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Latest iPhone 2.0 Firmware Has 3G On/Off Option

I can't wait till this thing his the streets of Holland. I hope they make a deal with T-mobile in The Netherlands. But I'm not holding my breath.
I really need a better phone than my SE 750i. It's not that it's a bad mobile phone, I just hate the interface.

Talking about 3G I hope they put 3G in the upcoming MBP's as well. Or at least make it possible to hoop up your iPhone to your MB/MBP.
 
ZiRo said:
I might revisit the iphone when it has caught up and/or overtaken other phones on the market.
Click to expand...

So you'll be buying a new iPhone as soon as they are available then?

I don't see any reason why they wouldn't give the new iPhone both GPS and 3G but who knows.
 
3G only or?

Well...

There is a huuuuge concern for me about the new iPhone. Will the new iPhone actually have 3G INCLUDING HSDPA or HSUPA. Cause quite honestly its 2008 already and there is absolutely no point having 3G only which is like 384kbps. Meanwhile HSDPA etc is generally at 3.6mbps and even 7.2mbps on one of our networks.

I sure do hope Apple will look further than the US market, I know the American mobile network lags behind compared to certain other parts of the world, like where I live for instance :) Anyhow... The 2nd generation iPhone will be launched here in my country as well as the first iPhone was not deemed worthy to launch here I guess. EDGE only was seriously pointless even when the first iPhone launched.
 
evillinde said:
Well...

There is a huuuuge concern for me about the new iPhone. Will the new iPhone actually have 3G INCLUDING HSDPA or HSUPA. Cause quite honestly its 2008 already and there is absolutely no point having 3G only which is like 384kbps. Meanwhile HSDPA etc is generally at 3.6mbps and even 7.2mbps on one of our networks.

I sure do hope Apple will look further than the US market, I know the American mobile network lags behind compared to certain other parts of the world, like where I live for instance :) Anyhow... The 2nd generation iPhone will be launched here in my country as well as the first iPhone was not deemed worthy to launch here I guess. EDGE only was seriously pointless even when the first iPhone launched.
Click to expand...

http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/why/technology/3g-umts.jsp?WT.svl=calltoaction

Technology
The AT&T 3G network uses HSDPA/UMTS technology (High Speed Downlink Packet Access/Universal Mobile Telephone System), which makes it possible to enjoy a variety of feature-rich wireless services. It also gives AT&T the advantage of offering simultaneous voice and data services. That means you can talk and use the Internet at the same time. How's that for multitasking?

Availability
Right now, AT&T's 3G mobile broadband data network is available in most major metropolitan areas.
 
evillinde said:
Well...

There is a huuuuge concern for me about the new iPhone. Will the new iPhone actually have 3G INCLUDING HSDPA or HSUPA. Cause quite honestly its 2008 already and there is absolutely no point having 3G only which is like 384kbps. Meanwhile HSDPA etc is generally at 3.6mbps and even 7.2mbps on one of our networks.

I sure do hope Apple will look further than the US market, I know the American mobile network lags behind compared to certain other parts of the world, like where I live for instance :) Anyhow... The 2nd generation iPhone will be launched here in my country as well as the first iPhone was not deemed worthy to launch here I guess. EDGE only was seriously pointless even when the first iPhone launched.
Click to expand...

That's what is expected. W-CDMA wouldn't offer much of an improvement so I expect Apple will be offering HSPA (HSDPA and probably (or hopefully) HSUPA as the upload speeds in HSDPA are absolutely pitiful). I think Europe mostly skipped W-CDMA anyway and just jumped straight to HSDPA so it would be rather pointless to only have W-CDMA/UMTS.

Sebastian
 
mr.stinki said:
I think it would also be appropriate if they put a 3G switch here:
attachment.php
Click to expand...

i gotta say...some of the best photoshopping ever seen hehe ;)
 
sebastianlewis said:
Couldn't they have called a vague term like "3G" something more specific like I dunno... "HSPA" because calling it "3G" just groups it in with competing technology like EVDO, or confuses it with EDGE (at it's higher speeds).

Sebastian
Click to expand...


HSDPA/HSUPA is 3G and 99% of people have no idea what HSDPA/HSUPA is. Yet most know 3G means "faster internet speeds".

3G is the best name for the option. It can be further distinguished in the menu bar with an H instead of the E for EDGE.
 
MacinJosh said:
I don't know why Apple chose to use lithium-ion batteries when lithium-polymer batteries offer better battery life in a smaller package.
Click to expand...

Yet, they did.

iPhones (as with all of Apple's portables) use the lithium-ion polymer batteries you speak of.
 
ZiRo said:
I agree. They cited battery consumption of 3g chips as the reason that 3g wasn't included in v1. Now v2 has 3g and a warning saying 'will decrease battery life'.

To be honest, I'd rather have the choice in v1 - now i'm tied into a 18 month contract on my old 2g iphone and will be expected to shell out full price of the 3g equivalent.

