This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 22:34 and is filed under Analysis & Commentary, Cellular, Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Site Search:
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Ya, ya. I’ll be in line waiting — hoping — to get an iPhone. I admit it. But I did leave something out of my post yesterday about the QA of the iPhone and that’s the EDGE network use. Straight up, it’s going to suck. It’ll make the iPhones Internet capability useless.
With the slow data speeds of 100kps (at best), you better hope for long pauses between turns or you may get lost. Very lost. See, with the Google Maps Turn-by-Turn direction feature, you have to manually tell Google when you come to a turn. It then updates the iPhone with your next turn. But if that next turn comes in a block or two, forget it, you’re going to miss it. David Pogue has already called the iPhones EDGE use “slow and horrible” and Mossberg agrees. While I’ve heard many say as long as they are in a hotspot, they don’t care due to the iPhones use of Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi isn’t going to be everywhere. That’s almost like saying, “As long as there’s a phone jack (RJ-11) at all the Starbucks for me to plug into to make phone calls, I’ll be happy.” Think about it. How many places do you know of that will bathe your entire trip in 802.11g signal? Thus, EDGE is what you’ll use. Kind of.
Truth is, most will use the EDGE network to download their e-mail in the background throughout the day. Web browsing will become so painful for users that they’ll only use Safari in a hotspot situation. I know that’ll be my MO. It’s really sad, because I don’t use my current Smartphone that has super fast EV-DO on it because its browser is horrible (Pocket Internet Explorer.) Now I’ll finally have a great browser but my signal will be horrible. Ugh. When will the perfect smartphone for true mobile surfing be here? (I think we know.)
June 29th, 2007 at 7:20
There are reports online that AT&T has dramatically increased the speed of Edge today. Not sure when this change is going to roll out nation wide if it hasn’t already. People are reporting 5x real world speed increase.
Interesting if true.
June 29th, 2007 at 11:11
Brant–it’s no longer abysmally slow, it’s only “too slow.” 200Kbps? Great! I’d still rather have 1.8Mbps with 5 hours of battery life.
The RJ-11 jack is the best example I’ve seen yet of the whole “Well, you can use WiFi…” argument. I also like to point out that, depending on where you are, it is illegal to access a WiFi network without the owner’s permission. Just because the access point is open doesn’t make it legal.
A couple more stories here and here.
June 29th, 2007 at 13:08
I suspect the app will download all the directions up front and step through them as you go. Hopefully there’s not a ton of data to download.
June 29th, 2007 at 20:07
Why don’t you try using it before making such categorical statements? BlackBerry users on EDGE networks report that Google Maps Directions requires only a few seconds of refresh time from turn to turn. Why would the iPhone be any different?
And even if I were to agree that EDGE will be unusable (which I don’t because it’s obviously a ridiculous overstatement), your analysis is *still* braindead. Why do you conveniently forget to at least asterisk your statement that the ‘iPhone’s internet capability will be useless’? The last time I checked, WiFi is an internet capability which is most certainly NOT useless.
SvenOnTech … just like other tech opinion sites, only lighter and less filling. Get your kneejerk unexamined conclusions here! Get your red hot lies!
June 29th, 2007 at 21:18
DBL you dumbass Maczealot, pull your head out of Jobs’ ass!
July 1st, 2007 at 19:01
Actually, as someone who actually owns an iPhone, and has tried Google Maps several times in the car, I can report that the step by step directions come up quickly..the text description immediately..the map as it refreshes a couple seconds later.
I’m a bit disappointed that you made such an declarative blog heading about this BEFORE you bothered to test it-but I guess you were trying to get lots of site hits. Hope that worked out for you.
July 2nd, 2007 at 20:50
If the iPhone’s Safari had an option to not download images or skip Javascript, or even better, have a plug-in like Saft to avoid garbage like Intellitxt and Adbrite, our pages would load much better over EDGE.