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3G: How important should this be to me?

J

JustinP81

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 13, 2007
252
0
Celebration, FL
I live in Tampa, and my area is covered in 'blue' (meaning we have full 3G coverage).

I'm torn between waiting for the iPhone to have 3G ability or just buying one on Friday and saying the hell with it!

I've never used the internet with my phones (well, besides checking baseball scores), so I'm not sure if using the iPhone with the Edge network will be that big of a problem for me... since, up until a year and a half ago, I was using a 56k modem still!

That said, for someone like myself who may check traffic conditions (with the Google app), look up a band (on AllMusic or something) or check e-mail and text messages, do I really need 3G? (And since most of my friends have wireless internet in their houses and I can jump onto WiFi spots all around town... I'll be able to get some quick internet pretty much wherever I go anyhow)...

And even if I do wait, will 3G be available in the iPhone come Christmas? Will it be available at ALL, even? Seems to me that would be the one and probably only upgraded feature in a second gen iPhone... since they can update the software (just like they do for our Macs!), new apps and such will be available to the 1st gen users...

Tell me what I should do!!!!


(Thanks!)
 
3G isn't available in my area, so it's not that hard of a choice for me. If it was widely available, I would probably wait until January.
 
ATT 3G is available in any city with populations over 100,000 so many people technically could get 3G service but will get an iphone regardless. 3G should not be what makes or breaks the deal.
 
ps49556n said:
ATT 3G is available in any city with populations over 100,000 so many people technically could get 3G service but will get an iphone regardless. 3G should not be what makes or breaks the deal.
Click to expand...

Don't make stuff up. My metro area is 500,000 and we don't have it.
 
Hey Justing it sounds like you made your own decision/arguement for yourself.....If you havent done that much internet phone searching prior to this then it will be the same in the future gauranteed......For people that plan on using this phone to surf are going to be dissapointed. Not just because of the edge but moreso due to screen size and neededing a magnifying glass to read. You can zoom in but to read articles in full your going to have to pan back and forth which gets old...

My concern over 3G vs edge is how well the widgets are going to load and email. If these are fast then every thing is great on my end...I will occasionallly look things up on safari, but that is what I have a laptop with wifi for also.
 
I just read this which is NOT GOOD

But otherwise, you have to use AT&T’s ancient EDGE cellular network, which is excruciatingly slow. The New York Times’s home page takes 55 seconds to appear; Amazon.com, 100 seconds; Yahoo. two minutes. You almost ache for a dial-up modem.


Two minutes for yahoo???? That doesnt seem right in my past experiences...but that does suck
 
tttexxan said:
Hey Justing it sounds like you made your own decision/arguement for yourself.....If you havent done that much internet phone searching prior to this then it will be the same in the future gauranteed......For people that plan on using this phone to surf are going to be dissapointed. Not just because of the edge but moreso due to screen size and neededing a magnifying glass to read. You can zoom in but to read articles in full your going to have to pan back and forth which gets old...

My concern over 3G vs edge is how well the widgets are going to load and email. If these are fast then every thing is great on my end...I will occasionallly look things up on safari, but that is what I have a laptop with wifi for also.
Click to expand...

I think e-mail will work pretty much as fast as text messages... I don't see why it shouldn't, since they're basically one in the same (unless the e-mail has images).

I'm sure the Google Maps app is optimized to run fast regardless of Edge or WiFi. The traffic feature alone would run mostly off the Edge network and not WiFi... (I doubt many people have a wifi connection running in their cars!)

And those speeds for Edge seem waaaaaayyy too slow. There's no way it's any slower than 56k... it can't be. It doesn't make any sense.
 
tttexxan said:
I just read this which is NOT GOOD

But otherwise, you have to use AT&T’s ancient EDGE cellular network, which is excruciatingly slow. The New York Times’s home page takes 55 seconds to appear; Amazon.com, 100 seconds; Yahoo. two minutes. You almost ache for a dial-up modem.


Two minutes for yahoo???? That doesnt seem right in my past experiences...but that does suck
Click to expand...

yeah. this is bs. don't even worry about it. EDGE is more than fine for mobile surfing/email
 
Those were from the New York Times Review by the way....I do have to say in the future I plan on upgrading to other versions, but not letting this stop me from buying now....Heck you can sell the one you get without a problem...I have already started getting offers due to people knowing I like to have the latest thats on the market. So getting 300 for my used Iphone and then spending another 200 or 300 really wont be an issue for test driving the new one...I think of it as a Lease...
 
Well, your other option is to buy a $2000 MBP, a $150 ExpressCard laptop 3g card, and pay $80/month for unlimited 3G data (and 4 cents per minute for Skype calling).

IMHO the iPhone with EDGE is a really great compromise.
 
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