but the customer service sucked.
now my girl has switched to ATT due to her need of the iphone. i will be going there shortly. service is definitely spottier in the city compared to verizon, but you cannot argue with endless browsing. verizon browsing for their internt-abled phones is like $45/month.
i am trying to hold out for the 3G iphone. worth it?
I’ve been replacing some 3G Verizon and Sprint/Nextel phones with the 2.5G iPhones. My users aren’t complaining - several have observed that while file transfers are somewhat slower than before, the lack of crashing (Windows Mobile) and the fact that they can count on getting usable signal out on the job sites more than makes up for it.
Amusingly, my guys are sometimes the only ones on the job sites with any kind of connectivity, because others’ Sprint or Verizon phones/cards don’t have usable signal. Which means that often there’s a line to “borrow” their laptops (and now iPhones) to check mail, etc.
AT&T’s service seems to have problems in places like NYC, where the 2/2.5G signal doesn’t seem to have the penetration of 3G. In places that aren’t deep concrete-and-steel ravines, like Dallas or Austin, for example, it’s as good as or better than competitors’.
I don't think so. 3G availability is only about 3% of the AT&T network, mostly in big cities and not even all of them... on the other hand, I travelled from Southern Indiana to Central California a couple of months ago on Interstates 44 and 40 and only lost EDGE for a total of about 5 minutes.
I did lose it on a side trip to the Grand Canyon but at the Grand Canyon it was available... just not on the way there and back. I also did not have an AT&T signal on the North Coast of California (The Sea Ranch) last weekend... while my daughter's Verizon phone had excellent service. However the house we rented had WiFi and so I had no problem while there... just couldn't make a phone call.
Test have shown that 3G is not really that much faster than the 2.5 EDGE... perhaps a few seconds of load time at most. AT&T upgraded its EDGE at the same time as the iPhone was rolled out... it is now about 200Kbs or about five times faster than dial up modem speeds.
Think about what kind of usage you will do with the iPhone... downloading large files is not among them... which is where the advantage of a faster connection really lies. i am surprised at how fast graphics load... text pages like FR load in about 10 seconds or less.
I think the current iPhone is great right now. When Apple introduced the 16GB iPhone I couldn't resist anymore and purchased one. I don't regret the decision. The iPhone is a simply ingenious device. I do wish the data transfer was faster at times, but I don't consider that a major negative at this point.
I have an 8 gig, 2.5G data iPhone and the only complaint I have is the 2.5G data. It is painfully slow at times. If I'm expecting to do serious data transfers with it, I do it using the built-in wifi. The speed for that is faster than DSL, but not quite as good as Roadrunner.
My advice is hold out for the 3g later this year if you plan to do large data transfers and that includes surfing graphic-intensive web sites.