If you want the details, this means that when you're on a UMTS cell, the RF gets low and the phone sees a nearby GSM, the call is usually dropped. Or vice versa - when you're on GSM and the handset (which is told to always choose lowest-cost routing) sees a new UMTS cell pop up and tries to hand over, currently in my experience this handover fails. Although mostly in Washington, I've also experienced and read about this happening nationwide - undoubtedly AT&T is trying to cover up the problems with its "fewest dropped calls campaign" - which must have been restricted to the GSM network.

The problems may be due to the low current quality of the chipsets, or (more likely) AT&T's poor integration/optimization of its GSM850/1900 and UMTS coverage. Either way, Jobs probably tested it and saw the likely negative impact on Apple's brand of all those dropped calls. This, combined with the poorer battery life and increased cost of the additional SKUs, made it a no brainer to go with a single, more reliable GSM/GPRS/EDGE unit that could be rolled out globally.

stevee02

IdentityBureau

You are right on with your comments.

The bottom line is that Apple designed and is calling most of the shots with respect to the iPhone. It is likely an EDGE device due to the state of the UMTS/HSDPA chipsets that were available at the time and this had little or nothing to do with the state of Cingular's 3G coverage at the time. This phone was no doubt more than 18 months in the making. The first gen HSPDA chips were battery hogs. To this day RIM does not have a HSPDA Blackberry out due to their high standards on battery power that prevented them from using the previous chips.

Using the argument about limited coverage driving a phone's capabilities - then why did Samsung produce the BlackJack, HTC the 8525, etc? This argument doesn't make sense.

It is clear to me that Apple sees this as mainly a WiFi device. Most of the musical/video content will be downloaded as such.

Concerning EVDO rollout vs HSDPA - HSDPA requires more spectrum and has the long run advantage on its theoretical maximum bandwidth. HSDPA has 5Mhz channel bandwidths while EVDO uses 1.25Mhz and they bond 3 of them together. During the initial rollout no doubt it is a more difficult task to arrange a series of 5Mhz of contiguous bandwidth for various markets.

It is very inaccurate to say that Verizon or Sprint have "national 3G networks". Nobody does. Each of them focus primarily on the major market areas and then expand their 3g footprint virally. If you drive from NY to LA on any carrier you are bound to spend more time on their fall back network than you are to have a 3G signal. Sprint/Verizon's fallback network is 1xRTT and it is unlikely that they will totally replace this anytime soon with a total CDMA2000 coverage.

ConstructiveFeedback

Miraa

Brian Lam

Remember, the iPhone has a much larger screen than a Windows PDA, so it is going to have to drag alot more information down across Edge in order to display the information it needs. Until the iPhone gets 3G, and resolves the "fixed battery" issue, there is going to be some frustration from screen refresh times and slow downloads, especially for people that have previously used Edge devices with smaller screens, or 3G devices.

wbremner

This has nothing to do with the Treo vs. the iPhone, of course, except that in both cases, you can make a previous-generation technology perfectly usable when you write your programs intelligently.

Would HSDPA be a good idea? Probably, once the power concerns are resolved. Will I buy an iPhone? Not until the second gen, but that's because there are at least two separate tiers of Apple users: Drooling fanboys who buy everything as soon as it comes out, and pragmatists who have made that mistake in the past, and saw that the kinks weren't worked out until the second revision.

RaptorCK

Comparing subsidized and unsubsidized phones does not work. Knock off ~$200 from the price to get a better idea. Still pricy for an EDGE phone, and yes, people ARE bitching about them.

bignaz2k

Um, ok... HTC has the brand new Touch WM6 Pocket PC. It has EDGE only. And, it's missing 850MHZ for the US. Their previous device, the P4350 is WM5, but also only EDGE.

Eten has their new M700 WM5 Pocket PC with EDGE. Street price $620.

Now, go bitch.

beyondthetech

cnordb01

If they can get near it of course.

I have T-mobile edge and it can get pretty dang slow when using my phone's browser. it seems much faster when I use the phone as a modem however. Go figure.

bombastinator

The Apple Store is DOWN!

Could those be the rumored new MacBookPros???

mangochutney

Of course, I often use free WiFi on my N95 (which is widely available in SF). So I think the iPhone will be OK for me as long as the EDGE is class 10 or higher!

In comparison, I regularly get about 1 Mbps with HSDPA on my OQO Model 02 (modded for HSDPA) - as a result, I rarely use WiFi on that device :)

tnkgrl

Exclusive: AT&T's operation "Fine Edge" attempts to prevent network meltdown from iPhone data

Vexorg

realjh

beyondthetech

Also, can anyone tell me what will be necessary to make the iPhone do 3G? I have assumed it will take new hardware instead of just new software or firmware. Is this a valid assumption?

David513

(Gimme my iPhone.)

Cleverboy

and as far as battery it (the blackjack) lasts all day with pretty heavy use, and comes with an extra battery just in case, for free... you cant even change the battery in the iphone.. if battery use was such a concern they would have made it swappable

rlreif

Donk In A Box

Maybe the iPhone is intentionally gimped because AT&T can't roll out their 3G fast enough to suit the Jobs, and he's tired of waiting. Or he can't afford to wait.

I worked in a call center a while back, and I got to see how Big Orange sat on Old Blue's budding 3G network for two years while the two played Who Has the Most Screwed Billing System (subtitle: F You First Tier Support) and Verizon was eating their lunch on the data front with EVDO rollouts.

