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Cities affected by EDGE upgrade! 200kbps!

In Tulsa, OK my Blackberry is faster than I have ever seen it before. I think the edge rates are definitely tuned today for the iPhone launch.

Grats for all with the nice boost in performance (and shame on all you losers trying to make voice calls on your phone with shift in timeslot allocation!).
 
thestaton said:
So, if you don't live in an edge area the iPhone is basically a waste of time?
Click to expand...

If your area wasn't even covered by EDGE, and you planned to use the phone's Internet data connection a lot, then yes, probably. That would be true of most any phone though as far as Internet stuff goes.
 
pale9 said:
re: suddenly increased edge speed



are there an infinite number of time slots?

if not, what happens when hundres of thousands of iphones get released into the wild? is it possible that that could create a systemwide meltdown>>>?
Click to expand...


I think that is exactly what we will find out this evening! I'm glad to hear of these speed increases as I will be ditching Verizon (and I'm rather accustomed to my EVDO network speeds on my Treo 700p)... but the iPhone is worth it!

- Eric
 
Kilobits vs. Kilobytes

When looking at DSL speeds, be aware that the speeds are listed in Kilobits per second (Kbps) and not Kilobytes per second (KB/s). This is important to understand the speed you will actually receive when your DSL circuit is up and running and you begin downloading or uploading information over the Internet or your network. Below is a comparison table of the differences between a Kilobit and a Kilobyte.


Kilobits (Kb) Kilobytes Download or Upload Time*
144 Kbps 18 KB/s 1 minute
384 Kbps 48 KB/s 21 seconds
768 Kbps 96 KB/s 11 seconds
1,100 Kbps (1.1Mbps) 138 KB/s 7.5 seconds
1,500 Kbps (1.5Mbps) 187.5 KB/s 5 seconds

*Based on transferring a 1 MB file over a network with no congestion. Times are approximate.


Translations:
1 Kilobyte (KB) = 8 Kilobits (Kb)
1 Megabyte (MB) = 1024 Kilobytes
 
JellyFish said:
I have Verizon and they are about to get a rude awakening when I get my iphone. I will enjoy giving them the finger as I leave their service. :D
Click to expand...

ditto. :) I love what apple and at&t have done with these little announcements the last 2 weeks. This is a great one. Those speeds are more than sufficient for my, and most people's, purposes. And if 3G would have cost us in size and battery life, then this really was the better option, especially with this speed bump to the network.

Come on 6 pm! :)
 
Just as an update; I ran the mobile speed test on my Treo 650 in my car driving through Northern Virginia (from McLean to Annandale to Alexandria, primarily). Mostly still got 50-80kbps........ highest I got was in Annandale, at 127kbps. Here at work in Alexandria I'm getting around 86kbps.

Hope these EDGE speed improvements will come to this area soon too.

-Zadillo
 
How long does the batteries last on a EVDO device?

10 days standby time or 7 hours of constant internet use seems pretty sweet for me.
 
ReMaDi said:
How long does the batteries last on a EVDO device?

10 days standby time or 7 hours of constant internet use seems pretty sweet for me.
Click to expand...

That would be one issue. Not sure about typical EVDO devices, but taking the 3G Samsung BlackJack for example (which uses AT&T's 3G network), and is also a very thin device, although with a much smaller non-touch screen..... it is notorious for pretty terrible battery life.

-Zadillo
 
If its snappier its simply due to ATT strengthening its foundation before lowering the bandwidth sucking behemoth onto it that is the iPhone.

I bet if you listen really carefully you can actually hear ATT's network groan as more and more iPhones show up.
 
eddietr said:
I've tried this three times here in Northern Virginia and I'm getting 250-255kbps. (EDGE on a Blackjack.)

I definitely can live with that, especially for email and maps which is what I'll use most often on the road. Anytime that I have to sit down and actually surf the web, I'm almost always around WiFi anyway.

Great little iDay eve upgrade, AT&T!
Click to expand...
The blackjack is"
"Quad-band world phone with dual-band UMTS/HSDPA"
So those speeds are actually on the faster 3G network and not the slower EDGE.
 
