FCC Approves iPhone

An anonymous reader alerted us that the iPhone is one step closer to hitting shelves. "The Federal Communications Commission approved Apple Inc.'s iPhone, clearing the way for the combined phone and music player to hit the shelves. Apple expects to begin selling the phones in late June. Some of the FCC documents confirm a few features of the phone, including it will have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and will operate in the 1900MHz and 850MHz frequency bands. The phone uses GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) technology and the low-speed GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) wireless data standard."

too bad

[Neuropol]

Vermont doesn't get to play with the new toys like the rest of the kids. Unicel has a firm grasp (sp/grasp/stranglehold) on the GSM network up here. As of current, and for what ever reason, they will also not be selling the iPhone. One would say go with Cingular or T-Mobile or which ever carrier applies, but one can't do that without penalty as well for not being on home network. If 50% of your calls, or more, are in non-network coverage areas for Cingular, you get the 'sorry-we've-dropped-you-as-valued-customer' letter.

Re:well-thats-not-very-exciting

[T-Bone-T]

It does have 900/1800. The FCC didn't approve them because they aren't used in the US. It still got all the approval it needed to be sold.

EDGE is much faster than GPRS

[kherr]

I've been using EDGE through T-Mobile and it's much faster than GPRS. Not sure how it compares to EVDO and I won't vouch for AT&T's network, but it's misleading to tag the iPhone with "slow GPRS" when it supports EDGE.

Re:Important Points

[qengho]

The very first statement was blatantly false and misleading and the last was "Lame". That looks like classic flamebait to me.

Welcome to Slashdot, newbie. [slashdot.org]

Re:Dev Kit?

[Anonymous Coward]

You just don't get it.

Apple can package bullshit tomorrow and market it as premium fertilizer and their fans will buy it up.

Re:Low tech phone

[T-Bone-T]

It only works on 850/1900 in the US because that is all that is used. It also supports 900/1800 according to Apple.

Re:Important Points

[nxtw]

AT&T is now using HSDPA, which is significantly faster than 1xRTT, EDGE, GPRS, etc. and on par with EV-DO. Much of the network supports it, with a great number of deployments in the past few years. Also, compared to Sprint, AT&T has more 3G coverage in my market (out of the 4 3G networks here, Sprint, Alltel and Verizon EV-DO and Cingular HSDPA, only Verizon and Cingular bother to cover outlying areas).

The worst major carrier (digital broadband wise) is T-Mobile.

EVDO is much faster

[Mr2001]

EDGE's theoretical maximum is 473 kbps [wikipedia.org], while EVDO's is 2.4 Mbps [wikipedia.org] - five times as fast. Real world performance is more like 800-1200 kbps, which is still four times the real-world performance you can expect from EDGE.

Re:EVDO is much faster

[magictiger]

Keep in mind that there are currently two tiers of EVDO in use. Base EVDO tends to run about 300-500kbps. EVDO Rev. A looks closer to what you claimed. For those of us unprivileged who are not covered by Sprint's Rev. A network, it's not such a huge jump from EDGE.

Re:EVDO is much faster

[Sensible Clod]

I work with and test EVDO and EDGE data modems (same model, different carriers), and I can tell you definitely that EVDO, while faster, is NOT 4 times as fast. It's more like 20-30% faster in my experience.

Re:Dev Kit?

[MrPerfekt]

Windows Mobile also lets you crash three times a day, runs extremely slowly, costs as much and doesn't interface well with anything except Windows.

Features I'm counting on the iPhone to not have.

Re:EVDO is much faster

[Mr2001]

Here [dslreports.com] are some speed test results. myvzw.com is the domain for all Verizon Wireless internet access: 1xRTT (slow), EVDO rev 0, and EVDO rev A.

Re:Again /. readers miss the point.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Webbrowser in S60 3rd edition is infact WebKit. So it's fairly likely that the iPhone will have a virtually identical html renderer apart from the UI.

S60 Webkit [nokia.com]