But Verizon, if they're anything, they're total Nazis (but more like Soup Nazi instead of the kind with the killing and such) and Steve couldn't roll out a CDMA platform worldwide. No network in Europe and all that. So, who was he going to go to? T-Mobile? The redheaded stepchild of US carriers? No, he needed GSM and AT&T (which is Cingular, which is AT&T even after we spent two months training ourselves to never ever say AT&T) is the only game in town.

Don't get me wrong. It isn't too gimped. They've had a while to look over the field and work with the limitations (i.e. client side Google Maps) and this phone will probably give me wood when I see it in person. It won't suck because Steve can't afford to drop the ball. But you better believe there was some serious chewing of asses behind closed doors, and AT&T is crapping bricks right now about this launch. If it doesn't go off without a hitch Stan Sigman's head will be on a pole somewhere in front of One Infinite Loop as a tribute to He who must be Obeyed.

Prediction? AT&T takes 6 months to get its act together. 3G drops at Macworld in January. Sigman gets to keep at least one ball.

You heard it here first.

emeryemeryemery

edge in a phone that expensive really is inexcusable. especially in 2007. i would understand if the phone came out last year, when 3G networks werent even up yet... but their up.

if htc was charging $600 for a WM6 phone that did everything the iPhone does, and only had edge... eveyrone would be bitching.

ever since the Tytn came out if you want to charge that much for a phone... you really do need Edge. no matter how pretty and apple-y it gets.

MadColombian

Kichigai Mentat

If drewhayman's comments aren't singular (yeah, it's almost a pun), why all the reports about google maps being an achilles heel?

crescentdave

Bart Lee

first off, HSDPA is backwards compatible to edge, so if you dont have it in your area at least you will still get edge, adn your $600 phone will be future proofed... second, wifi uses a hell of a lot more battery than 3g, and the open networks are far from ubiquitous, thats a stupid excuse

if anyone else was selling a $600 edge phone, and hyping it as the greatest thing ever we would all scoff... im always being accused of being an apple fanboy, but on this issue im realizing that im really not, and can understand the frustrations of people regarding the ridiculousness of apple apologists

rlreif

Brian Lam

Cleverboy

Schalliol

chadmd23

thechansen

Google Maps, Paris France to Los Angeles Driving Directions:
Ok, 880k to load, 10,000 km, time 30 days 23 hours.
That took 5 seconds to load after i typed the stuff in.

Now I'll click on each step of the directions, and see how long that takes to load to make it all the way through.
Ok, it takes about 1-2 seconds to load 1200kb, according to the little display.
It's approx 33 turns, and the "swim across the ocean" turn is hilarious.
It took 4 minutes to go those 33 steps, and each significant one requires another 1200 kb to load.

Fast enough for the web and google maps; downloading songs or movies would probably suck.

drewheyman

sweetness666

logikgr

FuzzysFriedChicken

EDGE sucks but it could suck less if they allocated more channels to it and it could support simultanious voice/data.

The "real" limit to EDGE is the carriers not allocating all available data channels. I believe (don't quote me if I'm wrong) that EDGE works similarly to multiple channels on a T1. You can allocate X number of channels to voice and Y number to data. The carriers feel that voice is more important than data and optimize the channels in its favor.

Since the article specifically states that they are reorganizing their channels at the towers and adding more bandwidth, this makes sense.

Hopefully TMO will up their EDGE channels, too. It wold be even better if (I think it was) Qualcomm's EDGE enhancer was implimented but obviously since they're pinching pennies in the first place by not going full-speed with EDGE, they certainly wouldn't implement hardware and software upgrades.

jcostantino

Brian Lam

EDGE, like any other data network, can be upgraded to boost speeds. I read all the time about networks overseas that don't have 3G being upgraded by the likes of Ericsson and Motorola through new technologies.

I know everybody loves to keep the term 3G on the tip of their tongues and in america 2.5G may "suck" but in many parts of the world EDGE is still top dog. 3G has a very small global footprint.

Of course, as Brian said, if the iPhone had UMTS or HSDPA we wouldn't need to worry about this in the first place. It's not hogwash if they claim to be upgrading EDGE speeds, however.

Marty_MacFly

PS Why does'nt Lam have a graphic for his icon?

girraffesack

I swore to myself, way before the iphone was announced, that my next phone would not be edge... and it certainly wont be on edge and cost $600....

my treo 650 is pretty cool, and it does all the same things that an iphone does, and ive had it for like 3 years or something... im not going to replace it with something that costs $600 and besides looking cooler does all the same functions jsut as well...

rlreif

scoobydoo

Brian Lam

more importantly, i'd wadger that a majority of the target purchasers of the iPhone are rarely away from an open wifi network anyway, and EDGE is just fine to fill in the gaps. the phone is designed to prefer wifi networks for internet and other data connections, so it's just plain silly and short-sighted to say EDGE is as big of a hindrance as most people are claiming.

fucking fanboys and naysayers like to rip on things because they don't have steroid-inflated pecs ... err.. specs.

grow up and use the damn thing before you trash it.

TonyRockyHorror

foofighter28

foofighter28

FuzzysFriedChicken

Brian Lam

There is a rumor* that Jesus himself was going to come down from heaven and remap the entire internet into faster loading pages just so we don't NEED 3G all up in our polished hotness.

(I am starting that rumor)

girraffesack

I guess they have to do something to compensate for not including 3G in it.

scoobydoo

Darkest Daze