new iphone 3GS

[Edu-IT]

Just seen the tethering prices. Ouch.

[GrumbleDook]

Things that are missing -

 

Front facing camera for decent video calls. iChat / Skype / high-end apps from Cisco etc ... so much opportunity missed here.

 

Decent Battery. The upgrade means that I would only have to charge my iPhone every 1 1/2 days instead of every day.

 

Expandable memory. I use SD/microSD a lot ... it is a handy tool for me especially since I don't often have my Mac around to transfer files across or even if I do it is a pain to set up an ad-hoc wireless network as I am *not* using McDs freebie Wi-Fi to transfer stuff around ... and we have no wireless in the office (County rules) ... so it ends up being done at home instead.

 

Bluetooth is still a case of suck it and see. I have been playing with the bluetooth side of mine for some time and have a few different devices you can reliably hook into the present machine and OS ... it does look like v3 will improve things but there is still to strong an emphasis on Wi-Fi. I'll just have to wait until the new OS comes out as some restrictions with bluetooth at the moment are OS related, some are hardware related.

 

I am happy with my present 3G and will upgrade the OS, but I will probably wait until 4th Gen iPhone now.

[ZeroHour]

Decent Battery. The upgrade means that I would only have to charge my iPhone every 1 1/2 days instead of every day.

Your not going to get a 50% increase btw, a few hours at best (3g calls are exactly the same) and a few minutes at worst for the 3gs

The battery life is a joke, as an experiment I have turned push delivery on, 30mins sync to pop3, 3g and I am listening to music to see just how long it lasts. I am even barely using the device itself as am reading mail on the server just to get around the "use/display drains the battery" argument.

 

 

Bluetooth is still a case of suck it and see. I have been playing with the bluetooth side of mine for some time and have a few different devices you can reliably hook into the present machine and OS ... it does look like v3 will improve things but there is still to strong an emphasis on Wi-Fi. I'll just have to wait until the new OS comes out as some restrictions with bluetooth at the moment are OS related, some are hardware related.

The jailbreaked ones have a new bluetooth driver in dev which trys to fix the lock down apple applied.

What non-apple devices have you found that work via bluetooth as handsfree? or well at all?

Also I am pretty sure hardware has nothing to do with the current restrictions as the 3g will have mobile to mobile networking for gaming using it so a lot of the protocols are there at least. The chip they used was pretty standard I thought, apple just limited it to get apple tax.

 

As for tethering, I am mostly going to stick with jailbreak tethering for the little I use it as that price is nuts but I guessed that it would be an operator enabled feature and not included. Apple need their tax dont you know...

"They" say os3 has been easy to jailbreak as long as you dont install 8.2 (as the driver is different).

 

Also did it get the "radio" broadcast feature or was that just a myth? And also I bet it had the super crap feature that forces you to replace your inline mic/controls no doubt.

[GrumbleDook]

Pretty much any bluetooth device that can run dual channel (connect to two devices or run a single device with two data streams) works but I found my good old fashioned Sony Ericsson HBH-600 works a treat and even had a connection to my mac via an old BT dongle (firmware was updated though and was Mac only). The restriction is partly down to how stable the connection is (they used a cheap, low power chip ... but so did many others) and the strength of signal ... it is meant to be a different chip this time round and handle more connections.

 

Still waiting to hear on the full details though ... the keynote was very vague about what was enable via the OS and what via the 3GS

[HodgeHi]

I don't think it makes any odds anyway. IIRC the contracts were renewed when existing iphone owners took out their 3g contracts. Now, that was around 1 year ago and were for 12 months. If that is the case then the existing iphone 3g contracts cannot be cancelled for another 6 months. It states on o2's website that the contract can only be upgraded on the last month unless this changes in the near future.

 

I like my iphone but may not be getting the next one. I don't like the fact that they are charging for tethering. Makes no sense since they give you unlimited bandwidth on the phone itself

[ZeroHour]

I *think* existing users can upgrade within the 18 months.

Tethering sucks tbh as its far far too much, they should have a day charge if you want, say a £1 per day to do it when you need to or well it should be free tbh.

I would like the extra storage space as 16gb is causing annoyences for me.

[jamesb]

I like my iphone but may not be getting the next one. I don't like the fact that they are charging for tethering. Makes no sense since they give you unlimited bandwidth on the phone itself

 

Which is why it makes sense.

 

There's a limited amount of bandwidth you'll realistically use with your phone, since its primarily a phone. If you turn it into a wireless access point though then you could quite happily leave it on overnight, on charge, downloading whatever you want to your laptop for hours at a time. Not something a mobile network's really going to want going across their network.

[ZeroHour]

There's a limited amount of bandwidth you'll realistically use with your phone, since its primarily a phone.

You do know you can listening to streaming net over the iphone, that uses huge amounts of bandwidth along with youtube traffic.

Its not really much of a excuse that you would suck the life out of o2 if it was included.

[jamesb]

You do know you can listening to streaming net over the iphone, that uses huge amounts of bandwidth along with youtube traffic.

Its not really much of a excuse that you would suck the life out of o2 if it was included.

 

Yes, I know, but you're not as likely to do that for too long, if for no other reason than that your battery's going to run out.

 

I don't necessarily agree with it, but I can see their reasoning.

 

Personally I've got an N85 and a nice little app for it which turns my phone into a wireless access point whenever I need to hook something up through it, so the controversy's not really going to affect me.

[Ex-MGSTech]

Just been on the 02 site and I think they must of knackered up the pay monthly prices cos thats just insane amounts of money a month !!

 

Pay Monthly

 

184 to 300 quid a month ( just for the contract ) for either the 16 or 32gb iphone 3g s ? hhhmmm - me thinks not lol

 

No you muppet, that's the cost of the phone, the monthly tarrifs are along the top!

[Edu-IT]

No you muppet, that's the cost of the phone, the monthly tarrifs are along the top!

But at the same time equally as expensive.

[Edu-IT]

Anyone here using a Simplicity SIM with the iPhone?

[_Bat_]

Enable tethering on iPhone 3.0 - Too easy... (WORLDWIDE carriers) | richardlai's Xanga Site - Weblog

 

For those who want to tether their non-jailbroken iphone

[Domino]

I've seen a few ways to tether the iphone without paying - I think o2 will cotton on to it sharp as and you'll get charged for use against the AUP.

 

however I also can't think of why I'd use it - I get web access on the phone, 3g is too flaky on the daily train route to use a vpn and otherwise I'd be in a town so use wi-fi...

 

So not particularly bothered here.