"3G lovers may want to hold out for iPhone version 2"

for many more reasons than just 3G...

You know, I really love you guys, but you should be aware that iPod != iPhone. I was as excited as anything until it occurred to me that 3G iPod made no sense. Then I read the article and my hopes were thoroughly crushed.

Oh well, I guess it's back to tit taseration. It's the only thing that can sooth me now.

I need one without the camera... If i want to take it to work..

I'm guessing I'm in the minority here...

I'm with you, nzruss - no cameras allowed anywhere @ work without a camera pass.

Hopefully they'll split some versions off - I definitely expect a new iPod-only based on the iPod phone.

Ha! I don't know what 3G, HSDPA, Quad-band, or any of that other cellphone-speak is but I do know that the iPhone is sexy hot!

3G strategy makes sense - it's like buying an HD TV 3 years ago

Somewhat pointless due to lack of coverage.

People are very confused. Who cares about 3G? It's barely out. Who here thinks they will have an iPhone for more than 2 years anyway?

In two years you know what Apple will release? It will make your eyes pop right out of your head and your tongue roll out of your mouth. By then people will want the next hot new iPhone.

I'd like to see it launch with 3G - still might depending on what they've got going on...gets the press to nit-pick and the over-deliver. They've done it before. I've got the BlackJack now and will get the iPhone when it comes out. I can say that the 3G (HSDPA) is in my market is lighting fast when compared to edge. I think it has to be 3G really - the cingular rep said that 3G was the only cingular protocol that allows data and voice at the same time.

According to Cingular, they have it in 160 markets.......

Is it just me, or didn't His Steveness mention they were doing 3G right near the start of the iPhone segment of the keynote. Something like "...we're planning 3G and all that...".

I certainly think the iPhone'd be a big motivator to actually GET 3G in the first place. The only advantage over "regular" mobile phones (GSM mostly downunder downunder) is the increased data bandwidth. The price is prohibitive though. Mobile broadcast TV and video calls are just complete waste of space IMHO.

I'll wait for version 2, just so that they can get the kinks out, drop the price a bit and get a hacked version to use with t-mobile.

Cingular, huh? That's just dandy.

Gee, finally someone else noticed that! I happen to live in a market with NO 3G coverage and I already use Cingular. My w810i has EDGE and it's been alright for my use so far.

Also of note, 3G phones have significantly lower battery life as compared to 2.5G phones.

rjfarquhar, it's not just you, I heard it too... went back to the video to confirm... at 50:23 (of the full length keynote) his steveness states we "plan to make 3g phones and all sorts of other amazing things in the future"

Personally, I'm hoping some of the "amazing things" would include an iPhone without the phone or internet... basically the touch-widescreen video iPod with, oh, I don't know... a 100GB drive? It shouldn't cannibalize the iPhone too much, what with only 8GB onboard.

Steve said it during the keynote that 3G was coming. So there is literally no rumour involved.

I'd sure hope so. I was very excited when it was announced but I am beginning to feel somewhat disappointed. Every post contains bad news: locked down, no 3G, same-as-iPod polycarb, and so on.

However, I will shut up and wait until it gets released/reviewed/tested.

3G is barely out -- only for Cingular. Sprint is rolling out 4G this month. Cingular is still stuck in 2G. Who would use that iPhone browser on less than dialup wireless? Maybe you could get its Bluetooth to use a Sprint phone's internet connection though. That would rock! Well, except for having to have two phones and two plans...

Why 3G? Because if they want to sell the iPhone internationally, it would make much more sense.

3G networks are much more prevalent and popular in Europe (and in Australia where I am) than in the US. There is absolutely no way I'd cough up for a 2G/2.5G iPhone - it'd be like buying a horse-drawn Porsche 911, pretty but backwards.

Not that it matters, the iPhone should be in its second version by the time it arrives in Aus in 2008.

3G's definitely in vogue in the UK at the moment, though, beats the hell out of GSM. Suspect Apple will find it hard not to produce a 3G iPhone if they want to sell 'em here.

i am waiting for the 3G version, mebbe that's y they are holding it till 08 for asia...

I'll wait for the verizon version with evdo Rev. A thank you kindly.

ummm...
what is the point of getting a kickass Safari browser when you can only browse the internet at dial-up speeds???

THAT is why you need 3g.

