iPhone: Buy Now or Wait for 3G?
It's both newsworthy and completely unsurprising: AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has confirmed that there will be an Apple iPhone with high-speed data next year. Combined with last month's news that Apple will open up the iPhone to third-party applications in February, that means that the two biggest limitations of the world's most interesting phone are set to go away next year.
As I blogged last year, I tried living with an iPhone and decided it wasn't the right phone for me. (Since that post, I've upgraded my phone--I now tote HTC's TyTN II, which is an unlocked variant of the AT&T Tilt.) I like my TyTN II and have no plans to dump it anytime soon, for an iPhone or anything else.
But what about folks who are currently contemplating an iPhone? Stephenson's leak begs the question: With a high-speed iPhone on the way, would it be a mistake to buy one with pokey EDGE data today?
My impulse would be to say yup, it would be. The iPhone's amazing Safari browser is fundamentally hamstrung by the phone's slow data connection--a 3G iPhone should be a dramatically more pleasing Internet device, and one that's worth waiting for.
It's more complicated than that, though. While a 3G iPhone's data speed will trounce that of the current model on paper, I want to try one out before I come to any conclusions about whether it feels that much faster. There are a lot of factors that impact how fast mobile browsers are beyond raw data speed, from rendering engines to latency issues; designing a robust 3G iPhone is going to involve a lot more than swapping out the EDGE radio for a 3G one.
Then there's battery life. Until now, Steve Jobs has been pointing to 3G's power-hungry ways as an argument in favor of iPhone's lack of high-speed data. It seems a good bet that Apple will figure out how to release a 3G phone whose battery life isn't radically worse than that of the current model, but we won't know for sure until it shows up.
Lastly, I know a lotta iPhone owners, and not all of them spend much time in Safari. High-speed data will have less impact on e-mail, and if you're itching to buy an iPhone but plan to use it mostly for voice calls, e-mail, and music, the current model's lack of 3G isn't a crippling flaw, and the next one's addition of it won't be a gigantic boon.
Me, I'm waiting for an iPhone with an improvement that has nothing to do with data speed or technical challenges of any sort: I've told myself I'll never buy another phone that forces me to sign up for a carrier contract. It's possible to sneak your way into a pay-as-you-go AT&T plan, but at a much higher cost per minute. What I really want is what iPhone buyers in France and Germany will get: The ability to pay more in the first place and avoid contractual obligations.
Okay, scratch that--the unlocked iPhone will be about a thousand bucks in France and $1500 in Germany. If it's true that it costs Apple $263.83 to make an iPhone, there's gotta be a way for it to sell us contract-free ones at a reasonable price and still make lots of money. Or am I the only contractphobe out there who isn't ready to spend a grand or more on a phone?
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There could be a KILLER APP for the iPhone that Steve Jobs could display in January -- this would be DICTATION SOFTWARE for the iPhone, that would let a user speak not only the outgoing telephone number, but also an outgoing Email, that could later be retrieved on a home PC and then filed or printed. Now THAT would shake up the cellphone industry like no other gadget could.