Monday, September 10, 2007

iPhone critique

more thoughts on the new mobile: The worst feature by far (ignoring being forced to use one carrier) is the glacial molasses-in-January EDGE wireless service from AT&T. Don't even think of using the web browser using EDGE unless you have pressing needs to see one page (I'm talking about 1-2 minutes for a NY Times page to render). Performance in WiFi is spiffy - so it isn't the device. If you really need on-the-go web, forget this until a 3G alternative arrives. (Via tingilinde.)

EDGE seems to compete with other network uses in a really bad way. On my T-Mobile data service I sometimes get decent Web performance, but it becomes useless at busy times in places where there are a lot of calls going on, for instance airports. Packet losses of over 50% and ping times of over 5 seconds are not unusual in those situations.


2 comments:

albert said...

HSDPA coverage on the Penn campus is actually very good, and the speeds I'm getting with AT&T are very fast. I can't understand why they chose not to give the iPhone 3G support.

Fernando Pereira said...

Coverage in my workplace is much less important than coverage when I travel. On campus, I can always access the net through wired and WiFi links.