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Latest iPhone 2.0 Firmware Has 3G On/Off Option

lostfan916 said:
Or maybe they have a 3G option because 3G isn't available everywhere, not because it will massacre your battery....:confused:
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Absolutely NOT

"3G loads data faster, but decreases battery life".....
The wording of the text below the 3G-switch specifies exactly what the 3G switchs' intended functionality is....
 
PBGPowerbook said:
wow, have you ever used a lightswitch? (much less an iphone?)
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Come on now, that is a little rude. The label on the slide button will probably get changed. it says "Enable 3G", which is a clause, "Enable" being a verb and "3G" being a noun. And then "on" and "off" refer to two different states. It makes no sense to say "I'm turning on enable 3G."

The other switches in the iPhone are simply labeled things like "WiFi" instead of "Enable WiFi", allowing one to say "I'm turning on WiFi" which makes prefect sense.

I'm pretty sure this is what the original poster was commenting on, so maybe you can be nice and apoligize to him now. ;)
 
leorou said:
Come on Apple, with all the clever people you have and all the money to buy new technologies from companies, you can make a really outstanding battery technology? How about make the battery replaceable? Is that a lot to ask?
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Don't you realize that a battery compartment would have to be made to facilitate this? You can't just have the place where you change the battery expose all the insides. Thus this takes up more room.

The tolerances inside the iPhone are insane the way they are, and rumors say it could get thinner!
 
Matthew Yohe said:
Don't you realize that a battery compartment would have to be made to facilitate this? You can't just have the place where you change the battery expose all the insides. Thus this takes up more room.

The tolerances inside the iPhone are insane the way they are, and rumors say it could get thinner!
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Agreed. It would definitely add size.

Maybe I'm not a power user, but I've never had more than one battery for my phone, and I've never bought a replacement. The only time I could ever need one is when I leave my phone on at work (which is nearly a faraday cage) and it continues to search for a 3G network and that could be solved rather cheaply by remembering to turn it off. This switch will solve that (although my friend's iPhone actually gets a signal).
 
leorou said:
Come on Apple, with all the clever people you have and all the money to buy new technologies from companies, you can make a really outstanding battery technology? How about make the battery replaceable? Is that a lot to ask?
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There's a great deal of benefit to having a integral battery rather than a replaceable one. The structural integrity and impact strength will be superior to a housing with a door, and you still get the benefit of a very thin silhouette. Such is the case with the MBA.

It is probable that Apple has tweaked the hardware/software to further minimize power consumption though I don't expect that to please all. Long term, Apple is certainly interested in nano tech battery designs.

Here's one example:

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1234/
 
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lostfan916 said:
Or maybe they have a 3G option because 3G isn't available everywhere, not because it will massacre your battery....:confused:
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Also, if you are browsing on the phone in a noncovered area, it will automatically turn to edge.
 
I expect the battery life to be poor =/ not being any better than the current iPhone's. Putting in this kind of option definitely ensures that 3G will be very consuming so Apple's reasoning for not releasing the iPhone with 3G was a lie. They could have released it now and then and the battery would have probably been the same.
 
MyJelleo said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)



Also, if you are browsing on the phone in a noncovered area, it will automatically turn to edge.
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Would the iPhone be searching for access to 3G during that time in an uncovered area, which would put extra drain on the battery? If so, if you knew you had no 3G access, turning it off in regions where you know it's not available would increase the use for the charge. (Therefore, there would be a tie between battery life and unavailability of 3G, and the ability to turn off 3G would be useful for that reason alone.)
 
newyorksole said:
I expect the battery life to be poor =/ not being any better than the current iPhone's. Putting in this kind of option definitely ensures that 3G will be very consuming so Apple's reasoning for not releasing the iPhone with 3G was a lie. They could have released it now and then and the battery would have probably been the same.
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Bold talk of lying.

Might you consider that a 3G chipset generically requires more power than a 2G chipset as it is processing more bandwidth?

It would be an easy argument to make that Apple did indeed find a more power efficient chipset since the initial iPhone release, one that supports both 2G/3G. Even then, one would expect that the 2G mode would be more power efficient.
 
I don't understand much of the 3G technology, as my telephone is a good and old 2G GSM technology.

I'd like to ask you guys if I buy a 3G telephone will it work in 2G-only areas in a "2G mode", or I won't be able to make calls if I'm outside a 3G area?

