Apple's iPhone: The Future is Here

Wireless Networks: Edge, WiFi and Bluetooth

The initial previews and reviews made the iPhone's lack of 3G support out to be its Achilles' heel, but honestly after using the phone for a while, it is a problem but not the only thing worth mentioning.  Fixing things like the performance issues while rendering a web page would be nice, but I've been using phones on Edge for a very long time now so I'm not as bothered by it. 

I can understand the battery life concerns about going to something 3G; the iPhone is already not great on battery when you're surfing the net or handling emails, lasting around 6 hours in my tests.  Moving to 3G would cut that down to even lower levels, but I see the desire for an option at least. 

WiFi is an interesting alternative to Edge on the iPhone, and it's great if you're using your phone at home or work (or if you live in a place where there's municipal WiFi).  Performance on WiFi isn't great however, I got around 1.5Mbps in my tests on WiFi.  While that's a huge improvement over the 100Kbps I averaged on Edge, neither is what I'd consider "fast".

The issue is that the iPhone interface is just as responsive as a computer, so you inherently expect the sort of performance you'd see on a notebook and it's just impossible on a device like the iPhone.  It's so fast in all other aspects that the network is truly the weakest link in the user experience, but I'm not sure if 3G alone would fix that given that performance on WiFi isn't up to par with what's necessary in my opinion. 

Switching between WiFi and Edge is truly seamless as long as you've got the WiFi network pre-configured with the iPhone. Apple also makes it really easy to get rid of WiFi networks you're no longer using, just forget it:

I think overall we need a handful of upgrades to the iPhone alongside 3G; we need a faster processor, possibly more system memory, maybe even faster flash.  The MLC flash in the iPhone has absolutely horrendous write speeds compared to SLC, which could be holding the iPhone back a bit.  I can see Apple introducing a 3G version in about 12 months, addressing many of these issues at the same time.

Bluetooth support on the iPhone is limited to headsets alone, you can't transfer files to the device over Bluetooth and you can't browse it either; using it as a modem for your notebook is also impossible.

Of course you can't sync over WiFi or Edge, you can only copy music to/from the device over USB to avoid hurting record sales.