InfoWorld Home / Tech's Bottom Line / My sad affair with the iPhone 3G S
July 09, 2009

My sad affair with the iPhone 3G S

Spotty 3G coverage and poor battery life take the luster off Apple's new star. But the roots of the problem are much deeper

| Print | 15 comments|
234 Recommendations

It was love at first sight. Getting that sexy black iPhone 3G S from Apple was like hooking up with the lady of my dreams. And what a night we had. But when I woke up the next morning with the iPhone beside me, the iTunes in my head had become a symphony of shame and regret.

My wallet was $199 lighter, my feverish advances had drained her battery, and instead of the perky "3G" at the top of her lovely screen, there was the hated "E" -- for EDGE network. And then I remembered that Madame Bell would be coming after me for another 420 bucks this year for data and texts. Oy! What a hangover.

[ Which mobile device is best? Find out in our iPhone vs. BlackBerry deathmatch and our iPhone vs. Palm Pre deathmatch. | Stay ahead of advances in mobile technology with InfoWorld's Mobile Edge blog and Mobilize newsletter. ]

Enough with the purple prose. But my first few days with the iPhone, coming just before Google dropped the Chrome OS bomb, made me realize how far we are from the mobile, Web-based nirvana so often promised. The technology and the infrastructure are simply not there yet. It's time to lower our expectations.

4G? Don't hold your breath
Check this out: "Although the carriers will never admit that current 3G and 2.5G data services are anything less than spectacular, they are still prepping their networks for the next generation. And wireless providers hope 4G technologies will light a fire under the moribund market for data services on cell phones." Sound familiar? It should. Those lines were written by an InfoWorld colleague in 2003.

That's right, six years ago. If I cared to, I'm sure I could find hype-filled 4G stories going back to the turn of the 21st century. So when I hear Verizon and other carriers go on about yet another superduper telephony technology, I've got to laugh.

There is one very false note in the paragraph I cited above: the bit about moribund market for data services on cell phones. These days, that market is anything but moribund. But the carriers never expected, nor prepared for, the rapid expansion in demand.

Related Content...

White Paper

D2D Virtual Tape Library Replication Primer

This whitepaper explains the terminology and concepts behind Data Replication technologies and establishes some sizing rules through worked examples. Learn the new paradigm in disaster tolerance—protect data anywhere.

Download now »

White Paper

An Alternative to Virtualization for Datacenter Cost Savings

Server virtualization is a popular option for dealing with mounting datacenter costs. Another equally promising approach is the use of an Application Delivery Controller. Citrix NetScaler provides a low-cost way for organizations to reduce their server count and accrue cost savings from a reduction in space, cooling, power and personnel.

Download now »

White Paper

Why Your Firewall, VPN, and IEEE 802.11i Aren't Enough to Protect Your Network

The emergence of WLANs has created a new breed of security threats to enterprise networks.

Included in HP ProCurve WLAN solutions is security technology that alleviates threats from WLANs through:
* Monitoring wireless activity inside and out of the enterprise
* Classifying WLAN transmissions into harmful and harmless
* Preventing transmissions that pose a security threat to the enterprise network
* Locating participating devices for physical remediation

Download now »

White Paper

Bringing the Edge to the Data Center

Effectively address data protection challenges, implementing solutions that help store and protect business–critical data while cutting costs and improving efficiency and reliability.