It's a nice phone, but i've been there done that - I'm not shelling out again for 3g - I'll just buy a certain nokia next time. I might revisit the iphone when it has caught up and/or overtaken other phones on the market.

I'm sorry, but I'd expect to have paid for 3g last year. Not this year. This year i'd expect to be paying for GPS or something.

No-doubt apple will do that one next year.
Click to expand...

So you willingly spent your money last year knowing it was 2G and yet expected 3G.
Why buy it then?

On the actual thread subject:
I hope the iPhone has HSDPA, but being that none of the UK networks have even regular slow 3G in my area it's moot. Just nice to have the option.
 
I agree that most people think 3G is 'faster internet' which it is... but the reality is normal 3G is still incredibly slow. Education, education....just teach the people what HSxPA is and the problem is solved :)
 
Darkroom said:
i'm sure this has been said a zillion times already, but couldn't apple just make their batteries user replaceable? it's not like the design or security of the device would have to suffer - plus wouldn't they make more money by selling iPhone batteries?

same goes for iPod of course... i mean, i'm surprised the Apple Remote has a user replaceable battery.
Click to expand...

The real question is going to be if there allowing you to switch from 3G to EDGE than just how poor is the battery life going to be in the new iPhone?

Will the new iPhone have enough bells and whistles in it to keep the general public satisfied with there new purchase?

I am on the fence on this one. Also as I already mentioned RIM's new touch 3G BB is coming out the same time frame as the 2nd Gen iPhone is.
 
evillinde said:
I agree that most people think 3G is 'faster internet' which it is... but the reality is normal 3G is still incredibly slow. Education, education....just teach the people what HSxPA is and the problem is solved :)
Click to expand...

I disagree.

Do customers need to know about ADSL, ADSL2, ADSL2+etc? No. But the information is out there should they want to educate themselves. In reality, the term "broadband" followed by how many Mbps is enough for them. As is 3G followed by 384kbps, 1.8mbps, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.4 etc

Its why Apple never puts the processor model on their spec sheets. It's just "Core 2 Duo 3.06Ghz" or whatever.
 
I posted this a couple of days earlier on the HTC thread, but I think there is some valuable information regarding html rendering on the iPhone.

http://daringfireball.net/2008/05/blackberry_vs_iphone

from the link (John Gruber):

"You can see that browsing speed — which is what matters — depends on more than just networking speed simply by comparing how long it takes to render a web page on the iPhone using Wi-Fi: a lot longer than it takes to load the same page using Safari on a Mac. For example, it takes about two or three seconds for Safari to load the Daring Fireball home page on my new MacBook Pro. Using the same Wi-Fi network, it takes my iPhone about 15 seconds. (Using EDGE, it takes about 60 seconds to completely load, although you can start reading much sooner than that.) Point being that even if 3G wireless networking were as fast as Wi-Fi — which it’s not — browsing on an iPhone would still be pretty slow compared to browsing on a modern desktop or laptop. If you frequently use Wi-Fi on your iPhone, a faster processor in the next-generation hardware would make a bigger difference to the overall experience than faster phone-carrier networking."
 
Project said:
HSDPA/HSUPA is 3G and 99% of people have no idea what HSDPA/HSUPA is. Yet most know 3G means "faster internet speeds".

3G is the best name for the option. It can be further distinguished in the menu bar with an H instead of the E for EDGE.
Click to expand...

Project said:
I disagree.

Do customers need to know about ADSL, ADSL2, ADSL2+etc? No. But the information is out there should they want to educate themselves. In reality, the term "broadband" followed by how many Mbps is enough for them. As is 3G followed by 384kbps, 1.8mbps, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.4 etc

Its why Apple never puts the processor model on their spec sheets. It's just "Core 2 Duo 3.06Ghz" or whatever.
Click to expand...

I strongly disagree. People obviously had no problem picking up that "EDGE" means "not as fast as 3G" and the only way people are going to ever be able to tell the difference is if they are informed, at which case "3G" is NOT a technology in and of itself, it's a term referring to a type of wireless technology as classified by mobile service operators, and as noted before, EDGE also falls into this category at it's faster speeds because the only difference between "3G" and "2G" is that 3G offers broadband speeds and 2G doesn't. 2G was faster AND offered data in addition to voice, while 1G was basically just phone service, maybe SMS as well but I can't remember. Just because some people are not as technical as others doesn't mean they should be treated like idiots and changing "3G" to "HSPA" wouldn't take anything away because there is still that description along the bottom informing them that it basically offers higher speeds but lower battery life, which is correct, and it offers those who wish to find out what the hell "HSPA" means a term to actually look up in Google rather than a vague term that could turn up results about basically anything from 3G iPods to competing technologies like EVDO.

