Tag Archives: gsm

Verizon iPhone 4

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Everyone is weighing in on a device that hasn’t been released yet, and everyone already has formed opinions based on rumors and suppositions. Since this is the way it is going, I’ll just toss my unrequested three-cents in with the rest of the noise and babble.

Key Differences between AT&T and Verizon on the iPhone 4:

  1. No 4G Service – Who cares to have broadband speeds in your pocket? Eventually there is a good-enough-speed that people reach, with 3G and WiFi pretty much available everywhere this claim is only going to make the really geeky miffed. If you need such speeds in your pocket, what exactly are you doing IN YOUR POCKET? At some point extra speed only benefits BitTorrent users. The only exception to this is media streaming, but frankly my dear, if you are sitting back and enjoying a movie, chances are you are doing so in the comfort of some place that has WiFi. Just like FaceTime Chat…
  2. iPhone 4 Antennagate – CDMA doesn’t have the same antenna as a GSM phone has, so physical attenuation isn’t a problem. The Verizon phone won’t have the grip-of-death, while the AT&T phone will.
  3. CDMA-GSM Simultaneous Data and Voice – I have to admit to living without this as such a thing is by the design of CDMA very unlikely if not impossible to bring off. I’ve never needed both data and voice services at the same time. My logic is that people smush the phone against their face to talk, they aren’t going to smush-tap-tap-smush-tap. The fact that AT&T can do this is pretty much a cute empty little extra. People who have been using CDMA won’t notice at all.
  4. Network Size – AT&T has done NOTHING to address signal quality in key markets that I find important. Really it comes down to Kalamazoo. AT&T bought out Centennial, along with all their 3G towers in the area. The fact that AT&T hasn’t enabled those towers speaks volumes to me. They don’t care. They claim that their network reaches 97% of Americans, and it does, some are graced with 3G service like the people in Grand Rapids or Chicago, while the rest of us have to contend with their EDGE network. So, what about Verizon? They’ve got a giant network and they have 3G in Kalamazoo. I live in Kalamazoo, it is an important market. I would argue that Kalamazoo is more important than Grand Rapids. So, when it comes to 3G network traffic, who wins? Verizon.
  5. Finally, It’s AT&T PEOPLE! – AT&T, which lets face it is just a shelled out mask that Cingular wears to ritzy dinner parties (yes, it wears another’s tanned hide) is still CINGULAR. Just because it’s wearing AT&T’s dead face and animating it doesn’t mean that it’s somehow got a new soul. Both Cingular and AT&T were as I regard them, abhorrent companies. Cingular for their lameness before trapping and gutting AT&T, and AT&T for being inherently EVIL. Many people don’t recall, and it’s understandable, that AT&T used to be Ma Bell. The giant monster company that abused it’s customers, ran a monopoly, and retarded real technological innovation for decades! This is less of an argument based in reality as it is a name-game since Verizon also was a shard of Ma Bell’s evil empire. It’s not that somehow Verizon is good, of course they aren’t, they are just as evil as AT&T is, but AT&T is stupid and evil. Verizon is clever and evil. It’s a very fine difference.
  6. Waiting around for iPhone 5 – Great, so Verizon is going to get iPhone 4, but Consumer Reports goes on at length about how they are going to wait until iPhone 5 before they’ll look at it again. What exactly are people waiting for? Isn’t the iPhone 4 “Good Enough”? What can Apple do to make the iPhone 5 compelling enough for everyone to suddenly acquire buyers remorse regarding the iPhone 4? They could make the device thinner, perhaps make it transparent, change the shape perhaps but in every other instance the iPhone 4 can be field-upgraded to whatever iOS revision is coming down the pike unless Apple is serious about enabling things like BitTorrent on the iPhone. For this class of device, how much can change? Is it enough to continue to suffer with AT&T? In my case, is it enough to continue to suffer with Sprint? My answer is no. I don’t care what is or is not coming out in June or July. I’ve been waiting for the iPhone 4, without the grip-of-death, on a competent 3G network FOR A VERY LONG TIME. Who cares if you are locked into an iPhone4 for two years? It’s not like an immense base of other iPhone 4’s out there are suddenly going to just vanish. Just because there is something new doesn’t mean it’s needful. Sometimes what you need is right in your hand all along, or in this case, in the traveling roadshow that is Verizon.

