Awesome discovery regarding AT&T 4G

If this is common knowledge please forgive my ignorance but I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere so I figured I could share with all of you!

I am with AT&T. And as mostly everyone knows, with the release of ios 5.1, AT&T, with apple's assistance, removed the ability for users to disable 4G/3G and switch to Edge. AT&T wants to phase out the Edge network and transition everyone to 4G/3G. I was very disappointed when I got my phone on 5.1 and I tried to turn off the 4G connection in favor of the battery saving Edge.

Anyways, with absinthe 2.0 getting released yesterday I jailbroke my 4S. This morning I was setting up sbsettings and I almost turned off the 3G toggle because I knew I couldn't disable it anyways. I decided to keep the toggle on the drop down window and tested it. To my surprise I learned that I could turn off the 4G/3G settings and use Edge full time! I am so happy because I'm almost always on wi-fi so I don't need faster cell speed. Anyways, since 5.1 came out early March I've only read that it was impossible to turn on Edge permanently on an AT&T iPhone on ios 5.1 (or higher).

In the last 3 months I haven't read anything saying that I could do this. And i read a lot. So I'm thinking there are others out there who want to turn their AT&T iPhone on edge with the latest firmware. Hopefully im not making a fool of myself and that everyone knows this. I was so happy haha. Hopefully this helps others!

*EDIT: before people start ripping me saying that AT&T 4G is not true 4G speeds. I know this. That is why being able to turn Edge on permanently is such a great feature for me. I was getting really annoyed by not being able to turn off 4G/3G.

Great questions. If I'm away from a wi-fi network and need data, of course I'll switch on 4G/3G and use that over Edge. But when I'm away from wi-fi I'm mostly either texting or talking on the phone. And both of those are perfectly fine on Edge, and easier on the battery on Edge.

I forgot to mention that in my area, I am constantly getting a weak to poor 4G signal whereas i almost always get full reception with edge. So obviously I'd rather have the better reception for when I receive phone calls.

I have compared 3G versus Edge. For standby, talking on the phone, and texting, being on edge is much better in terms of prolonged battery life. If I need to use the internet or watch a video or something similar, I'll turn on the sbsettings 3G toggle for the improved speed.

But if you both disagree, I'll have to go back and compare the two again. But for years I've always used edge full time for texting or talking and 3G only when doing anything more data demanding and I have always gotten better battery performance this way as opposed to using 3G full time 24/7. Thanks for the input guys. Much appreciated. Now that I'm jailbroken again, Ill compare the two and see what happens. Have a nice weekend!