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Original iPhone

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someone28624

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 15, 2007
849
11
Buffalo
I volunteered as a camp nurse for a few days. There I could only get the E network on my iPhone. Despite having full bars, it was nearly impossible to do anything with it due to slowness. I know the original iPhone only had E, no 3G. Despite this, it was hailed as the best Internet phones of its day. What were your experiences like with the original iPhone if you had one? Was the Internet usable?
 
Last edited:
dontworry

dontworry

Suspended
Mar 18, 2010
385
165
someone28624 said:
I volunteered as a camp nurse for a few days. There I could only get the E network on my iPhone. Despite having full bars, it was nearly impossible to do anything with it due to slowness. I know the original iPhone only had E, no 3G. Despite this, it was hailed as the best Internet phones of its day. What were your experiences like with the original iPhone if you had one? Was the Internet usable?
Click to expand...

I used to stream Pandora on Edge on my iPhone 3G before ATT upgraded the towers around me. My area seemed like one of the last to get 3G so I basically had an edge only iPhone unless I was traveling to bigger cities. Loading text only sites wasn't bad but it was definitely slow compared to 3G.
I'm not even sure that the Edge networks are even a concern for ATT anymore.

As far as being hailed as the best internet phone, I'm sure that most people were using wifi to do heavy usage tasks until the networks matured to the point we are at now. I know I did.
 
SilvorX

SilvorX

macrumors 68000
May 24, 2002
1,701
0
'Toba, Canada
I never had an original iPhone, but had an iPhone 3G - we only had an EDGE network until last year. When I first got iPhone 3G, the EDGE network was usable, even in the middle of nowhere, about 10-15k/s, which was over 4x faster than my parents' dialup internet at the time. Then as soon as other people starting buying iPhones, it diminished to 3k/s. It was usable, until the network got congested.
 
Agent OrangeZ

Agent OrangeZ

macrumors 68040
Mar 17, 2010
3,015
3,015
Planet Earth
It was also more usable back then because AT&T actually maintained their Edge network pretty regularly. They also turned up the speed a little bit just before the launch of the iPhone. A few news sites reported that other Edge smartphones got a little faster weeks before the iPhone launched.
 
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Spectrum Abuser

macrumors 65816
Aug 27, 2011
1,377
48
There was no application store and you couldn't send MMS pictures. No mobile Pandora. YouTube was a low video quality site[by todays standards] and did not have an 'HD' content explosion until well after the iPhone 3G came to be. Most mainstream websites were also designed to be light in digital footprint.

The Enhanced Data Rate Network is a slow protocol, but in '07 the smartphone era was a different place.
 
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someone28624

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 15, 2007
849
11
Buffalo
I know this is an old thread, but I was out in EDGE territory again today and decided to document just how bad it is.
 

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brand

brand

macrumors 601
Oct 3, 2006
4,390
456
127.0.0.1
Leet Apple said:
Edge was useable, because at the time it was the fastest thing available then 3G came out
Click to expand...

3G was available prior to the original iPhone being released. The original iPhone only being 2G was a major complaint when 3G was already available from some carriers.
 
M

mark.1

macrumors newbie
Oct 17, 2012
2
0
iPhone is such a great achievement by the owners of it. They have made such a good phone with every facility in it. iPhone is a expensive phone and a huge investment must be made in this project that is why the owners have made such a great phone. This practice shows us more investment more return. Today the iPhone owners are enjoying huge return as this phone has become very successful all over the world.
 
Interstella5555

Interstella5555

macrumors 603
Jun 30, 2008
5,219
13
I'm not sure I understand the question, you can't really compare current tech and speeds to old tech and speeds like somehow something 5 years old should have been utilizing current tech to make it faster. Yes, it was slower, just like everything used to be slower.
 
Gav2k

Gav2k

macrumors G3
Jul 24, 2009
9,216
1,608
The speed was a pain but only for maps that took a lifetime to load. What did annoy me was the design change for the 3G to make it more affordable as Steve said in the keynote! I was gutted.
 
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someone28624

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 15, 2007
849
11
Buffalo
Interstella5555 said:
I'm not sure I understand the question, you can't really compare current tech and speeds to old tech and speeds like somehow something 5 years old should have been utilizing current tech to make it faster. Yes, it was slower, just like everything used to be slower.
Click to expand...

My question was whether it was usable at all, since the iPhone was hailed as an excellent internet phone, yet I find EDGE totally unusable for anything.
 
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