3G iPhone to Support 42Mbps Evolved HSPA?

How bout they fix the biggest problem with the iPHONE !!

I have a 8 gig iphone and everyone keeps talking about all of these new features and updates, but what about the picture mail ??? Even my garbage old $ 40 could receive picture mail. Can anyone tell me why a $400 iphone can't ? Trying to look at some multimedia message on the AT&T website takes forever. Besides all of the hidden super features we are wishing for in the next iPHONE I wish they would just let you look at picture mail in the texts ( I know just let them send the pic to the email, and then look it on the phone ) But I still say an expensive phone with a camera should be able to get picture mail if every little junk phone can get it. This would be a nice easy thing to fix.
 
klagermkii said:
This isn't going to happen, there are no other phones out there with support for HSPA+ neither are the networks ready for HSPA+. Safari and the CPU on the iPhone isn't even fast enough to take full advantage of 7.2Mbps HSDPA, let alone HSPA+. Right now the only use of HSPA+ would be to use it on your laptop via the iPhone, and we haven't heard about any improved support for tethering.
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DING DING DING! We have a winner!

Thanks for saying this. Yes, as anyone with a fast internet connection can show, the iPhone can't even handle faster than about 7 Mbps over Wi-Fi, so there is no way the iPhone itself could take advantage of E-HSPA. Unless Apple updates the processor, of course. Which I doubt they will do, simply because there are no computationally-faster chips available that draw the same or less power.

For example, right now, my computer benchmarks 20 Mbps with 40 ms latency over Wi-Fi to cable broadband using a 'desktop' speed test. To an iPhone-compatible speed test, it gets 10 Mbps/about 100 ms. My iPhone, over the same Wi-Fi connection, benchmarks 4.4 Mbps with 250 ms latency. Over EDGE, I get about 50 Kbps, 900-3000 ms latency. (Although I have a pretty crappy ("two bars") signal right here, so the 3000 ms latency spikes might just be due to my reception.)

The big thing is that, just like EDGE, HSDPA and E-HSPA both have pretty high latency. So while good, it's still not a perfect replacement for conventional fixed-point broadband. Now, if they add tethering, and the iPhone is designed so that tethered, it's CPU isn't a bottleneck, then the higher speed might actually matter.

As it is now, though, the iPhone processor is barely capable of sustaining 4.5 Mbps, which is still plenty fast for any conceivable streaming video, both directions. For example, Apple encodes 640x480 movies at 1.5 Mbps, so moving to HSDPA would be enough to stream full-screen-size video with no problems. And, heck, AppleTV-encoded 1280x720 video is only 5 Mbps, so there is no major reason to need more than that, since the iPhone can't even handle decoding that video. (Or have the ability to display anywhere close to it.)

Unless E-HSPA can increase battery life, I can't see Apple including it at all. (Which it might actually do. Since the iPhone can't handle its top speed, it may be able to do power cycling to reduce power draw, just like how Bluetooth 2.0+EDR saves battery BECAUSE its faster.)
 
bmh16 said:
Bit confused, is this for a particular country/s? Will these speeds be achievable in the UK?
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AFAIK the current 3G plans are 7.2Mbps this year/next year (it's reasonable to expect that we'll get 14.4 over time in cities at least). You never know though - depends if they think there's money in it...
 
andyinboca said:
I have a 8 gig iphone and everyone keeps talking about all of these new features and updates, but what about the picture mail ??? Even my garbage old $ 40 could receive picture mail. Can anyone tell me why a $400 iphone can't ? Trying to look at some multimedia message on the AT&T website takes forever. Besides all of the hidden super features we are wishing for in the next iPHONE I wish they would just let you look at picture mail in the texts ( I know just let them send the pic to the email, and then look it on the phone ) But I still say an expensive phone with a camera should be able to get picture mail if every little junk phone can get it. This would be a nice easy thing to fix.
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"Picture Mail"? You mean MMS? If you mean MMS, then yeah, it is kind of dopey that the iPhone doesn't support it. But the iPhone does support full rich-text-with-multimedia E-mail. Which should more thank make up for it. (I say "should", even I don't think it fully makes up for it.)

Personally I really want an up-front low-resolution camera for real two-way video conferencing. Both between iPhones over the mobile network, as well as iChat compatible.
 
Santa Rosa said:
Dont try and swing it my direction, at least I have the balls to admit Im wrong. You had a go at me first, with your now deleted post.
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WTF? I just said that there was no mention of the other standards so the chip didn't look like a likely candidate. How is that having a go?

Like I said. Chill out.
 
mr_matalino said:
So why isn't ATT doing this in the US? We're AMERICA!! And the ausssies are going to beat us?
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Remember that transferring data costs money. At the moment, ATT is offering unlimited data plan in the USA, but only because Edge is slow enough that even if you use as much data as possible, it won't cost them too much.

With 42 MBit/second, you won't get an unlimited data plan. You may try to download two 500 MByte videos, and after three minutes and twenty seconds when the videos are downloaded, your data quota for the month is gone.
 
ehurtley said:
But the iPhone does support full rich-text-with-multimedia E-mail. Which should more thank make up for it. (I say "should", even I don't think it fully makes up for it.)
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It makes up for it unless you wish to send or receive a picture from anyone that doesn't have an iPhone. Which is ... just about everyone I know.

