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As appealing as the iPhone is to me, I won’t be giving up my EVDO high speed Internet phone service until Cingular has a similar service in my area (Sacramento, CA).  Does anyone have any scoop on what Cingular’s plans are?  The sooner that happens, the sooner the iPhone becomes a realistic dream to plan for, vice an unfulfilled fantasy.

I don’t have any insight into their rollout...I have used devices on their EDGE network and they seemed pretty speedy to me. Anyone know how much faster 3G really is?

Here’s a pretty good review of EDGE speeds and Cingular US coverage, but it’s a bit old:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1770749,00.asp

The bottom line is that EDGE’s theoretical top speed is a little over 200Kbps, but actual experience is around 70-80Kbps, little more than a dial-up modem.  EVDO has a theoretical speed of around 2400Kbps, but routinely hits around 300-600Kbps.  Here’s a good explanation of each of the network speeds/acronyms:

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11288_7-5664933-5.html

According to this glossary, 3G will offer speeds up to 14400Kbps, yes, that’s 14.4Mbps! 

For a personal communicator that will download web pages for real-time scaling and viewing, speed counts.  When all you download is snippets of info from a pre-formatted source (Verizon’s closed network, for example), great speed really isn’t that important, and may be comparable to the slower EDGE user experience.

That’s why I’ll wait for the 3G iPhone.

Thanks for the great research, Dave. That makes things clearer for me. Question about 3G. If Cingular ever updates to it will it just be a software update to the iPhone or will it require a whole new iPhone?

I believe Apple has said that the current iPhone will only support 2.5G, which is MUCH slower than full 3G (and uses a different RF chip), so I guess that means you’ll need to upgrade your iPhone, not just get a firmware update.  Another reason for me to wait…

Actually 2.5G is a completely diferent network with an entire diferent channel access method than 3G.
2.5G networks are GSM netowrks with GPRS/EDGE data transfer, GSM networks use TDMA coding access method.

3G networks are UMTS networks (those are very popular in Europe, example Vodaphone), these 3G networks are based on W-CDMA access method, with a bandwith up to 14Mbps. UMTS is outdated now, since there is a new system known as 3.5G, HSDPA.
The only mobile phone i know that can work in either network is the Nokia N80.
I’d be kind of cool that the second generation iPhone would be meant to be used in UMTS networks.

The iPhone wont be able to work in any 3G networks. It’d be needed a second generation iPhone.