Safari images on iPhone and iPod Touch

[copydeskcat]

My wife recently got an iPhone 8GB on O2 here in the UK. I've got a 32GB iPod Touch (getting a 16GB iPhone on Tuesday).

However, something I noticed today (this has possibly been posted before) - when I browse websites on 3G on the iPhone, the images are dithered. When I browse websites on the iPhone on wi-fi, they're crystal clear. They're always crystal clear on the Touch.

I thought it was just an iPod Touch/iPhone thing - but it looks like the iPhone somehow downloads a lower quality version of an image, or something - unless it's on wifi.

Is this correct, and why would it be the case? Why can't it just download the original image?

CDC

 

[Night Spring]

I would guess it is to load pages faster when it's on the comparatively slower connections provided by Edge/3G as opposed to WiFi.

 

[Small White Car]

I know nothing about Safari images (I haven't noticed what you're saying) but Youtube gives high quality on Wi-fi and low quality on 3G/EDGE. Perhaps there's something similar happening with images.

But I'm not sure. Other cell phones do that, but I was pretty sure the iPhone didn't. It would be a big deal since either AT&T or Apple would have to have thousands of computers doing the down-rezzing, and I haven't heard anything about that.

So I'm pretty sure there's something else going on here.