iPhone: Waiting For 3G
Very, very mixed feelings related to the second generation iPhone. It is dubbed "3G" but in fact this is the 2nd generation device. 3G means it can use WCDMA/UMTS/HSDPA networks in 850MHz(US)/1900MHz(US)/2100MHz(EU) bands. 3G has been a hype for a long time... essentially since 1999 when the first deployments took place and Qualcomm (the pioneer of the underlying CDMA technology went "over the rainbow" after the World realized everybody is going to license Qualcomm's technology).Now, as we have some perspective of almost ten years, we may try to evaluate some pros and cons of 3G (technology and networks) in context of the 2G (meaning second generation) iPhone:
- 3G delivers fast mobile data transmission. This is what we have been all waiting for. With HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) and HSUPA (Uplink) the current real world speeds come close to the speed of 802.11b WiFi. Most operators advertise 7,2Mb downlink speed, but this is usually true only for the radio part - the backbone links to Node-B's (the base station transceivers) are usually slower than that. And for 7,2Mb to happen the cell you are in should be empty. But still in the real world I often see speeds approaching 2Mb/s. That is not enough for a high definition video streaming, but is just fine for heavy web browsing. With connection speeds exceeding 1Mb/s often the bottleneck is the application processor - you need a fast Intel chip to render web pages fast enough to keep the packets flowing. I have not done any scientific tests, but the iPhone CPU seems to be too slow to benefit such speeds. Possibly this is why Apple advertises it as "twice as fast" suggesting real user experience is more or less comparable with 256kb/s link.
- 3G allows to make video calls (this is a standard functionality of 3G handsets). But iPhone cannot do this. Certainly this is a software - only issue, so chances are Apple will upgrade the phones in future. Of course you will not be able to make face - to - face video calls, as iPhone lacks front - facing camera, but it also may be Steve Jobs just does not believe in video calls. And he has reasons, as video calls has not picked up in volume as a service. With 64kb/s bandwidth the video quality is not stellar and facing a phone with loudspeaker turned on strips users of their privacy. I just do not see people making face - to - face video calls in public transport for example. It is still not clear to me at this moment if iPhone can make a person - to - machine video call - such as to a video IVR. This does not require a camera on the handset, and this type of video calls are much more popular. For example your bank may present a menu in visual form, not forcing you to listen to long IVR calls. Or your service provider may let you simply place a video call to YouTube and air instantly what is happening around you.
- 3G brings us (finally) better voice quality. Instead of aging narrowband GSM codecs, 3G handsets may use more modern AMR standard, and when the network supports a TrFO mode (Transcoder Free Operation), you will hear the difference. New iPhone owners report much better audio call quality. It may be partially due to better hardware (speaker, microphone etc.) and partially due to higher bitrate AMR / TrFO mode provided by a 3G network.
- 3G brings a lot of improvements to network operators. The most important is the higher capacity in densely populated areas and just after that is the complete elimination of TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) transport in the core network, being superseded by Ethernet / IP-based transport for both signaling and media.
- And finally: there is a price for all these improvements. 3G handsets draw a lot of power. Unfortunately battery technology has not advanced fast enough. That is why the new iPhone has a switch to turn 3G off (essentially becoming equal to the first generation iPhone). And according to the tech specs, it should be advertised as "Twice as fast. Half the price" but "Twice as fast. Half the battery life" instead.
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