Sebastian
 
sebastianlewis said:
I strongly disagree. People obviously had no problem picking up that "EDGE" means "not as fast as 3G" and the only way people are going to ever be able to tell the difference is if they are informed, at which case "3G" is NOT a technology in and of itself, it's a term referring to a type of wireless technology as classified by mobile service operators, and as noted before, EDGE also falls into this category at it's faster speeds because the only difference between "3G" and "2G" is that 3G offers broadband speeds and 2G doesn't. 2G was faster AND offered data in addition to voice, while 1G was basically just phone service, maybe SMS as well but I can't remember. Just because some people are not as technical as others doesn't mean they should be treated like idiots and changing "3G" to "HSPA" wouldn't take anything away because there is still that description along the bottom informing them that it basically offers higher speeds but lower battery life, which is correct, and it offers those who wish to find out what the hell "HSPA" means a term to actually look up in Google rather than a vague term that could turn up results about basically anything from 3G iPods to competing technologies like EVDO.

Sebastian
Click to expand...

Sigh.

It's not about treating people like idiots. Its about keeping things simple. The fact you had to make a big convoluted post like this proves the point.

My mum doesn't need to know what HSPA is, and how the term differs from HSDPA, HDUPA and HSPA+. What she wants to know is that if she enables this 3G option, she will get the fastest speeds available for that iPhone at a slight detriment to the battery life.

It's why the Wi-Fi option in the interface doesn't say "turn 802.11g off".

Or why disabling 802.11g and EDGE is simply called "Airplane mode".
 
TMay said:
I posted this a couple of days earlier on the HTC thread, but I think there is some valuable information regarding html rendering on the iPhone.

http://daringfireball.net/2008/05/blackberry_vs_iphone

from the link (John Gruber):

"You can see that browsing speed — which is what matters — depends on more than just networking speed simply by comparing how long it takes to render a web page on the iPhone using Wi-Fi: a lot longer than it takes to load the same page using Safari on a Mac. For example, it takes about two or three seconds for Safari to load the Daring Fireball home page on my new MacBook Pro. Using the same Wi-Fi network, it takes my iPhone about 15 seconds. (Using EDGE, it takes about 60 seconds to completely load, although you can start reading much sooner than that.) Point being that even if 3G wireless networking were as fast as Wi-Fi — which it’s not — browsing on an iPhone would still be pretty slow compared to browsing on a modern desktop or laptop. If you frequently use Wi-Fi on your iPhone, a faster processor in the next-generation hardware would make a bigger difference to the overall experience than faster phone-carrier networking."
Click to expand...

Browsing speed is not the only thing that matters. If the iPhone is going to be fully independent of a computer, it also needs decent raw download speeds, and while it can process data faster than most if not all phones right now, HSPA and EVDO phones are still downloading the data faster than the iPhone. This makes it impossible to really tell the difference when just browsing, but when downloading files from say, iTunes, or really any large chunk of data, it becomes obvious. The iPhone's iTunes Store right now is limited to WiFi because of EDGE's speeds and it can't download movies, tv shows, or podcasts at all right now which means you still need to sync with iTunes for those files so the iPhone is still tethered to a computer which is backwards for any mobile device, even if it does create some convenience for the owner as there's always a full backup of the data on the iPhone on the users computer, there are more phones than computers in the world.

Sebastian
 
joeshell383 said:
http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/why/technology/3g-umts.jsp?WT.svl=calltoaction

Technology
The AT&T 3G network uses HSDPA/UMTS technology (High Speed Downlink Packet Access/Universal Mobile Telephone System), which makes it possible to enjoy a variety of feature-rich wireless services. It also gives AT&T the advantage of offering simultaneous voice and data services. That means you can talk and use the Internet at the same time. How's that for multitasking?

Availability
Right now, AT&T's 3G mobile broadband data network is available in most major metropolitan areas.
Click to expand...

You should get a gold star today for actually decoding an acronym!

My only concern is whether AT&T has the bandwidth for peak periods as I can imagine a large number of iPhones coming on to the network in the next couple of months.
 
Project said:
Sigh.

It's not about treating people like idiots. Its about keeping things simple. The fact you had to make a big convoluted post like this proves the point.

My mum doesn't need to know what HSPA is, and how the term differs from HSDPA, HDUPA and HSPA+. What she wants to know is that if she enables this 3G option, she will get the fastest speeds available for that iPhone at a slight detriment to the battery life.

It's why the Wi-Fi option in the interface doesn't say "turn 802.11g off".

Or why disabling 802.11g and EDGE is simply called "Airplane mode".
Click to expand...

Sorry, short and simple has never been my style, I've given it a shot a few times but all my posts just turn out long and boring anyway.

And you're right, a user doesn't need to know, but changing 3G to HSPA takes nothing away but adds a small piece of documentation allowing anybody who is curious to quickly Google HSPA. There would still be that description documenting the exact tradeoff that turning HSPA on will offer without referring to a vague term like 3G.

Sebastian
 
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