There is no reason the iPhone can't do this, it can't be that hard to engineer... Apple just doesn't WANT to do it.

$10 says the next iPhone still won't MMS.
 
iCantwait said:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, cue the racial slurs.
I Love Australia.

USA is not all that great for networks in the world. Australia has the largest and fastest network in the world (next G), dont be to ashamed, we rock down here
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Not to bash you guys too much (I love Australia), but you should have a better network considering that Australia is smaller and less populated than the U.S. Smaller by over two million kilometers and about 283 million people. Most of our people live along the coasts, but a good amount of our population is in the interior. Most of your population lives along one coast—and in particular mostly the southeast—and there's a scant few in the interior.
 
DavidLeblond said:
It makes up for it unless you wish to send or receive a picture from anyone that doesn't have an iPhone. Which is ... just about everyone I know.

There is no reason the iPhone can't do this, it can't be that hard to engineer... Apple just doesn't WANT to do it.

$10 says the next iPhone still won't MMS.
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Saw a rather cool portable bluetooth printer the other day - you BT the picture from your phone to it and it prints out a hardcopy for you. The first thing that crossed my mind was 'pity that will never work with the iphone'.. which is a bit sad - since the whole BT thing is really only a software upgrade away.. shouldn't even need a new phone. I miss that (and Tethering, for which I carry a second phone around) more than MMS to be honest.

Video calling.. well.. every 3G phone for years in the UK has had it, and I've honestly never seen anyone actually use it. Although it would be cool to have I do wonder if apple look at the usage and don't bother.
 
zync said:
Not to bash you guys too much (I love Australia), but you should have a better network considering that Australia is smaller and less populated than the U.S. Smaller by over two million kilometers and about 283 million people. Most of our people live along the coasts, but a good amount of our population is in the interior. Most of your population lives along one coast—and in particular mostly the southeast—and there's a scant few in the interior.
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mmmm? still 98% service OZ wide is good, iWant iPhone
 
So, will there be 3G support in a software update? Or will I have to buy a new iphone altogether?
 
klagermkii said:
This isn't going to happen, there are no other phones out there with support for HSPA+ neither are the networks ready for HSPA+. Safari and the CPU on the iPhone isn't even fast enough to take full advantage of 7.2Mbps HSDPA, let alone HSPA+. Right now the only use of HSPA+ would be to use it on your laptop via the iPhone, and we haven't heard about any improved support for tethering.
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yeah, could we get some tethering please?! we pay for the data plan, we should get the support!
 
I still have a hard time thinking AT&T would do this simply because they dont have the backhaul capacity at the tower to be supporting fast internet speeds, nevermind what the iPhone could support.
 
Telstra's network is amazing, but considering that it's the only network to support 14.4Mbit HSPA now (it was enabled Feb 2007) and there are still no devices supporting this, I don't know if the iPhone will...

Telstra are doing the 28.8Mbit upgrade first and then the 42Mbit upgrade next year.

I would love the iPhone to show HSPA's full potential.
 
ehurtley said:
DING DING DING!Thanks for saying this. Yes, as anyone with a fast internet connection can show, the iPhone can't even handle faster than about 7 Mbps over Wi-Fi, so there is no way the iPhone itself could take advantage of E-HSPA. Unless Apple updates the processor, of course. Which I doubt they will do, simply because there are no computationally-faster chips available that draw the same or less power.
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Which is why Apple bought PA Semi, known for their incredible chip design on "low-power" chips.
 
I am so SICK of hearing about the iPhone! Since January of last year, MacRumors has EXCESSIVELY focused on the iPhone and left all other products screaming for attention. iPhone reports outnumber all other Apple products several times over. Just look at the MR front page and count iPhone stories vs. all others.
 
ShooMoe said:
So.. will the 3G make it easier to receive calls or will AT&T iphone service in my area still SUCK.. I constantly drop calls.. I agree.. Nice toy but worst phone I have ever had... :confused:
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How can you blame a phone for living in a weak coverage area? :confused:
 
audioadrenaline said:
I am so SICK of hearing about the iPhone! Since January of last year, MacRumors has EXCESSIVELY focused on the iPhone and left all other products screaming for attention. iPhone reports outnumber all other Apple products several times over. Just look at the MR front page and count iPhone stories vs. all others.
Click to expand...

MacRumors don't Create the news and rumors, they simply report what's out there, and at the moment, for better or for worse, its mostly an iPhone world.

P.S.: I'm also starving for desktop news/rumors. ^_^
 
I'm a little confused, what is the difference between these 42 Mbps (5250KB/s)???

I know the obvious answer of Megabits and Kilobits, I'm not stupid, but I just did a speed test of our internet here at my work on http://www.speedtest.net/ and it said download was "6161 kbps". So that would be about 50 Mbps right?

So how does that work when I am almost positive that at home I only get 3 Mbps with Quest but it is faster than at my work??? :confused:

Sorry, but can someone explain this to me a bit? lol
 
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