Hey Exoduz you are going to be waiting a long time since Cingular has an exclusive with Apple until 2009 (talk about negotiation, Cingular only had a 6 month exclusive on the RAZR when it first launched), not to mention HSDPA should be fully deployed during those 3 years. I would imagine that a UMTS version of the iPhone will be released shortly after the initial launch, especially since Cingular (er...the NEW AT&T) will be launching 3G service in Los Angeles (the largest North American wireless market) at the same time as the iPhone launch.

Europe and Asia has 3G for more then 3 years. The U.S. mobile market is so retarded and control by lame ass telco. Look at the 3G phones with video call (and price) from Orange UK:

http://shop.orange.co.uk/shop/show/handsets/pay_monthly/al...

To be able to sell in Europe and Asia. The iphone has to has 3G, with GPS will be even better.

Wow, thanks for carrying the iPhone Rumors torch well past its logical conclusion, the actual announcement of the iPhone.

Well, I live in the Netherlands and am used to internetting on my (Nokia) 3G phones for over two years now.
So while I do like the looks of this iPhone, there would be no chance I would replace my just new Nokia N91 4GByte music phone with WiFi and 3G for an iPhone without 3G.

Apparently, the US is lagging behind in mobile technology still if 3G coverage is indeed that bad.

Agreeing with xahmol.
Lots of countries in europe already have full 3G coverage.
Here in Portugal, at least 2 of the 3 major operators already have full coverage for 3G, along with mobile TV, mobile internet, etc, for quite a while.

My guess is, by the time the iphone reaches europe late this year it'll be featuring 3G.

The UK too... all the operators have 3G coverage.. and at least 30% of the market has switched to 3G. And its growing very rapidly.

On the other hand I think only 1 network even has EDGE in the UK (and they hardly use it). The UK skipped right over EDGE.

Japan also has very high 3G coverage and usage, at least equal to the UK. Its actualy pretty hard to find a NON-3G phone in Japan, as all the latest phones are on the 3G network. Don't think there is any EDGE here AT ALL. Except maybe Willcom, who have like 3% of the market.

(Side note.. a 2mp camera isn't gonna cut it in those markets either.. most current phones have at least 2mp, usually 3 or even 5. And pretty much all new phones in Japan have GPS too - which is actualy themost useful thing on a mbile for years, I couldn't live without it now!)

Also, I hate to see how much the data plan is gonna cost.. even with my current 3g phone and only browsing "the mobile web" its amazing how much these things can cost.

I've got 3G coverage here in NYC, and I've been connecting to it using an Option GT Max 3G card for my laptop. It is lightning fast, near cable speeds. Woohoo!

So everyone holds out for the 3G version, general product demand is perceived as low, and the 3G version is never released.

DAMN YOU, RUMORS ON THE INTERNETS!

There are many reasons to wait for the 2nd or even 3rd editions of this thing besides 3G.

The entire beef with the iPhone not having 3G is that there's otherwise no point in making it a multi-year exclusivity deal with Cingular (for the consumer) since Cingular isn't going to be giving any discounts either. In fact, according to T-Mobile, by the time that the iPhone comes out, they are supposed to have 3G up and running on their system.

dink23: i appreciate your opinions, but i seem to remember another rumor that there was another version of iphone. Seeing as everything is just a rumor, there is no sense in arguing anything. And to ammend my original comments. I'll wait for CDMA + EVDO REV A. + SUB $600 PRICE TAG...and wait nevermind...the iphone is a dissappointment to me...i'll stick with my blackberry 7130, my LG 8600 and my ipod nano....all three devices combined cost me less than $600 and none of them are as ugly as the iphone is. garbage.....the most hyped phone ever has been the biggest dissapointment ever.

Someone Answer me this:

Quote:
there's a good reason Apple didn't have 3G in this iteration of the iPhone. He says less than 1% of Cingular customers have HSDPA capability

Now I am under the impression that the 3G technology and HSDPA are two different things. Yes the natural evolution is from 3G to HSDPA, but they work on different Protocol stacks and different technologies as a whole so surely the engineers comments are slightly confusing?

Here in the UK 3G coverage is at nearly 65% and growing rapidly and I have been surfing the net for 2/3 years now on whatever technology was available in my phones. I know America are somewhat behind in these stakes (and seem to be skipping 3G in favour of rolling out HSDPA) but surely you would want to make a phone that has the best technology at the time? From the comments here it seems most who know about phones will wait till the iPhone V2 arrives with 3G technology!

