Macworld | The iPhone 3G: What you need to know

Macworld | The iPhone 3G: What you need to know

With the iPhone 3G’s release just days away, it’s time to revisit the pressing questions relating to Apple’s next-generation phone. We still don’t know everything about this forthcoming iPhone 3G—and probably won’t until we’ve picked one up on Friday morning—we do know more than we did immediately after Steve Jobs previewed the iPhone 3G at last month’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

How much faster is it than the current iPhone?

AT&T says that the iPhone 3G will have typical download speeds as high as 1.4Mbps versus average data speeds between 75Kbps and 135Kbps on its EDGE network. During Steve Jobs’s keynote, it took 21 seconds to load a graphics-heavy Web page using 3G versus 59 seconds on EDGE. Similarly, an e-mail attachment took 5 seconds over 3G and 18 seconds on EDGE.

Of course, Macworld contributor Glenn Fleishman pointed out in his 3G guide last month that comparing 2G and 3G browser and e-mail attachment loading times isn’t the most revealing exercise. The most important thing to know about 3G is that data transfer speeds will likely be faster than what iPhone veterans are used to—and more important, that there’s room for 3G to grow.