One of the key reasons Sony paired with Ericsson in the phone business was this very reason. I don’t know the specifics any arrangements Apple may have, but I’d assume that the same logic applies here that applied at Sony: if Apple added 3G to the iPhone it would have to hand over around 10% of the selling price for each unit to Nokia, Motorola & co. This applies to EDGE too, by the way — Apple is going to pay royalties to the established vendors.

Taking the N95 as an example, it’s data rate is around ten times faster than the iPhone owing to HSDPA, which comes in handy when downloading of streaming.

Also I’d be worried about scratching the big screen. Obvisouly Steve doesn’t keep his in a handbag!

http://www.gsmarena.com/o2-phones-30.php

True broadband speed over cellular usually requires add-on data plans with hefty monthly fees (e.g. $60 w/ a voice plan, $80 w/o for Verizon EVDO)

This way you pay one fee but are stuck with speeds about 2x-3x dialup (when away from Wi-Fi networks)

So if you’re used to broadband internet, you won’t be using the iPhone for traditional web surfing, but it will be fine for email and WAP sites via EDGE.

A lot of interesting reading. What I se is a lot of comaping it products on the market that are something else — phones with ad-ons that do not work well. This is a new beast in the market. I will get one as fast as possible when they get to Europe. I used my SE m600i for couple of months now. I got it beacause of the feature set matching my needs as well as a nice formfactor. But the OS is C R A P. Unlogical, slow, looks awkward etc. etc. It is even worse than it was on the P910i that I had before. I payed for a downgrade:-(

Regards,

Joche

I agree totally, more than a few times, Apple has bumped the specs even before a product ships (’98 iMac modems: spec’d at 33.6k shipped 56k, 2002-ish all Powermacs bumped to dual processor with no price changes… 2006 Mac mini silent upgrades.. Macbook Pros, announced as 1.67/1.83Ghz shipped 1.83/2.0/2.16Ghz. Current C2D models billed as 802.11b/g, actually b/g/n with the enabling driver delivered gratis yesterday.

Anyways, how many times has a cingular exclusive been limited to a model or color? Apple can ship a different model tailored to a different carrier and the iPhone we saw yesterday is still Cingular/ATTs baby. Certainly something tech/cost/cingularwise precluded 3G… certainly this important first foray would have been triply-clobbered had 3G meant abysmal battery life.

Every other manufacturer pounding out myriad variations hand over fist can afford to make some lackluster tradeoffs to appease everyone, Apple cannot afford to, even if it mean that first iPhone wont be yourPhone.

Coming full circle, theres a lot about the iPhone that is not yet known; which may tie in with what has been admittedly withheld about Mac OS X Leopard. Underpromise, then overdeliver.

In regards to one question posted– it seems pretty certain that you cannot purchase music without a host at, uh… T minus 6 months… dont be surprised if thats hammered out before then… again, you might want to compare Apple vs Carriers in the same light as Apple vs Labels and understand why one must tread lightly one has some numbers to wield, eh? Getting a US major to deal with a hardware manufacturer on a eye to eye basis is a COUP. This will ripple out to other handsets and carriers and who will we have to thank?

Vaughn

P.S. Again NOT knowing a dang thing about phone hardware, ive always wondered why the radio portion couldnt be standardized as say, a PC Card (or ExpressCard, CF, whatever is feasible) so you could swap out CDMA, GSM with just a little abstraction layer in between… Bleh, answered my own question… would make it insanely easy for third parties to profit at the expense of HW makers and carriers.