Download now »
15 of 15 comments
Sign In or Register to comment
tomaddox 9-Jul-09 8:50am
In re AT&T, I work in the Financial District and live in the Mission, and my coverage tends to be crap. I flop constantly between 3G (when I'm lucky), EDGE, GSM, and GPRS. My suspicion is that even when I'm getting "3G" at five bars, what I'm really getting is a strong signal overall but poor 3G service. Most of the time, I'd rather just be on EDGE and stay there since it's more reliable. In re battery life, that issue could be addressed by Apple allowing the battery to be user-replaceable, but then you might not have quite as pretty a piece of shiny plastic.
kreusteve 9-Jul-09 11:52am
I work in a major city, where I get a strong EDGE signal everywhere, and crap for 3G coverage. My gripe is that 3G clobbers battery life, but my even bigger gripe is that, even after the 3.0 upgrade, the phone isn't clever enough to roll over to EDGE when the 3G signal is useless, effectively turning the phone into a brick if I try to use the capability it was designed to provide.
NSL 9-Jul-09 11:58am
I'm in Philadelphia and get a generally excellent 3G signal in the area, but in NYC it's been so-so. Recently, I was in San Francisco in the Financial District and as tomaddox said above, the coverage is lousy and extremely spotty. 3G was similar in Phila. until recently. I wish Apple would make the battery user replaceable, but I've been getting around that problem with a Mophie battery case. I'm a heavy email user on the phone and when I used my Treo, I put in a bigger battery for it too. I'm optimistic about ATT upgrading their 3G network as I've noticed improvements in some of the locations to which I travel.
zuby 9-Jul-09 12:15pm
I wonder if the absence of Steve Jobs from Apple day-to-day operations has affected the new release of iPhone 3.0 and the IPhone 3GS?
BjornA 9-Jul-09 12:29pm
I have been using an iPhone 3G since last fall, and was initially stumped by the limited battery life. Then I found that if I kept the Wi-Fi turned off except when I actually used Wi-Fi, I had plenty of juice all day. I could save even more juice if I turned off the Bluetooth radio also, but I need that in the car. In the car, it's also easy to charge the phone with a $5 adapter from eBay. No problems with the data coverage, other than some apparent congestion when a lot of users on the same tower are surfing the web. Overall, really great. I have run my business on this phone while traveling, and wouldn't want to do that with any other "smartphone" on the market today.
mrivner 9-Jul-09 12:48pm
I am just sick of AT&T taking all the flack about how poorly the IPhone works. I have a Blackberry bold and my wife has an IPhone. They both use the same network but my Blackberry consistently has service in areas where my wife does not. This is not to say that AT&T service is great but some of the blame most go to the IPhone's poor antenna. I am not sure why every one is so excited about this junky IPhone when in my opinion it first needs to be a phone then it could be a level, a MP3 player, a game machine or whatever other app Apple sells. MHR
Bill Snyder 9-Jul-09 2:22pm
A reader in a remote part of Colorado takes me to task with an interesting post. Here it is: Just saw your recent article - and while it was very well written and I agree with some of your points, I can't agree with your conclusion. In my particular case, I *love* my new iPhone 3G S. It is so superior to my previous service that after two weeks with it, I can't imagine life without it. You're obviously very tech-savvy, and I suspect your background has "spoiled" you a bit to what average users want and need. I live in a very remote mountain town in Colorado, and even there I get superior 3G coverage over the AT&T network. The coverage and quality is so good that I just dropped my home phone service with Qwest (good riddance). Likewise, I just drove to Nowhere, Illinois last week and had excellent 3G coverage in the boonies there too (where few people have broadband internet), along with the entire Interstate route between. Do you realize what this truly means? Probably not, because you're probably used to living on the cutting edge of new technologies. Yet the cutting edge is not where 99% of the public lives. This reminds me of the same gripe I have with some economists who focus exclusively on the "greed" of the upper 1% of wealthy Americans while forgetting the increased prosperity of the other 99% in recent years. The rising tide lifts all the boats.... and the true measure of technological progress isn't the leading 1% - it's the trailing 99%. The iPhone 3G S seems like a revolutionary step forward for the "rest of us," the normal people out here...
Regaug 9-Jul-09 2:50pm
"...the true measure of technological progress isn't the leading 1% - it's the trailing 99%." I love it, that is great.
attstinks 9-Jul-09 5:40pm
Just returned from a long trip in Europe. There is virtually no (available) 3G coverage in the UK, limited in the Baltics (but better than the UK where it never worked for more than 10 seconds at a time). iPhones are very popular in the UK so I do not understand why people buy them if they only work as a phone. As to battery life, bought a slick add-on battery that looks like a clone of the case ... works well but it makes your phone 40% longer. Apple is just as big of tech snob as Microsoft. iPhone needs two real improvements. Replaceable battery and dump ATT as a network. ATT touts the world's biggest 3G network (I can't prove it) but coverage does not equate to operability.
jimbojones 10-Jul-09 6:09am
The simple fact is we have a hodge podge of networks run by companies who are in it for a profit. As long as that is the case we will continue to have everyone of the problems all of you are complaining about. Marginal areas and marginal customers will never get the kind of service we all want under this model. Private profit motivated companies just don't have a reason to. Until our government creates incentives or actually creates networks where everyone get equal service, this will be the case. It was this way with the electrification of our country, the creation of a wired network for phones, and even the internet itself, not to mention dozens of other societal services. Every other industrialized country understands this. Private industry is great at innovating, but it can trip up when too many companies dilute the market and none of them has a big enough market share to absorb the fixed cost of a network that serves everyone equally. It will take some sort of government intervention or you'll just have to get used to the status quo. The market won't fix it. It will only perpetuate it.
OldTechie 10-Jul-09 8:41am
1 reply

