Not really. My HTC Titan has 3G, and while it probably has less battery life than an iPhone, I plug it in every night when I get home. Ohhh... that was hard to do. add approximately 2 seconds to my process of setting it down on the dresser to also plug it in at the same time. Then when I wake up, imagine that, it's charged!! As long as you can make a full days worth of battery then I could care less. The rest is just people whining about numbers. The only time my phone doesn't last a full day is when I use it as a GPS becuase that drains battery with the bluetooth connection and if I'm using Google Maps or Live Search, it will probably go through at least 20mb of data on a fairly small trip if I turn on the aerial view (which is pretty cool when you see your dot on the same road as you).
Lets be simple here, Apple didn't add it because they wanted to be able to produce a 3g iPhone in a couple of months and get all the suckers to buy it again. The battery life crap is BS, because if that were really the case, they could have added an option in the settings for the data network to be "off, save battery, or full speed" and let you flip between data off, EDGE, and HSPA. That would have been a VERY simple way, not to mention the way tons of other phones work, in allowing the consumer to choose what's important to them at the moment, battery or internet speed.
If you really believe that Apple did it just for battery life, you're blind to Apple's marketing. Their marketing is pretty crappy for consumers, but it works amazing for them. They've created products that people will re-buy if they just come out in a new color. It's genius on their part, but makes the general public look like sheep following their master.
ShortFuse - yes, perhaps I should've thrown an "exactly" in there. 2010's a long way away, and we're far from an exact launch date for NTT DoCoMo, let alone any of the other carriers that have committed to LTE for their next-gen networks.
“There's a certain feeling of wading through water with this phone, as every time we went exploring the menus, we were met with a delay long enough to make us doubt our keystrokes registered.”
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"(consumers' opinions be damned, apparently)"
You KNOW for a fact that if Apple opted for 3G over 2.5G, you'd all be up in a hissy that the battery life for the iPhone was terrible.
There is no pleasing everyone.
Not really. My HTC Titan has 3G, and while it probably has less battery life than an iPhone, I plug it in every night when I get home. Ohhh... that was hard to do. add approximately 2 seconds to my process of setting it down on the dresser to also plug it in at the same time. Then when I wake up, imagine that, it's charged!! As long as you can make a full days worth of battery then I could care less. The rest is just people whining about numbers. The only time my phone doesn't last a full day is when I use it as a GPS becuase that drains battery with the bluetooth connection and if I'm using Google Maps or Live Search, it will probably go through at least 20mb of data on a fairly small trip if I turn on the aerial view (which is pretty cool when you see your dot on the same road as you).
Lets be simple here, Apple didn't add it because they wanted to be able to produce a 3g iPhone in a couple of months and get all the suckers to buy it again. The battery life crap is BS, because if that were really the case, they could have added an option in the settings for the data network to be "off, save battery, or full speed" and let you flip between data off, EDGE, and HSPA. That would have been a VERY simple way, not to mention the way tons of other phones work, in allowing the consumer to choose what's important to them at the moment, battery or internet speed.
If you really believe that Apple did it just for battery life, you're blind to Apple's marketing. Their marketing is pretty crappy for consumers, but it works amazing for them. They've created products that people will re-buy if they just come out in a new color. It's genius on their part, but makes the general public look like sheep following their master.
Yeah, but this isn't 3G. This is Super3G. Super3G is LTE, HSOPA. This isn't HSDPA.
And Chris, you said: "There's still no word on when NTT DoCoMo (or anyone else, for that matter) will be launching a commercial network at LTE speeds"
Read: http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/Report-Japans-DoCoMo-to-spend-up-to-US17-bln-on-new-highspeedSuper-3G-cell-phones/2007/01/04/1167777219593.html
They'll have it ready by 2010.
ShortFuse - yes, perhaps I should've thrown an "exactly" in there. 2010's a long way away, and we're far from an exact launch date for NTT DoCoMo, let alone any of the other carriers that have committed to LTE for their next-gen networks.
Chris
I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything. Apologies if I came off rude. We all appreciate your work. I read engadgetmobile religiously. :)
None taken! We appreciate everyone keeping us in check!
Chris