely different set of radios. Voice calls continue to use CDMA. So it's quite conceivable that you could have spotty voice and awesome data.
At some point in the future, Verizon plans to support voice calls on their 4G LTE network and, ideally, phones can shut off the CDMA radio until they're out of 4G range. In the meantime, though, you're running two radios on different frequencies.