[Glenn_Fleishman]

NickDunklee said:

To name a few EVDO Rev. A or HSPA (HSDPA+HSUPA) phones:

--Information gathered from carrier and manufacturer sites - and a little personal hands on with several of the mentioned phones.

Nick. the EVDO Rev. A stuff is discussed in the article. On the HSUPA side, can you provide some URLs to manufacturers' sites? I started with the Blackjack II, and as far as I can tell from looking at about 20 reviews, teardowns, and Samsung & AT&T's site, this is an HSDPA phone, which means that it does "UMTS" speeds (384 Kbps) upstream and HSDPA (probably 3.6 Mbps flavor) down.

[montgomery_burns]

Apple should not allow third parties to create native iPhone applications. Nobody cares about native iPhone applications. Web apps are really sweet. Everybody who wants third party iPhone applications are whiners.

Nobody cares about 3G on the iPhone. Everybody who wants 3G are whiners.

Nobody cares about GPS on the iPhone. Everybody who wants GPS are whiners.

Nobody cares about MMS on the iPhone. Everybody who wants MMS are whiners.

Nobody cares about copy and paste on the iPhone. Everybody who wants copy and paste are whiners.

[NickDunklee]

The carrier sites are kinda cumbersome but you can look at AT&T's web site and sort by 3G only and brand - they have session cookies so direct linking is kinda futzy.

HTC's site breaks down phones by detailed specs:
http://www.htc.com/w...cification.html

Here's the Touch Diamond - it only does HSDPA
http://www.htc.com/w...cification.html

I'll try and dig up some more in a bit.

[cseeman]

Nobody cares about smart phones. Everybody who wants smart phones are whiners.
Walk a few feet to a pay phone. Pay as you go. No monthly charges. No expensive hardware to buy.


[quote name='montgomery_burns']
Apple should not allow third parties to create native iPhone applications. Nobody cares about native iPhone applications. Web apps are really sweet. Everybody who wants third party iPhone applications are whiners.

Nobody cares about 3G on the iPhone. Everybody who wants 3G are whiners.

Nobody cares about GPS on the iPhone. Everybody who wants GPS are whiners.

Nobody cares about MMS on the iPhone. Everybody who wants MMS are whiners.

Nobody cares about copy and paste on the iPhone. Everybody who wants copy and paste are whiners.

[NickDunklee]

Treo Pro: http://www.palm.com/...opro/index.html
Pre: http://www.palm.com/.../pre/index.html

It looks like AT&T has changed their consumer site recently, it no longer shows the breakdown of bands/modes like it used to...nice... Their Premier portal hasn't been "updated" yet though, anyone with Enterprise portal access can still see the old method that actually differentiates handsets between HSDPA/HSUPA/etc.

It also looks like the AT&T Fuze variant of the Touch Pro does NOT include HSUPA, only the import/OEM version, as AT&T's site lists it as only being HSDPA. However, according to XDA-Developers (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=446652) the disabling of HSUPA is a registry tweak AT&T did, and the radio actually supports HSUPA.

From their Premier portal I grabbed a few screenshots of their listed specs and stuck them on an image:
http://imgur.com/Xn2Wg.png

Here are some Verizon handset specs showing their Rev. A capabilities:
http://imgur.com/HjVUI.png

[djrobx]

Quote

the disabling of HSUPA is a registry tweak AT&T did, and the radio actually supports HSUPA.

It would be entirely unsurprising to me if the iPhone was also being limited to 384kbps at the request of AT&T.

I think 384kbps is pretty good upload for a cell phone. That's basic DSL upload in our area. I don't expect my iPhone tether to replace my home broadband internet. More would be nice but it's certainly not required. If I was doing something more serious on the go I'd buy a data card. And that's just what AT&T wants anyhow.

Blowing more than 384kbps on streaming video uploads are just the sort of things I'm sure AT&T does not want clogging up their towers. Heck, they don't even think their network can handle slingbox player.

[AdamC]

For those who are unhappy with their 384 kps upstream on their iPhones - go and sue Apple and AT&T and give up your iPhone and use something else...

[NickDunklee]

Not to feed the troll or anything - but it's not so much about suing Apple or AT&T. Neither of them ever advertised that the iPhone 3Gs had HSUPA. They clearly stated it was 7.2Mbps HSDPA, they just never mentioned upload speeds.

It is more about educating consumers and teaching them how these overly-complex technologies interact, and can affect their lives so they can make an informed decision.

Apple's favorite game is omission of specifications that don't suit them. There is nothing illegal about that, it may be a bit of an ethically nebulous area, but they aren't doing anything wrong per se. (Standard disclaimer, YMMV, IANAL, etc.) In fact, if anything they just take a very positive angle to feature advertising. They don't go, "hey look what our product could do" - they go "look what our product CAN do." From that perspective, major kudos.

