iPhone - Not Yet

by Bob Seidel

Two of the women in my life are ganging up against me! The other week I mentioned that my wife wanted me to get an iPhone. After I filed the column, my editor at the Pilot also indicated that she wanted me to buy one - or, at least, report about one. What's a guy to do?

Well, get an iPhone, I guess! But, perhaps not. I spent a couple of weeks journeying in cell-phone land and emerged somewhat dazed and confused. The bottom line is that I ended up buying: (drum roll) Nothing yet. But I did learn a few things along the way that I can pass on. Before I begin, let me emphasize that you should not take anything as gospel in this column; make sure you check out phones and plans yourself to verify the facts.

My primary goal was to advance my mobile phone capability by adding the Internet and email. To me, that is the function that distinguishes the iPhone, besides being pretty and using a touch screen for everything. Many people already have this capability to some extent with their Blackberry-type phones, but I never took that step.

If you want Internet access on your cell phone, be prepared to pay an additional fee per month that is about what you pay today at home for DSL or Road Runner. By looking at equivalent voice and data cell plans to what I have now, I could easily almost double what I am paying monthly. But it was all confusing as the people I spoke to often did not understand the rates for data, and especially with the complication that I wanted data but my wife did not want it on her phone. Sharing phone minutes but not data seemed to be a confusing concept to some salespersons.

The iPhone is only being sold online at att.com, or at authorized AT&T dealers. It is not (at least not yet) sold by your local AT&T or Cingular store. Thus the only place to get one locally is the AT&T store in Wilmington; but when I called they were out of the 4GB model and only had a few of the 8GB model for sale.

So, given the very high cost and lack of availability of the iPhone, my next goal was to see what else was available. There are many new Blackberry and other Smartphone or PDA models out there now, but are they good enough? The first hurdle I had to overcome was the type of data network each carrier was offering.

There are two types of cell data networks. EDGE is supported by AT&T and EVDO by Sprint, Verizon, US Cellular, Alltel and other companies. Cingular was pushing a third system called HSDPA, but this is in limbo now given the merger with AT&T. EVDO is what is called a 3G (third generation) network; EDGE uses an older and slower standard.

Our local ATMC/AT&T network is EDGE only for now, but EVDO is available in our area. The EDGE results were underwhelming; performance is more akin to a dial-up modem than DSL. If you want to use it for email or text-only web browsing and results were almost acceptable. But if you tried to access a normal webpage, it took far too long. EVDO systems I tried did run much faster. But the significant point is that the iPhone uses only EDGE.

A possible way around EDGE would be to buy a phone that also had Wi-Fi capability so you could also connect to a Wi-Fi network in your home, at work, or local coffee shop. But very few phones I looked at had Wi-Fi capability.

The second major issue was the web browser programming in the phones. The iPhone uses the same excellent Safari web browser that Apple Macs use. But browsers in other phones I looked at fell short - some not able to process all the kinds of web page languages or features used these days - such as Javascript, frames, or XHTML. If the browser cannot handle these you may not be able to view the webpage properly. From what I could find out, the Blackberry phone browser was the best out there. But Blackberry phones do not support Wi-Fi yet.

In short, there was no solution. Some phones or carriers had some things, some others. There was nobody that offered the total package, even the iPhone. I am still working with a couple of the local stores to continue my evaluation. Stay tuned.

(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.)