Who bought a UK Apple iPhone?

I’m impressed by GPRS on Orange (who wants to be an O2 customer? not me!). Loading SMSTextNews on the iPhone and the N95 in Safari, both from cold (i.e. no connection established) provides interesting results:

The iPhone starts downloading immediately, while the N95 has the Symbian bollocks of ‘Do you really want to download data? Now pick your access point, even though we know and you know there’s only one F**ker defined in the handset anyway’)

Then The N95 rips ahead, only to be knobbeled by the fact that Sir Ewan has some UAS-recognition optimised bollocks stripped-down pastiche on offer .It takes a few clicks more to actually get anywhere.

Meanwhile the iTortoise has patiently downloaded the_whole_page for me to then stab at directly.

Overall, the iPhone experience is no worse, and if you factor in the ‘not having to click twice to choose F**kin’ access point malarkey, it’s much nicer.

no, I won’t be downloading any multi-MB tunes or apps on GPRS. But as Dean Bubley points out recently, the actual *need* for mobile high-speed connectivity is an illusion.

£0.02 (and getting better value for our US readers by the day

Cheers,

Mike

Despite myself I bought one, Soooo glad I did. Time will tell whether the data speed/coverage issues will take the gloss off. At the moment though I’m in love. It really does redefine what a personal handset should be.

EDGE is not shabby at all – I tried some iphone browsing at the Regent Street store and it was much much faster than I expected. Maybe they have a booster on site to make it seem much better than it is.

The iPhone starts downloading immediately, while the N95 has the Symbian bollocks of ‘Do you really want to download data? Now pick your access point, even though we know and you know there’s only one F**ker defined in the handset anyway’)

For me, that’s the biggest, ugliest sign that Symbian simply has to go!
(Closely followed by the lack of font control; two almost useless browers; and the completely inadequate task manager.)

Thanks for venting — it made me feel better too!

@AJ – Maybe you were connecting thru the shop’s wifi?
The three demo models I tried to play with in an O2 shop refused to go online at all.

@HeavyLight: I think your complaints should probably be directed at S60 rather than Symbian generally and I’d score a ‘C- must try harder’ rather than ‘give up’, but I agree with the sentiments. Side-by-side my iPhone’s not appreciably slower than my E61 despite the EDGE / 3G speed difference.

@Ben — How can a normob distinguish between S60 and Symbian?
All they’ll see when they visit Carphone Warehouse is a monolithic OS that’s not easy or comfortable to use and move onto the next phone on display.

@Ricky — my E65 has Access Point Groups but there doesn’t seem to be a way to make them the default connection. And many apps only list APs and not the groups.
Frequently I can’t connect using the group that includes my 3G connection but the phone connects fine once I select the dedicated 3G AP.

All well and good that Symbian recognise there’s a problem but when will it be fixed on my existing phone?
Probably never!

@HeavyLight: No one uses Symbian directly – it’s all via an ‘interface’ such as UIQ, S40 or S60, but I agree it doesn’t matter to normobs. My point was that your bile (which I agree with) needs to be directed at S60 (part of Nokia, although they license to other manufacturers) not Symbian.

Oh, GPRS is fairly slow, but usable, when Edge is not available…