Regardless of the end product, their engineers work their rumps off trying to pump out something earth-shattering. They don't always make the mark, but such is life. To that end, informing consumers better helps Apple in the long run, because the more consumers clamor about N thing, the more Apple will know, "our customers would like N, let's try and give them N." They've done a darn good job so far, 3.0 has an awesome copy/paste interface, the new stereo bluetooth sounds crystal clear on 3Gs (albeit with no AVRCP grumble), voice command is slightly a novelty - but for their first stab at presumably home-grown voice dial instead of outsourcing to one of the third party voice dial engines, not bad at all - and seriously, the 3Gs hardware is blazing fast, the OS feels like 1.0 all over again.

Let's face it, Apple's hardware speed limitations are going to have very little affect on American consumers. AT&T's network is so beyond useless, you're lucky to even make a phone call without their network trying to bounce your handset all over kingdom come between GSM and 3G on a good day, or getting signal in the thousands of places other carriers work that they do not.

This more affects international consumers, and US consumers living in very large cities that do a lot of moblogging and whatnot, and there ARE people that want to do that stuff! I personally wouldn't mind being able to send a 30MB video clip off the 3Gs' rocking video camera without having to wait until the second coming.

In the end I would hope people would take such information with a grain of salt. Maybe 384kbps is more than enough for one's usage patterns, maybe EDGE is fine, maybe you live in an area that doesn't even have 3G and can't take advantage of it anyway, maybe you got an iPhone for a telephone that is also a wicked fast app platform, and don't care about data at all - but without the full story how can you decide?

In a few months from now when the Palm Pre has more apps, they will probably have moblogging apps - wouldn't it be nice to know, if you were a moblogger, that you could buy a phone that will upload files at 1Mbps instead of 384kbps? Especially when you're spending a few hundred dollars on a handset and a few thousand dollars on a service contract.

It'd be like complaining that it shouldn't matter to people what the horsepower and fuel economy ratings of vehicles are to be able to buy a car.

[mzahran]

You act like America is the only country in the world, and that AT&T actually provides the fastest mobile data speeds possible in that little world of yours. Based on your logic, I dont see why you would have ever bought an iPhone, considering you must have been perfectly happy with the features available on your Razor or whatever POS device you had. You dont really need internet on your phone, anybody who wants that is just a ninny cry baby or whatever you said right? If they ever need the internet, they could just use their computer and not be limited by a smaller screen and slower speeds right? Furthermore, anyone who wants a good camera on their phone is being a little cry baby because they should just lug around thier digital camera, right? And why would you need to text message, you can always go to the post office or write an email right? If everybody in the world used your logic, we would still be in the stoneage.
Message was edited by: Chris Breen

[Sulis]

^^ Wow, talk about over-reacting. You're attempting to argue by reductio ad absurdum, and even then failing massively.

IMHO, Daniel Decker is mostly correct - Apple is not 'cheating' anyone, nor depriving them of any functionality that they might reasonably expect. Part of the reason for the success of the iPhone is that it doesn't try to satisfy everybody: you get the balance of compromises that Apple chooses. You don't like it ? go somewhere else. You may object to this, but there's about 20 million people who disagree with you.
Message was edited by: Chris Breen

[mzahran]

You totally missed the point I was trying to make. No where did I say that Apple is 'cheating' anyone. Dont put words in my mouth. All I was saying is that there is nothing wrong with people wanting and expecting more from a device which they pay thousands of dollars for it over its lifetime. Especially when you are almost required to sign a 2 yr contract to buy it, meaning that many people expect the phone to last atleast 2 yrs until they can upgrade, where such technology would be readily available in that time frame. So when Apple includes technology that will render the phone technology sub par in a year or less, I can understand why people would be upset, although you can argue thats the nature of technology (but you can counter that with the 2yr contract argument).

Just because some people dont see a need for some features, doesnt mean others dont as well and that they are all whiners. If no one expected more out of the iPhone, we still be on the 2G with no need for the 3G or the 3Gs. Apple intentionally left this feature out for two reason. One, is to force those users who want those features to upgrade to the next gen iPhone, and two is to dumb down the phone to AT&T standards and thus save money (even though there are many more iphone owners outside the US whos carriers already support those upstream speeds, and would definately enjoy that feature). I think what pisses many people off is how insensitive Apple is to its customers needs (specifically the early adopters who are driving sales), especially when they have to give up so much (including money, switching carriers, signing a 2yr contract, etc) just to own the freakin phone. Since when is wanting something better and faster a bad thing. Faster is always better...and if it werent for these same "whiners" requesting these features, you would still have a 2G iphone without 3G functionality, mms, copy/paste, etc, etc.

[Sulis]

Sometimes a whiner is just a whiner. I reiterate what I said before: if you don't like what Apple serves up, then go somewhere else. Apple is not a democracy - it's a (hopefully benign) dictatorship.