Exoduz- No rumor about it. Cingular/AT&T IS Apple's exclusive carrier for 3 years which means they will be the sole carrier provider on every Apple wireless phone based product, no matter what Apple decides to call their device. I think that every media outlet has pretty much made that clear. If you don't think these things will be in high demand, you are in denial and a bigger Verizon fanboy than I previously thought. Verizon has spent way to much on their $2.99 per song music service to ever consider partnering with Apple and splitting the royalties. Nope no Iphone for Verizon Fanboys and no Beatles either.

why dont they just use GMS+3G stack?

as dink said, it's locked in for three years and while apple still decides what features they're going to force cingular to do R&D on, everyone who's complaining about Apple making this available to other carriers probably has a better chance of bitching to cingular to change their ways. Personally, I have cingular and the worst part of it has always been the actualy phone i use in the end. My razr had to be replaced 3 times until the warranty was finally up and now that its over a year old, just broke down for the 4th time. Cingular got a call from me and while they were kind enough to offer me an upgrade (nice gesture considering I've always paid my bill on time) they understood I was wiating for the iphone. Even out of warranty they sent me a new LG CU500 Check it out Here i understand my experience may also be an isolated one but I'm glad that it's going to be Cingular and my mobile-to-mobile plan makes me glad it's exclusive.

I agree with soul_grind, coming from the european market, we use 3G a lot. Of course there is EDGE but 3G is winning the competition. Look at the Nokia N95 coming out soon, and see 5Mpix, DVD-like video recording, GPS included, not enough memory expansion, an average screen although in an ugly package.

So... neither the iPhone or the Nokia N95 are my ultimate devices. And certainly I will not buy the iPhone version 1 though I like my MacBook and iMac very much. The iPhone is like buying a G4 computer today - nice package but obsolete technology compared to the market !

3G phones have significantly lower battery life as compared to 2.5G phones.

my A900 has better battery life than any other phone i can think of, and it's both a 3G phone and an ultraslim. and EDGE is painfully slow, if there's one way i hate to browse the web, it's on a GSM phone.

but honestly, if apple has a good 3G strategy, I wouldn't be surprised to hear it's EVDO on sprint's network, because EVDO in the US is available in many more markets than HSDPA, and by the time HSDPA gets a full rollout, EVDO rev A will be standard on sprint and maybe verizon, and revisions B and C will be in beta.

also, for all you verizon fanboys, apple will NEVER sign a deal with big red, because apple designed OS X portable to have a good UI, not the shitty verizon UI, apple would want AAC file music as opposed to verizon's lock on DRM encrypted WMAs, and honestly, I think sprint is the only decent service provider left, cingular's smartphone lineup be damned.

Here's a link to the Cingular 3G availability by city listings. Click on the city to see the coverage. While viewing the map at city level zoom, a check box to show 3G coverage as blue. I was shocked to see how much coverage is available in STL.

http://www.cingular.com/coverageviewer/popUp_3g.html

The reason for the slow rollout of 3g in the US has to do with the low Data usage. A very large portion of cell users do not use ANY data. And of those useres who do use DATA very few of them use it enough to warrent needing 3G. Most people in the US dont really care about video conferencing of streaming. Those who need 3G make up such a small part of the market. It dosen't make any financial sense. Also to compare 3G rollout in places like Portugal to the US is crazy the Area you have to cover is SO much larger, and so much more expensive. The total percentage of cell users alone is less here than a lot of countries. The US has had VERY reliable land-line service for a long time. For the first few years the Cellphone was thought of as a luxury, in many other contries it is a necessity, thus the quicker rollout.

There's a little confusion on this point. HSDPA is the latest, fastest Cingular 3G protocol, but they have a somewhat slower, broadly deployed 3G protocol called UMTS that is perfectly adequate. HSDPA radios are backward compatible with UMTS. I use it every day, and it is a major improvement over their 2.5G GPRS/EDGE protocol, which is essentially useless. I do not live in a major metropolitan area, but I consistently get 3-4 bars on UMTS and move data at hundreds of kbps. It works well enough to do web and email routinely, and anybody who lives in a small city in the States can use it. In other words, a heck of a lot more than 1% of Cingular/AT&T's users are in a UMTS network, gotta be more than 50%. So the engineer you quoted could stand to be a little more aware of the Cingular/AT&T user experience, and I still don't understand the omission of the 3G radio in the iPhone.

Omission of 3G capability is a huge disservice to the masses. Why not include a technology if it is available? The argument that 3G is available in only a dozen or so markets --- doesn't that mean you have a dozen or so markets you should cater to? I'm willing to bet that those dozen or markets, probably include @ minimum the top 5 markets in the country. Why would you not address these markets?

