For anyone thinking of visiting their local Apple or AT&T store Friday to buy the new 3G iPhone, take notice. You are NOT going to be happy with your Web surfing experience and you are NOT going to be happy as you watch the iPhone's battery drain like an SUV sucking gas. The hype continues.
Walt Mossberg in his Wall Street Journal 3G iPhone review was too nice. But at least he published his test data in today's All Things Digital to warn off the wary. The user comments will fill you in on other complaints about iPhone features--or lack thereof--I won't cover here.
In my previous post "Steve Jobs, Hype and the 3G iPhone," I wrote about the latency (crawl-and-stall) nature of AT&T's broadband mobile network--and the battery drain problem. Mossberg's review confirms what I wrote.
Mossberg, testing the 3G iPhone in New York City, only achieved download speeds of 200Kbps to 500Kbps. (That's KILOBITS, not MEGABITS.) Due to the large screen size and resolution of the iPhone, 3G vs. Wi-Fi web surfers will be greatly disappointed. Add the fast battery drain and web surfing will be like ocean surfing on a slow wave that dissipates before reaching shore.
Why is this? Why will 3G iPhone users NOT achieve AT&T's 1.4Mbps (that's MEGABITS) claim? Why does the battery drain quickly, like other AT&T 3G phones?
As Verizon rightly claims, "it's the network." Despite the best 3G radio in the iPhone, it can't overcome the built-in latency (crawl-and-stall) and turtle-speeds inherent in AT&T's 3G network. The company is furiously installing 3G cell phone towers across the U.S. But it will take at least another year before most areas of the country have 3G and even average 1Mbps mobile download speeds.
This is not true in most European and Asian countries where mobile carrier networks, optimized for high-speed Internet downloads, deliver 6Mbps to 20Mbps on average. Even smaller countries--such as Finland and Denmark--average 7Mbps. (Listen to my podcast interview with Lennart Svanberg on MarketingBeyond). Svanberg is an Internet and mobile expert. In the podcast, he talks about mobile network data speeds in Europe and Asia.
And the battery drain? It's draining quickly because the 3G radio in the iPhone needs to draw more battery power to maintain the signal and maximize the download speed. And it's not only data speeds draining the life out of the iPhone. Mossberg's tests revealed a maximum of 5 hours talk time vs. 8 hours on the original iPhone, requiring Mossberg to re-charge the iPhone daily.
Considering the additional $240 AT&T is now charging for the data plan ($30 vs. $20) per month without text messaging, I wouldn't buy the first 3G iPhone version. If you have the original iPhone, keep it, unless you're very dissatisfied with AT&T or touch phones in general.
If you're dead-set on buying a 3G iPhone, WAIT for at least a few months until AT&T and Apple fix bugs and optimize the device.
As AT&T--now approaching 75 million customers--continues expanding, network demand for voice and data services will grow faster than AT&T can deliver. Wait for the dust to settle before changing carriers or mobile devices.
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