from: http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=2008072808444964
mac.column.ted: iPhone 3G and MobileMe: New features add little value
Ted Landau
July 2008
The more time I spend with my new iPhone 3G and the new MobileMe software, the more I find that neither of these upgrades were worth the bother. Now, before you start sending me hate mail, let me be clear:
I still consider the iPhone to be one of the greatest technology inventions of the decade. And the new iPhone 3G is even better than the original. The iPhone 2.0 software, especially the App Store, is a significant leap forward from iPhone 1.1.4. As for MobileMe, on balance (assuming the service can ever get past its initial hassles and actually work as intended), I believe it is marginally superior to the .Mac service it replaces.
So what's the problem? The problem is this: The new hardware features in the iPhone 3G and the new options in MobileMe are largely irrelevant to me (and I suspect to a lot of other people as well).
iPhone 3G
Let's start with the iPhone 3G. It has only two major new features: 3G network support and GPS tracking capability. Yes, it also has improved sound (I can now hear my iPhone ringing even in a noisy environment) and a standard-size headphone outlet. But these are small-change improvements. It's 3G and GPS that represent the major differences from the original iPhone. So let's look at these features.
If you had asked me before I bought an iPhone 3G, I would have told you that 3G support is a very big deal. Indeed, painfully slow Web browsing, when using an EDGE connection, was my single biggest complaint about the original iPhone. However, it turns out that the 3G capability makes far less difference for me than I had anticipated.
For one thing, the 3G network is not available in nearly as many places as the EDGE network. I often can't get on the 3G network. Even if I do make a 3G connection, it is often such a weak one (just one bar with occasional dropping off altogether) that the overall speed seems not much different than with an EDGE connection....
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