After several generations of Treos, I switched to an iPhone 3G about three months before the Pre came out. I don't care about music or games, but it is a pretty good device. Specifics:

1) Not many people talk about it, but iTunes sucks as a business synchronization tool (Palm OS much better). I synch with my office, my home and my portable, and if you delete or modify appointments or addresses, you end up with duplicates that have to be deleted manually from each of the hopst computers or you end up with duplicates. Palm did it much better. I called Apple and they are surprised I would care about this.

2) Coverage -- all of the companies suck to some degree (I have gone through Alltel and SPrint before AT&T). As another post noted, this is one arena where competition may not be best.

3) Battery: Sealed battery sucks, period. Battery life to be pretty good except for gotchas. Yesterday I ran mine from 100% to 0!! in no time -- I forgot to exit a GPS app, and it must have kept searching while I was on a train for two hourse. Yes, stupid me for not turning the app off, but a little smarts in the phone could have prevented this.

Bill Snyder 14-Jul-09 6:05pm
Re synch: I used the Palm OS for a long time, but with Outlook and I had many of the same glitches you mentioned. So perhaps the devil is in the Outlook, not the iTunes.
midtoad 15-Jul-09 10:29am
About poor battery life in areas with spotty 3G access: my suggestion is that if you cannot be guaranteed of continual 3G coverage, disable it to save battery life. I have a Nokia 5800XM, and have found battery life to be excellent most of the time (and yes, I can replace the battery life if needed, unlike on my iPod Touch). However, last weekend I was in a low area in my city (Calgary) where there was no 3G coverage. My phone's battery went dead inside of an hour. My hypothesis is that phones use more power when trying to connect to 3G, and this continual hunting and searching rapidly kills the battery. The next day, I set the phone to EDGE-Only, and my battery lasted all day at the same location. If you're having iPhone battery life issues, try this simple solution.
EVVJSK 21-Jul-09 1:03pm
Although it doesn't have touch screen, consider trying a Nokia E71 phone. May not be as sexy as a 3GS, Pre, or brand new Blackberry, but being a Nokia, they just plain work (reception), battery life, 3G/3.5G, GPS, etc...
snookie 25-Jul-09 1:18pm
San Fran and NYC are well known to have terrible AT&T 3G coverage. But other cities like San Diego are catching up as iPhone users saturate the network. If the iPhone was on Verizon the same thing would happen. Most iphone users I know, and I know a lot of them, charge their iPhones at work or in their car on the way home because it really won't last the day if you use it much. Thats just the truth about battery technology today in a slim phone with all the capabilities of the iPhone. Another solution would be for Apple to make the iPhone thicker or if it really bothers you then buy one of the zillion or so iphone battery packs. A lot of people I know also turn off 3G unless they need it which gets them through the day without issue.

Sign up to receive Mobile Resource Alerts

Subscribe to the Today's Headlines: First Look Newsletter

Find out what will be news for the day, with our first-thing-in-the-morning briefing.

©1994-2009 Infoworld, Inc.