Chicago download speeds

I grabbed my buddies Samsung Blackjack on the Cingular/ATT network.
Ran a few 1MB download tests from:
www.dslreports.com/mspeed

Here's what I got, all in kbit/sec

461
779
844
571
845
819
779
752
891
720

All at around ~.3-.6 latency

This is in downtown Chicago (Madison & Dearborn)
Seems pretty promising, dunno if they flipped a switch this morning, or if these readings are off, looking for confirmation.
 
gwaereth said:
I grabbed my buddies Samsung Blackjack on the Cingular/ATT network.
Ran a few 1MB download tests from:
www.dslreports.com/mspeed

Here's what I got, all in kbit/sec

461
779
844
571
845
819
779
752
891
720

All at around ~.3-.6 latency

This is in downtown Chicago (Madison & Dearborn)
Seems pretty promising, dunno if they flipped a switch this morning, or if these readings are off, looking for confirmation.
Click to expand...

The Blackjack uses AT&T's 3G network.
 
gwaereth said:
And that's different than the EDGE network? I honestly don't know, just wading through the insanity.
If so, that's just sad...
Click to expand...

Yes. EDGE was the previous technology, and is considerably slower (the tech before that was GPRS, and was even slower).

HSPDA is AT&T's 3G network, and is considerably faster.

The speeds you get on a Blackjack won't reflect speeds on an iPhone.

Having said that, the Blackjack has been highly criticized for its terrible battery life (and that's even with a much smaller non-touchscreen).
 
Zadillo said:
Having said that, the Blackjack has been highly criticized for its terrible battery life (and that's even with a much smaller non-touchscreen).
Click to expand...

Yes, that is consistent with my friends experience. Thanks for the refresher gents. It's sad though, that the iPhone would be on a slower network. While I appreciate the batter life savings, given that this is meant to play videos and other media for a duration, I'd have hoped there'd be enough battery to support it.

Anyway, thanks again...
 
gwaereth said:
Yes, that is consistent with my friends experience. Thanks for the refresher gents. It's sad though, that the iPhone would be on a slower network. While I appreciate the batter life savings, given that this is meant to play videos and other media for a duration, I'd have hoped there'd be enough battery to support it.

Anyway, thanks again...
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. There is enough battery to support video and media playback - it's actually got much better battery life than anyone expected.

The speed of the data network won't have much to do with that (unless you're talking about youtube videos).

I think the iPhone is really optimized for the video and music you transfer to it though at this point.

If you did have streaming video (besides YouTube) and audio, and you had 3G, the battery life would be pretty bad anyway.
 
Okay, tell us how your EVDO compares on your phone to when you use WIFI. You use it more with WIFI right?
Click to expand...

Yes of course, if I had to choose I would use wifi. I was simply comparing the data technologies offered by the companies themselves, not that plus what I can get from a coffee shop or home. You realize some people that are going to buy these phones are not going to be around wifi spots that often. So they WILL have to rely on a overpriced subpar technology.

You make it sound like EDGE is all AT&T has; AT&T also does have a 3G network (UMTS/HSPDA).

When they release iPhones with 3G, it will be able to use those.

Either way, in case you haven't been paying attention, Sprint has been draining customers left and right, and the Nextel acquisition has been disastrous for them; cheap data plans is one of the few things they seem to be getting right.

-Zadillo
Click to expand...

I am making it out to be what AT&T offers. How many markets of the overall market does AT&T have UMTS/HSPDA deployed? its roughly 5-10% from the last numbers I read not to long ago. How widespread is EVDO offered from Sprint? I know its way larger than 5-10%. Pretty much everywhere I go with Sprint I have EVDO access.

It will be great when they come out with a rev 2 with HSPDA, maybe that will make it so 5-10% of AT&T customers get faster internet. But you do have to wonder why they did not make it HSPDA compatible right now? They did say they could not find a CDMA chipset that would be low power enough for what they wanted. So makes you wonder, maybe that have not found a HSPDA low power enough to do that either. I think it would be a long while before you see a rev 2 of the phone. With all the hype around it....just don't see it that soon.

So sure they have a very small market for their 3G access, but if we are talking about over all data access that is readily available to most customers, that is not even on the table.

Funny, I was just asking a question as to how AT&T can charge that much for a lesser technology and people pay it? And you fire back about the Sprint Nextel merger as if that has some relevance. Ok? Did they fumble it? Sure. Is Sprint still in a good company, in my 7 years with them, yeah really good. I worry about the service I get and the plans I have, and the Nextel merger did not effect either one of those. Not sure what that has to do with 3G technologies or AT&T's overpriced data plans on EDGE, but ok?
 
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