Also, it is not one or the other, a phone can still do edge while being 3G compatible. So the omission of 3G is just crap by Apple.

Have fun with the battery life on the 3G iPhone. Maybe Apple will make it "Zune thick" to accommodate the extra power 3G needs.

Wifi is faster than both 3G and EDGE. I've noticed that when I am interested in browsing the web from my phone, I am almost always in an area that has wifi.

Full 3G adoption is still probably about 2 years away.

I was the biggest skeptic of the iphone since I heard of it. I still do not have it because I am waiting for 3G version. As a current 3G Customer for AT&T I couldnt see going back to edge with a device that had full web browsing capabilities. I became a skeptic of this device because of its shortcomings. However, after playing with a friend's phone for an hour I can see that the Edge network is faster after the upgrade AT&T made to it. I just wish it had 3G, Video, and a longer battery life. Other than that the phone is not only goodlooking, its sleek and stylish.

Verizon will be behind the ball. I dont think they can match it with their LG Prada. By the time that comes out iphone bugs will be worked out and a 3G version will hit the market.

If you need a short 3G fix go with the new Razr V9 due out 3Q07.

I just left the AT&T store and was speaking to the manager about the iPhone. I was told that 3G iPhones are coming in December in time for xmas. Also that 4gig models are going away and there will be 8 and 16 gig models.

So what about us with the first wave of Edge iPhones? At&t and Apple will be upgrading the chips in the current phones to 3g for free.

Just passing the on the news that I heard

3G services for GSM carriers in the US is a new thing. For all the Sprint and Verizon users out there who have enjoyed the 2 megabit/sec download speeds for over a year we must play nice with the new kid on the block: AT&T. 3G is nothing new AT&T users, its just unfortunate that you have hardly had a chance to experience it since the rollout of the blackjack and 8525 over the past 6 months. Apple will realize that they need to just focus on making 2 unlocked versions of the iPhone both with 3G capability: one for cdma and one for gsm carriers. They can triple their earnings with two devices and not have to listen to any carrier nonsense. I just hope someone comes up with enough cash to buy out AT&T's exclusive contract sooner rather than later so Apple doesn't get the brunt of bad association. 25 dropped calls in 7 days with the iPhone is not helping my feelings towards AT&T. Sprint SERO plans ftw.

Here is some news on 3G phones to be released in Europe...
[www.smackall.com]

i live in nyc where cingular 3G is speedy and everywhere. i will give up my e61 for an iphone when they release one with 3G.

I find it interesting that so many people talk about how the iphone has to have 3G, but then I read about the att 3525 or blackjack and there are all these posts asking how to turn off 3G because people would rather the phone work after 5 hours than download that one video clip a bit faster :)

I think that the idea of 3G speeds is really cool, but if I'm going to end up trying to hack my phone to turn it off 3G once the novelty wears out, then maybe EDGE isn't so bad after all. All least they jacked it up from 40kbs to 100-200kbs :P

Guess there is no perfect solution...yet.

In the meantime, I think the iphone is a pretty amazing device that will only get better as they have time to roll out the rest of the apps and features done the apple way. (I'm a PC guy myself, but Apple does occassionally impress)

As an owner of a Blackjack, I can tell you that I have absolutely no problem with batter life. The standard battery last at least 2 days with no problem and I do plenty of talking and web browser (and I don't have to wait forever for a page like iPhone users do). With the extended battery the at comes with the blackJack, I get 3 or 4 days out of it so don't talk about something you know nothing about. I love the iPhone interface but there is no way I'm going to switch to an Edge network phone. I'm in the Puget Sound area and we've had 3G for some time.

Finally Apple and AT&T have initiated a true stop for all of the iPhone unlockers out there. You want to unlock our phone? Have at it, and be stuck on EDGE with Tmobile. Oh, you want 3G? Welcome to Cingular, the New AT&T and our ridiculously high data charges. You're going to pay for these and love it, because Steve Jobs has finally delivered with the iPhone 3G.

As for the guys across the pond, it's really a lost cause, heck, the EU is probably going to force everyone to unlock that bad-boy anyway.

andrewiswise.com

I found a site that is selling the rights to the 3G when it's finally released. When I first saw it the reserves were going for 20 bucks and now they're trading for up into the hundreds. Just to reserve the phone! When it does get released the company ships it directly to them. (company is firstdibz)

Couldn't some modder/hacker somehow put a 3G radio into an iphone?