Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Most people in the USA will be happy for the USA, those in France will be happy for their ability to use their 3G current installation. Not many USA people would be excited over it being available elsewhere, LOL.

Good way of thinking "if we are happy who cares for the rest of the world" ... that's the american way i guess.

Anyway, as sifredi posted, I live in the UK where 3G is pretty much all over the place. I have a Nokia N73 that always works in 3G and i charge my battery once a week/4 days worst case scenario, so I don't quite believe the story about battery life for the iPhone. The technology is out there, if Apple chose not to use it because the USA don't have much 3G coverage it's their fault.

Like MacBoySeattle said (even if i hate all of his derogatory posts) if you have a 3G phone but no 3G covered network, you'll get EDGE or whatever is available until you'll get to an area where 3G is available. It doesn't work the same way for EDGE.

Said so, I can't wait to get my hands on a 3G iPhone since that's the only detail i'm missing.
 
Good way of thinking "if we are happy who cares for the rest of the world" ... that's the american way i guess.

Anyway, as sifredi posted, I live in the UK where 3G is pretty much all over the place. I have a Nokia N73 that always works in 3G and i charge my battery once a week/4 days worst case scenario, so I don't quite believe the story about battery life for the iPhone. The technology is out there, if Apple chose not to use it because the USA don't have much 3G coverage it's their fault.

Like MacBoySeattle said (even if i hate all of his derogatory posts) if you have a 3G phone but no 3G covered network, you'll get EDGE or whatever is available until you'll get to an area where 3G is available. It doesn't work the same way for EDGE.

Said so, I can't wait to get my hands on a 3G iPhone since that's the only detail i'm missing.

You seem to have forgotten that this thread is about AT&T installing 3G in a lot of cities in the USA, so this news affects only USA. We have already hear that China and Asia wants a 3G iPhone and by the looks of it it will be available before year end. So it looks like us and the rest of the world will be getting 3G iPhone sooner or later.

It is not that we do not care about the rest of the world, it is simply that in a lot of the world 3G already exist, so there is no reason why someone in the USA would be happy or unhappy for you. If we were to hear you are not getting something that you should we may care.
 
What are the sales like of 3G phones in comparison to non-3G phones does anyone know?

Even though 3G is available here I haven't bought one because I don't see the need for it. Although the number of 3G users is definately increasing rapidly I'd imagine the majority would still be non-3G. On a purely business level you'd imagine the smartest move for Apple would be to launch their first phone in the market with the broadest consumer base and then work their way up as the market for higher technologies increases. In other words, establish yourself in the mass market and then move the mass market with you.
 
What are the sales like of 3G phones in comparison to non-3G phones does anyone know?

Even though 3G is available here I haven't bought one because I don't see the need for it. Although the number of 3G users is definately increasing rapidly I'd imagine the majority would still be non-3G. On a purely business level you'd imagine the smartest move for Apple would be to launch their first phone in the market with the broadest consumer base and then work their way up as the market for higher technologies increases. In other words, establish yourself in the mass market and then move the mass market with you.

I would add to your question: Is there a higher price for data plans that use 3G instead of Edge?

Also it would be great to have 3G provided that it will fall back to Edge or something similar where 3G is not available, which right now 3G has very little coverage in mainland USA.
 
I would imagine 3G phones are selling well. People want to have web access and on demand content.

Im not sure what you mean about lack of coverage, 3G is wide open with Sprint and Verizon.
 
That is because they are two different devices using different rendering engines...etc. You cant do such a comparison and deduce that EDGE is faster than 3G. This is ridicilous.

Show me a video of an iPhone on EDGE and ANOTHER iPhone on 3G, then we can talk.

It doesn't matter that they were different devices for a couple of reasons.

1) It wasn't the rendering that was slowing it down. You can clearly see the download speed at the top of the phone.
2) If the rendering engine and the processor is better on the iPhone then won't the used of EDGE vs. 3G be negligible to the end user? Isn't that what matters? If the average user can pick up an iPhone and a Treo and they work at about the same speed do you think they care that it doesn't have 3G?
 
People want to have web access and on demand content.

Do they? I'm not so sure that the mass market does at the moment. Perhaps I'm just that out of touch! I'd imagine there's a definate youth market (think up to 25). However I'd imagine the broadest market base would just require general mobile services at the moment. Most people I know still have EDGE phones and don't regularly need web access or on demand content, although this is definately increasing quickly.
 
A lot of users complain at how slow EDGE is, I think 3G is a huge deal.

I use my phone to get sports scores all the time. I use the web service.
 
It doesn't matter if it was fully rolled out or not dude. A 3G phone works on GSM bands as well when it can't find a UMTS network. Do you think all the people who bought the 3G phones that were out at the launch of the iphone had 3G? Ofcourse not. For them it acts like a GSM phone. Apple new damn well the 3G network was expanding and that the rollout would be done by mid 2008.

Yes, but Apple would have advertised the phone as 3G and since this was only available to a very small percentage of the population this could have caused them a lot of problems with users, the media, etc. These other phone companies have so many models that they release phones that target much smaller audiences. Apple decided to target a broad audience, making it easier for them to market the iPhone which was their FIRST ever foray into this arena. It looks like they were right and not very many people gave a darn about the lack of 3G. They are already the #2 selling smartphone in the U.S. Many of those 3G smartphones you are talking about are sitting far behind the iPhone in sales.

Also, the fact is that EDGE is faster than Sprint or Verizon's 2G network. That is part of the reason that those companies rolled out their 3G faster than Cingular.