For me, this entire release of a CDMA iPhone is mana from heaven. I’m willing to give up data+voice simultaneously for fewer dropped calls (in AT&T’s case) and way fewer impossible-to-make calls (in Sprint’s case). My professional recommendation is that the Verizon iPhone 4 is exactly what people need and they should pounce on it immediately. If you are beyond your ETF-barrier on your contract with AT&T or Sprint, you owe it to yourself to leave them behind and hop on. Even if a few months down the line iPhone 5 comes out, it’s not going to be revolutionary, it’ll be evolutionary. The same way the iPad 2 is not going to make me love my iPad 1 any less. A device is still a device and if it works well, isn’t that enough?

Blackberry vs. iPhone vs. DROID

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This is a bit of advice I wrote regarding Blackberry vs. iPhone vs. DROID…

Thanks for letting me know about what is covered during those meetings. I’d like to share with you some of the reasons why we are using Blackberry devices and not the others, yet.

WMU Development and Alumni Relations uses Blackberry devices because at the time (2007) they were the most relevant and best-featured devices at the time. Blackberry is carrier agnostic, they’ll run on anything, and the two competing systems are CDMA (Sprint and Verizon) and GSM (AT&T and T-Mobile). Blackberry also was a superior choice for corporate users because of the seamless security not only behind the scenes, where the network is edge-to-edge encrypted with AES-256, the US Federal Government standard, but also in-front of the scene. By using BES we have the capacity to manage devices over radio, so if a Blackberry is lost, we do not have to worry about sensitive information leaking out, we simply instruct the Blackberry to commit suicide, then order a new device. This really drove a lot of the Blackberry adoption, at least in the technical circles where these properties are worth quite a lot. Blackberry continues to be a ‘best-case’ device because of all the sticky technical bits that make them quite a pleasure to support. There are tradeoffs, as the devices are all business and no pleasure, they don’t have touchscreens, a panoply of apps, and they aren’t exceptionally fast with data. The competing devices, which would be iPhone and Droid are arguably the flipside of what the Blackberry is, it’s all pleasure, but very spartan when compared to Blackberry in the context of business use.

Between iPhone and Droid there is more detail that would benefit you to know. While the Apple iPhone is a tremendously attractive device (especially for someone like me) the device is locked into an arguably stunted network, AT&T. Here in Kalamazoo AT&T has been inexplicably retarded when it comes to fleshing out their 3G network capacity. A 3G network is essentially a “Fast Radio Network” which makes any device that uses it work faster than ‘2G’ or ‘Old and Slow Radio Network’. This lack of competent service in comparison to Sprint and Verizon’s 3G networks that already exist here is the principal reason why iPhones have yet to earn the mark of distinction from my office and why I have been silent about any future move off of the Blackberry infrastructure. I can argue that switching from Blackberry to iPhone at this juncture would be a stupid move, since 90% of users would do business in Kalamazoo county, ignoring Sprint and Blackberry’s 3G network for AT&T’s EDGE (their 2G network) would be akin to replacing the engine in a Camaro with a lawnmowers’. As for Droid, I cannot recommend that mobile device operating system because it has yet to establish a stable canon. Google has been working feverishly developing and extending this platform and Droid suffers for it. If we were to buy-in to Droid now, 6 months down the pike we’d be stuck with 25 devices that may or may not have an upgrade path to wherever Google takes Droid next.

What does the future hold? Blackberry and Sprint are the ‘Devil We Know’. We’re used to the rough patches and we have a well-beaten path and a contract that works for our needs. What conditions would need to happen for me to change my official recommendations? Any switch to iPhone would require AT&T to demonstrate a willingness to flesh out their 3G network in Kalamazoo county. AT&T did consume Centennial Wireless recently, so this may be coming sooner rather than later. Alternatively, if Apple reworks the iPhone to use the CDMA network, it would be useful on the Verizon network and iPhone + Verizon would make me switch us all over in the blink of an eye. So far, the legal rumblings from Apple state that there is a lovers-knot forged between AT&T and Apple in relation to the iPad. Apple needed a data provider, AT&T offered their network for the new iPad device, but the rumor states that the ‘sweetheart deal’ would only be possible if Apple kept the AT&T-only stricture on iPhone, at least until 2011. Verizon is very hungry for the iPhone, but Apple won’t budge, and everyone agrees it’s because AT&T has their hooks in Apple quite deeply. Droid, on the other hand, needs time to mature. The platform is still very young and prone to wild upset and I can’t justify us spending valuable University funds on something so prone to ‘platform-quakes’. Droid would be a valid option by 2015.

If there are any points you’d like clarification on please do not hesitate to ask.