Thanks in advance. :)
 
newyorksole said:
I expect the battery life to be poor =/ not being any better than the current iPhone's. Putting in this kind of option definitely ensures that 3G will be very consuming so Apple's reasoning for not releasing the iPhone with 3G was a lie. They could have released it now and then and the battery would have probably been the same.
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You do realize that lower-power 3G chipsets have been released in the last 12 months since the iPhone was first launched?

Akzel said:
I don't understand much of the 3G technology, as my telephone is a good and old 2G GSM technology.

I'd like to ask you guys if I buy a 3G telephone will it work in 2G-only areas in a "2G mode", or I won't be able to make calls if I'm outside a 3G area?
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From my understanding, 3G or not won't affect voice calls. Just data. But in non-3G areas, it will fall back to EDGE (2G) for data.

arn
 
Doesn't make sense ...

What I get from this setting is that Apple is giving you the ability to conserve power for Data only - e.g. use HSDPA (on) or EDGE (off).

However, this then poses a new question - is the iPhone 2 still a GSM phone with 3G data capability? This then would still limit the marketability of the new iPhone 2 into countries like Japan (where there is no GSM) or remote areas like outside Australian cities (where GSM is not available, but Telstra's NextG is on UMTS / WCDMA).

So, is the new iPhone still GSM, or will it support UMTS / WCDMA instead of GSM for Voice? Time will tell if Apple has really made a true 3G / 3.5G device (Voice and Data), or GSM with 3G data. I personally would be disappointed if it were the latter ...
 
arn said:
From my understanding, 3G or not won't affect voice calls. Just data. But in non-3G areas, it will fall back to EDGE (2G) for data.
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I've heard that one of the significant advantages of 3G is a ability to use voice and data at the same time. Do (some of) these systems use GSM for voice and 3G for data?
 
ok, ok, i agree on the replaceable battery stuff, but how about the other part of my post? I'm sure Apple can investigate more and produce some kind of magical battery that last more time, i mean, they could do an amazing phone from scratch...
 
leorou said:
ok, ok, i agree on the replaceable battery stuff, but how about the other part of my post? I'm sure Apple can investigate more and produce some kind of magical battery that last more time, i mean, they could do an amazing phone from scratch...
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Apple doesn't make batteries.
 
Can please put iPhone Rumors in Page 2. This should be it because everyone now knows the there will be a 3G iPhone. I wanna hear rumors about the Macs or the iPods. It doesn't even matter for me I'm on Verizon i'm never gonna buy an iPhone until it comes to me because I'm not moving for it and plus Verizon is better. (Come on Fanboys shoot me)
 
Dan9794 said:
Can please put iPhone Rumors in Page 2. This should be it because everyone now knows the there will be a 3G iPhone. I wanna hear rumors about the Macs or the iPods. It doesn't even matter for me I'm on Verizon i'm never gonna buy an iPhone until it comes to me because I'm not moving for it and plus Verizon is better. (Come on Fanboys shoot me)
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Don't expect the iPhone go to you untill at least the 10th version, i heard robotic legs are pretty complicated to do, much more plugged in to a mobile phone...:rolleyes:
 
Dan9794 said:
Can please put iPhone Rumors in Page 2. This should be it because everyone now knows the there will be a 3G iPhone. I wanna hear rumors about the Macs or the iPods. It doesn't even matter for me I'm on Verizon i'm never gonna buy an iPhone until it comes to me because I'm not moving for it and plus Verizon is better. (Come on Fanboys shoot me)
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I'm pretty sure that news/new rumors about upcoming computers and iPods aren't getting ignored for the iPhone news. It's just there is nothing to report about them, so no reason to keep this off the front page.

Also, while I am interested that you feel the entire management of news and rumors should revolve around your personal relationship with the iPhone, I don't think that it's necessary to change it for the rest of us. Some of us (in the U.S.) do have AT&T or think the iPhone makes AT&T worth it. Maybe they'll change it for you and put it on Verizon too though.
 
darklyt said:
Would the iPhone be searching for access to 3G during that time in an uncovered area, which would put extra drain on the battery? If so, if you knew you had no 3G access, turning it off in regions where you know it's not available would increase the use for the charge.
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This is what I came here to say - the phone searching for 3G could add extra drain on the battery life. Thus, if someone is in a non-3G area they can turn that off and push the battery life further.
 
Badandy said:
This option scares me: It almost leads me to believe they didn't use a new, lower-power 3G chip. That is frightening because I barely talk on the phone yet run my battery out in one day.
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Well, you don't need to worry so much. This switch is pretty much standard in all 3G phones I've seen. You can select GSM only or combined GSM/WCDMA mode.

--jalle
 
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