However, if you really, truly believe that Apple are leaving out some critical technology just so they can sell another phone in a year, you are whining in a lovely padded cell of your own. Do you think that people like Jonny Ive want to produce 'sub-par' machines? Do you think they don't struggle to get the best balance between technological advances, battery life, usability and price that they can?

People don't need higher upstream speeds - they are nice to have if you can. You can still accomplish just as much with slightly lower speeds - it just takes longer. So what. When processor power and battery life permit faster anything, Apple will provide it - why shouldn't they? But they've made their decision about what the best trade-off is, and at the moment, faster upstream didn't make the cut.

The iPhone is not just based on technology. What people are buying into is the platform as a whole - the apps, the syncing, the free-from-operator-crap approach, etc. Apple have made it pretty clear that they will be updating the iPhone once a year - by next year there will be a whole raft of stuff that are likely to be in the next iPhone, since they're already in some phones now: OLED screens, dual-processors, Bluetooth 3.0 (OK, that's not in any phone yet), who knows what else. So anyone buying an iPhone now knows damn well that in 9 months' time their iPhone will not be the most technically advanced in the world. But that's not what they're buying, is it? Just like people don't buy Macs to be the most technically advanced machines.

People who flit from one phone to another, from one operator to another, are not likely to be profitable long-term customers. Apple has jumped out of that commoditised market, and has produced - effectively - a blank slate which can run the most important thing - the software. How many phone manufacturers gave their users a significant increase in functionality through a software update? I can?t think of any, ever. They'd rather sell more phones. You criticising Apple for 'forcing people to upgrade' gets it 180? out of whack.

[drimwit]

dandbj13 said:

What major handset on a major American carrier has a higher upstream than the iPhone?

Probably all of them. There are many Nokia models that do HSUPA. But what's you're point? The iPhone has never been very high up on the spec sheet rankings.

[mzahran]

"Do you think that people like Jonny Ive want to produce 'sub-par' machines?"

Yes. Its called smart marketing and shareholder wealth maximization. Apple could have put all the 3GS features in the original iPhone, but then they would have really had to innovate for each successive version of the iPhone. By creating phones that lack certain features, they create a need and demand for each successive generation. Why do you think iPhones are way behind on features that are standard on other smartphones. The technology is there if they wanted to put it, they just dont for marketing and strategic reasons. From a business perspective its smart, from the consumer side it sucks. Im sure Ive would like to make an iphone with all the best features, but i think he would rather recieve that fat bonus. Im mean its his right, but dam, when that bonus is being payed from our hard earned cash, is it wrong for me to ask them to throw me a bone once in a while (and copy/paste and video recording dont count).

"People don't need higher upstream speeds - they are nice to have if you can. You can still accomplish just as much with slightly lower speeds - it just takes longer."

Exactly. It takes longerrrrrrrr. Try using an edge iphone for a day after youve had a 3g iphone, im sure you wouldnt like it. You dont need 3G, but it saves a lot of time. You dont need HSUPA, but it saves time. Im sure if you had HSUPA you wouldnt want anything slower, but just cus you havent experienced how fast it is yet, you dont realize how desirable the feature is. Im guessing you dont see a need for a 4G iphone...

"The iPhone is not just based on technology. What people are buying into is the platform as a whole - the apps, the syncing, the free-from-operator-crap approach, etc."

Exactly. Thats why Apple can still sell millions of phones despite the lack of features. This goes back to my first point. Its all marketing. They dont feel the NEED to give us those features, because they can sell a sub-par device anyway because the user experience and status you get from owning the device makes up for its shortcomings for the moment, so they can save money by skimping. Is this a good thing? I guess you would say yes, i would argue otherwise.

"Apple have made it pretty clear that they will be updating the iPhone once a year "

This pattern wasn't clear until Apple announced the 3Gs a couple weeks ago, so people could not have known that except from speculation and rumors. You must have a short memory

"So anyone buying an iPhone now knows damn well that in 9 months' time their iPhone will not be the most technically advanced in the world."

Not necessarily. Look above.

"People who flit from one phone to another, from one operator to another, are not likely to be profitable long-term customers."

I dont see what this has anything to do with what were talking about. And for your info, im an AT&T customer since the 3G. I went through three 3G's during that year, and now I own the 3GS. I also bought 2 3G's for my mom and my sister, that are on my account. So I think I am a profitable long-term customer, and im probably a more valuable customer to AT&T and Apple than youll ever be. Again, I dont see your point.

"How many phone manufacturers gave their users a significant increase in functionality through a software update?"

LMAO. What significant increase in funtionality? You mean waiting for two years for copy/paste, MMS, video recording, tethering, and voice control? All of which have been standard features on almost every smartphone (and dumbphones lol) on the planet for years, and something that was already available through jailbreak the whole time. What a joke. Run along fanboy and quit disagreeing just to disagree. Ill run circles around you any day.