Ennui Blog

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Last year, Mac geeks around the world heralded the coming of the Jesus Phone. It was the great phone, music player, PIM, web browser and automatic ass wiper to ever be invented. We gobbled it up like crack addicts who screw to earn the next hit. Disclaimer, Yes, I have an iPhone, yes I love it. However…

iPhone lovers have been nagged by the possibility that their great phone would COULD HAVE been better. Everytime it takes 5 minutes for Digg to load on Edge, you have to wonder, there has to be a better way and surely, Steve Jobs is thinking of it. Well, the savior everyone is anticipating is a 3G Enabled iPhone.

They possibility of it’s release next month is being treated as the Second Coming of the Jesus Phone.

What the hell is 3G and why is it going to be better? Is it actually better?

I remember in the early naughties, 3G was touted at the future of cell phones. I salivated at Japanese phones and European phones that supposedly had this ‘broadband’ capability. Steaming video would be possible they said! Well, typical of American cell carriers, they couldn’t get their crap together. So, they came up with 2.5G, which became known as Edge. It gave moderately fast data speeds, if by fast you mean compariable to logging onto Prodigy at 2400 BPS. 

Over the past couple years, the cell carriers, flying jumping on the bandwagon, decided to roll out 3G networks. Coverage is spotty. Most major cities are covered but the coverage is no where near as great as Edge. The point I’d like to make is that 3G is old. There is already a 4G elsewhere in the world.It promises faster speeds than Edge, and it may deliver that but there are disadvantes as well, such as:

• Spotty Coverage
• Bandwidth and Latency are different concepts - just because the speed is fast doesn’t mean packets of data will actually move faster
• High Bandwidth = greater data errors
• Phone software doesn’t run as fast as a ‘fast connection’ does
• 3G drains batteries

Despite all these disadvantages, iPhone lovers have been clamoring for an iPhone based on outdated 3G technology. And frankly, Digg loading in 2 minutes rather than five would be great. Battery technology hasn’t changed much in the last year since the first iPhone came out, so I doubt they’ve really fixed the battery drain issue, so likely we’ll have a bigger and heavier battery in the new 3G iPhone.

I’ve been pretty happy with my iPhone over the past year. Yeah, it’d be great to have stuff load faster. But it’s not a reason to plink down another $500 for another one. Apple would have to enable it to make me breakfast, then I’d consider.

The iPhone second coming will undoubtedly come soon and it will convert the holdouts who’ve been waiting for 3G. Will current iPhone users switch in droves? I don’t think so. Besides, the minute it comes out, they’ll be demanding 4G from Steve Jobs.

One thing is for sure, we Apple nuts are never truly satisfied.