Apple 3G iPhone - Power, ie battery performance dominates handheld performance

Implications: The question posed at the end of the article is key:- The unanswered question--assuming this account is accurate--is why the iPhone 3G shipped with balky power-control software, something that ostensibly could have been discovered in testing? It is true this could have been discovered, but as of launch we had 1m users using the phone immediately - always a sure way to test the phone and they found the weak spot. Apple is learning very quickly what it takes to get a world class phone to market in volume across 3 continents and is responding to criticism - part of its marketing image. This response is ahead of its major competitors.

Analysis: The 3G iPhone is not new in delivering performance, not new in using multiple radios and not new in wanting a sleek design - the latter will always compromise battery life.

3 factors here, adding in a 3G radio, always having a big, bright LCD display and needing high bandwidth (3G or WiFi) to keep the browsing fast. Use them and battery life drops significantly.

Many 3G iphone users, whose network still use 2G for voice [and 3G for data with parallel coverage] are able to side step this issue by turning off 3G and getting half decent response for email using GPRS/EDGE. Browsing will always in this case take longer, the benefit is 1 to 2 days of battery life.

Where does this leave us,

a) Apple is to be commended for responding so quickly
b) battery life is still a critical factor

and for once the attempts by the engineers to manage power control has pushed the optimisation slightly too far in one direction with a subsequent loss in call quality - this latter factor is something mobile operators cannot put up with.