this was painful to read
Originally posted by ibookin'@mwny
You are. POP3 Phones are WAY less common in the U.S. than in Europe, mostly because the only plans that offer them are intented for business users and priced accordingly.
My view: I would love to have a simple SMS message appear on my cell phone telling me I have email on my .Mac account. If the entire email were to be sent to my phone, it would be hard to read on the phone's screen, and I could not download attachments. I'll stick with POP3 on the computer, SMS on the phone for now.
To the guy wanting to switch from Verizon to ATT/Cingular: Don't do it. Verizon has shown top-notch service all across the U.S. in cell phone coverage studies performed by Smart Business Magazine and others. This is because Verizon (and Sprint PCS) use a technology called CDMA, which has a greater installed user base in the U.S. than the competing system (used by ATT/Cingular/T-Mobile), GSM. GSM is MUCH better in Europe than in the U.S., so a GSM provider is a better choice if you live in Europe. However, CDMA was the first to achieve the holy grail of true 3G service. Japan's NTT DoCoMo, which many believe to be the best cell phone service in the world, uses CDMA. The bottom line: Don't switch. Once Verizon and Sprint get their act together on their high-speed networks (which already exist, by the way), your current service is going to look a lot better.
First of all, CDMA is not a 3rd generation wireless network. CDMA is a 2nd generation wireless network, akin to TDMA and GSM. The third generation equivilent to CDMA is called CDMA2000, and is currently being rolled out in Japan.
CDMA does in fact have a larger user base in the US then GSM, but that's pretty much it. CDMA is big in southeast asia, but it is very much the minority everywhere else.
The biggest reason for this is that CDMA was developed by Qualcomm and requires a steep license to use, wherease GSM was created by a mobile standards group and is free to utilize.
In the US, TDMA (what AT&T, and most of Cingular's network use) is still far and away the largest digital cellular technology. AT&T is upgrading their network to GSM, as it is a little more future proof then TDMA, which has pretty much run out of usefullness.
Each region is different, in regards to what "service" is best. I live in the mid-atlantic, and Verizon's service is abhorent from a network saturation standpoint. In California, Cingular probably has the best coverage area, as it was created from the old PacBell Wireless network.
The bottom line is that all of the cellular service providers are upgrading their networks currently, and within about 12 to 18 months, you should see a drastic increase in features offered.
You probably won't see good data plans though, as it isn't in the providers best interest to provide such services for their customers. That is the biggest hurdle to overcome for the proliferation of 3G wireless in the US (its not really necessary as it is, and most users won't pay for it).
As it stands now, there isn't a phone on the market that does what I want AND integrates with the Mac. If Apple made one that was unique in the market they'd have no problem selling as many as they want to Maccies and maybe even PCers down the road no matter what the size of the cell phone market is.
