iPhone in depth: The Ars review

The EDGE of the Internet

Let's be honest here. No one buys an iPhone for the phone. You buy it because it's an Internet device that does all this other stuff, too: web, e-mail, IM, SMS, and more.

The iPhone taps into the Internet via one of two connections: WiFi and AT&T's EDGE network. Let's just get this out of the way right now: whenever you're within range of a WiFi network that you can use, use it. AT&T's EDGE network is inconsistent; speeds vary wildly between great and eye-stabbing, and they are highly dependent upon your location, the time of day, and phases of the moon. Okay, maybe not that last one, but it's possible.

In Boston, we were able to gain, lose, then regain our EDGE connectivity while simply standing in one spot for too long at various locations in the city. We would have our surfing interrupted suddenly by an error from the iPhone saying that it could not activate EDGE. It was times like these when we prayed for a nice, sweet open WAP. Coverage was spotty at best in several cities in the US (Boston, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Chicago) we tested it in, and readers confirm this.

Put simply, AT&T's EDGE isn't as good as the EDGE connection provided by T-Mobile or as robust as EVDO from Verizon. Because coverage varies so greatly in the US, readers are advised to research the quality of the AT&T network in their region. Apple's choice of carriers surprises us, if not because of the older EDGE network AT&T supports, then because of the routinely disappointing ratings AT&T receives from the likes of Consumer Reports, which says it has "middling to low levels of customer satisfaction" and routinely rates it no better than third place. The current lock-in between the iPhone and AT&T leaves a bad taste in our mouths. We can't wait until third parties start selling unlocked iPhones, even if that means they'll be sold for an even higher premium than they already go for in stores.

The iPhone feels slower than it should on EDGE; it can sometimes take ridiculous amounts of time to load web pages. Certain sites took over a minute to load the first time, although Safari's caching does a good job of ensuring that subsequent loads are very short (the second time we loaded the same page in the same session took about five seconds).

Sure, AT&T's EDGE gets the job done, but it does not amaze, and coverage issues exacerbate the problem. On average, we believe that it was annoying, but tolerable. The question everyone must ask themselves is, "For $500-$600 plus $60 a month, is 'annoying, but tolerable' something I can tolerate?"

The lackluster performance of EDGE must be one reason why Apple designed the iPhone in such a way that it attempts to switch to WiFi whenever possible and will only connect to EDGE when there is no other option. You can also change the settings so that it asks you whether you want to join available WiFi networks when you come within range or not.

The iPhone currently only supports 802.11b/g networks, not 802.11n. This comes as a disappointment to many people who already own draft 802.11n hardware, including Apple's own Airport Extreme Base Station. There is a lingering confidence among the iPhone-using community that a software update to enable 802.11n on the iPhone is forthcoming, but we strongly believe that will not happen, because the wireless chip in the phone does not support 802.11n (which we discuss in the autopsy section later).

Selecting and joining a WiFi network is as simple as tapping on the desired network and entering the password (if one is required). You can specify a static IP or a proxy server, but the default settings have the iPhone picking up an IP automatically through DHCP, and this works most of the time.

For a few days, we ran into some issues using our home WiFi network on the iPhone while still being able to join and use others. The iPhone was able to join the network just fine and even went so far as to pick up a correct IP, but it just absolutely refused to make use of the connection. This was eventually remedied by restoring the iPhone to its original configuration through iTunes and then re-syncing it with the data stored from our last sync.