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Following Apple’s announcements on Monday I’m asking myself the question, ‘3G or not 3G?’ on 2 levels. First, shall I upgrade to an iPhone 3G? Second, just how “3G” is the iPhone 3G anyway?

I’ll address them in reverse order. The iPhone 3G looks to be a mightily tempting device. It has all the lovely benefits of the original iPhone (that gorgeous interface, luscious screen that’s actually good enough to watch videos on, the best web browser on any mobile device, etc etc etc), but with the added benefits of a much faster data connection and an in-built A-GPS system. It also has a better battery life and removes the need for custom headphones by using a standard flush-fitting headphone jack. Alongside the new features of the iPhone 2.0 software, most notably the ability to add 3rd party applications including some awesome looking games, it’s a great device. You’re even going to be able to turn your iPhone into an excellent navigator using TomTom software.

However what I can’t help noticing is what 3G features the iPhone lacks. When the UK mobile phone networks took part in a government auction some years back for 3G spectrum, they paid huge amounts for the ability to run 3G networks, figuring they would make a killing on selling 3G services. But at the time, much of the hype was around video calling and video messaging, mobile TV and other such services. Yet the iPhone eschews video calling, providing neither the software capability nor the front-mounted camera necessary to make it work. Video streaming to the iPhone is available (and excellent), but uses standard web protocols to deliver the content, while multimedia messaging is conspicuously absent.

It’s an interesting reflection on the market and on those early expectations of mobile networks. Fundamentally, I believe the lack of video calling is not the slightest issue, and represents a sensible move on Apple’s part, to keep the device simple and to divert the hardware costs of an extra camera into other areas such as the GPS chip. After all, hands up who’s ever made a video call on their 3G phone? I know I never did on my old Nokia. (No, a stupid call to your mate just to see if it works doesn’t count!) However it shows very clearly how misguided the networks were. 3G is finally starting to take off, but it’s data speeds, web access and email which are driving the boom, not video calling. So is the iPhone 3G a ‘proper’ 3G device? I say yes, though only just…

More perplexing is the iPhone’s continued lack of support for MMS. I think the root of the problem (as I’ve said before) is in the lack of serious usage of such services in Apple’s own country. For Heaven’s sake, even text messaging is a fairly small market over there, and you still have to pay to receive messages. I can’t help but hope that Apple’s rollout of the iPhone 3G to 70 countries worldwide leads to some serious feedback that many of us rather like the ability to send pictures to each other. In the meantime though, I’d like to propose a solution… The iPhone is now open to 3rd party application developers right? And the APIs allow such applications to use the camera, the built-in picture library and web data services. So there’s nothing to stop someone writing an application which is capable of both displaying and composing MMS messages. Problem is, you need to be able to communicate with the mobile network’s own servers in order to send out and retrieve such messages. But who do we know with a bunch of techie employees who might have access to O2’s server architecture? Hmmm… how about O2? From where I’m standing (well, OK, sitting) I see no reason why O2 couldn’t write and distribute (hell, even sell) an iPhone MMS application. Then they could make lots of money from all us media-savvy iPhone users sending each other snaps. Somehow I’m sceptical of whether they’ll actually do it, but wouldn’t it be wonderful? And I can’t see anything stopping them…

And so on to my own dilemma. Do I upgrade? Well, the nice folks at O2 are at least allowing me to get an iPhone 3G and simply start a new contract, allowing me to rip up my old one. This is good, as usually you’d never be allowed to upgrade until your existing contract has nearly ended. However, despite its vastly reduced cost, the phone is still £99 unless I upgrade to a more expensive tariff, which I don’t really need. Oh, what’s a boy to do? I have a couple of ideas up my sleeve, but I’ll keep you posted…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 11:43 am and is filed under Personal Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.