The point is that the choice to go with higher battery life vs. 3G was the right choice with the small AT&T 3G footprint. Now that AT&T is finally expanding that footprint I think we will see a 3G iPhone.
 
I would imagine 3G phones are selling well. People want to have web access and on demand content.

Im not sure what you mean about lack of coverage, 3G is wide open with Sprint and Verizon.

I beg to differ with you slightly. I have a 3G phone (Treo 700p) and even though Sprint and Verizon have better 3G coverage than AT&T Verizon just added 3G in my town last year and Sprint still doesn't offer it. And I don't live in the boondocks or anything. There are a quarter of a million people here. The worst part is that Sprint has a Sprint Speed billboard down the road from my house.

This is why all this talk about rollouts and switching to 3.5G or 4G is ridiculous.

The fact is that our cellular companies can't get adequate voice coverage everywhere and their high speed data access is much worse unless you live in a big city, or really close to one.
 
Do they? I'm not so sure that the mass market does at the moment. Perhaps I'm just that out of touch! I'd imagine there's a definate youth market (think up to 25). However I'd imagine the broadest market base would just require general mobile services at the moment. Most people I know still have EDGE phones and don't regularly need web access or on demand content, although this is definately increasing quickly.

I agree with you but I think one of the main reasons for this is that the interfaces to access this type of content is really really horrible on most phones. I'm a geek and I almost never accessed the Internet on any of my mobile phones before my Treo. And even now I use the heck out of email but rarely use the browser because it is horrible. If I had an iPhone I would use the browser a lot more often because it actually works.
 
Battery is now also finished after 1 day. I have to charge it every night. Ohwell maybe because i'm an heavy iphone user :)

yikes... this is one of the main reasons i didn't buy one. I wish they would make them so you could replace the battery yourself then it wouldn't be an issue. I'd hate to send my phone off to Apple for replacement and be without a phone. -- do they send a temporary one?


In response to the 3G announcement. My first thought was the iPhone 3G must be on it's way. I would think AT & T is pretty happy to be the exclusive carrier for the iPhone. I was thinking last night that just about everyone i know wants or has an iPhone. Even people who aren't into gadgets or Apple. It is the coolest thing ever. Apple could take over the cell phone industry if they came out with a few more or reduced the prices so more people could afford them and let any carrier sell them.
 
Battery is now also finished after 1 day. I have to charge it every night. Ohwell maybe because i'm an heavy iphone user :)

im not really sure what you expected out of the iPhone's battery- its ever going to last you longer than a day if you use it even nominally. Not that its a bad thing- it's just the way it is with such a device.
 
im not really sure what you expected out of the iPhone's battery- its ever going to last you longer than a day if you use it even nominally. Not that its a bad thing- it's just the way it is with such a device.

I think some people must be coming to the iPhone from a regular phone. If they were coming from another smartphone they would be used to this.

It is funny, I actually forgot how long the battery in a regular phone can last. I recently travelled to Europe so I took my old Motorola V400 along and the battery in that thing could last for a week.
 
so does it look as if when this 3G phone comes out that it will be able to function on the new “bring your own device” network that Verizon is supposed to have working real soon???
 
Whoa, watch what you're saying.

EDGE is indeed pretty much everywhere. But it has a theoretical bandwidth maximum that is still far, far less than 3G. I'm not sure what it is but it's around 250kbits/sec. That's the cap as to how fast EDGE can go just because of the technology.

3G I believe can go up to 600-800 kbits/sec while 3.5G (HSDPA) can go way higher than that, 1000-3000 kbits/sec. Again, don't quote me on these numbers but I believe it's around those figures.

The only thing 3G cannot fix is latency times. So casual browsing across lots of pages aren't going to be that much faster unless the page size is huge. That's where the faster bandwidth helps in downloading the page.

True enough.

But theory and practice are different in the real world. Several technically impressive posters on MacRumors have convinced me that EDGE, despite its slower peak speed is both faster now in practice and is likely to be faster in the 2 year future due to ramp-ups in EDGE, and handshake issues, and the fact that 3G no matter how fast it "could be" some day, is not now, and also notably is not deployed in most places now anyway.

That said.

3G iPhones are to service markets where the current phones do not work.

Rocketman
 
Still a bit skeptical of a 3G iPhone coming that soon. Seems that there are things that could influence the timeline from either direction, though. Among them: the desire to enter the East Asian market (pro) and devising a strategy to placate early adopters (con).

Any other thoughts on what would influence this anticipated release?


Hey, I'M an "early adopter" and I want my 3G iPhone ASAP:)
 
Well if you put a couple relevant news stories together; we will be able to purchase the 3G iPhone without extending our contract via the same method used with the 16Gb release.
 
You need to get a clue. It is not that AT&T didn't have 3G available at the launch of the iPhone. Compare their 3G footprint to that of either Verizon or Sprint. It was and still is a joke. It really doesn't matter if they had 3G available for 10 years if it was only available in a handful of cities. I'm glad that it was available in your city but that doesn't help the majority of Americans.

This is EXACTLY why apple deployed in EDGE ... so they could sell more iPhones. But is also the reason why the 3G iPhone is not coming soon (albeit surprisingly it will be here by year's end).
 
I'm not saying that EDGE is faster in all cases but it isn't as slow as people make it sound. The speed of each is heavily dependent on the amount of network traffic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJTdFTIF2No

Which is also why I believe Apple choose not to flood the ATT 3G networks that are used by every other smart phone, hence you have the masses on something none of the other cell phone makers were using anymore (EDGE).
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.