BrandsAmongMany

Ok, I know that Apple is a favorite point of discussion amongst blogs like this. Someone is always standing at the ready to either praise or blast them for their newest…whatever. And I usually try to keep out of the fray. You’ll notice that we didn’t post yet another “ZOMFG, Apple released the 3G iPhone, let’s go stand in line for six hours!!!!!” post. But now that a few days have passed, and the initial shock is wearing down a little bit, I’m going to pick up my tradition of stepping back for a moment and trying to take a look at what’s really going on behind the excitement. Last September, it was the Starbucks partnership that prompted my musings…

This time it’s AT&T. Or is it just Apple? The web has been absolutely on fire with discussions of the newly released iPhone 3G. Most of that discussion, however, has been the usual fanboy discussion and the incredible lengths to which people have gone to acquire the device. Apple has reportedly sold more than 1 million devices since launch. According to Fortune, twenty one states are completely sold out. Sounds like heaven, right?

Maybe not so much. Reports from users are coming in every second, and the outlook is a little grim. A thread on Howard Forums has caught some attention and spurred a number of other discussions regarding both AT&T’s preparedness for the massive influx of new 3G capable devices, as well as questioning Apple’s hardware build. That led to further complaints on Macrumors.com, which in turn pointed [me] toward a similar discussion on Apple’s support forums.

General consensus: something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Complaints from 3G users around the world are coming in, reporting a variety of problems all pointing to either a major issue in AT&T’s 3G network - a reasonable deduction for US users - or in the new iPhone’s hardware itself - a more reasonable explanation given the worldwide issues. 3G-ers everywhere are complaining of slow connection speeds (the supposed benefit of the new 3G network), dropped calls, lack of signal, etc. - all in areas supposedly covered by their service provider’s network.

I’ll readily admit that I’ve pretty much caved and plan to do something that I vowed I wouldn’t - purchase an iPhone under AT&T. In fact, I’ve already made the call to Verizon to find out the exact date on which my contract is up (August 11 for anyone interested). But this is definitely enough to make me think twice about that decision. We can only hope that the issues will be fixed quickly, either via a firmware update from Apple (assuming that a software update can fix the issue) or some attention from the various service providers around the world. I realize that 3G is a newer technology that’s still being rolled out in many places, but if the reality of the system is that 3G speeds are slower than EDGE then maybe we’ve jumped the gun in the interest of “getting it out there”?