The Jesus Phone is Not All That Fast
It was supposed to be the end-all, be-all of phones. Scoble was all excited over it (which made him look really stupid, in my opinion), and the 400,000 or so bloggers have set the blogosphere abuzz with postings about the iPhone, and the 700,000 people or so who have bought the iPhone in its opening weekend.
But the iPhone isn’t all that great. Forget the jazzy new touch-screen glass interface. Forget that it seems to have missed out on some basic phone features. What I’m talking about here is how the iPhone is being bragged as an all-in-one device, especially an Internet-connected device. Sure it has WiFi, but WiFi access points are very limited after all. And when you’re out there in the real world, you have nothing else to rely on but your cellular service.
So a good mobile Internet device should be able to give you broadband access from anywhere. What does the iPhone have? EDGE.
EDGE? WTF? If you don’t know what EDGE is, it’s simply GPRS multiplied several times over. And GPRS maxes out at 30 Kbps or so. So that means EDGE will max out at either about 200 Kbps or 400 Kbps, depending on the network (I know my math sucks, but this is what the marketing materials say).
But trust me, even mobile networks in backwards, underdeveloped countries can support speeds faster than 400 Kbps! They have true 3G (whereas EDGE is technically 3G, but very slow compared to other technologies). They have HSDPA and all sorts of acronyms that stand for “very fast mobile internet.” But the iPhone, which is supposed to be the epitome of advancement and evolution in mobile technology can just support EDGE!
How ironic.
I’m not sure if this is just a limitation of AT&T, the sole carrier that offers the iPhone, or that if they limited themselves to EDGE so users will have broadband across AT&T’s coverage. But they could have done better. EDGE sucks, really. I expected better of Apple.
What do you think?