Worth upgrading to 3G iPhone?

When the iPhone was launched many people were stunned by the revolutionary interface and slick styling. However, the technical specification was not quite as cutting edge as many had hoped. The main criticisms were:
- 8GB capacity wasn’t enough for some people, so they couldn’t ditch their existing MP3 player
- The camera is a bit weedy at 2MP, doesn’t do video and doesn’t have a zoom
- No 3G network support

Despite these limitations I chose to purchase one anyway. Six months on and I’m still enamoured with it. However, hardly a day goes buy without someone asking “Don’t you wish you’d waited for the 3G version?” Apple are yet to announce plans for upgrading the hand set (apart from the update from 8GB to 16GB capacity) but a 3G version is hotly anticipated.

The lack of 3G is certainly not a show stopper. Living in London I’ve found the coverage of the Edge network to be pretty good and faster than I expected. Furthermore, when I use the iPhone over Wi-Fi I’ve not found it to be much faster – it appears the phone struggles to keep up with the processing the data when it’s supplied at a faster rate. In the absence of Edge or Wi-Fi the phones drops down to GPRS network rates. Applications like Google Maps are still useable at the slower speed but it’s definitely a drag. The built in YouTube application is the only thing that seems to stop working altogether.

So, do I regret not waiting and will I be upgrading to a 3G set? Well, it’s probably not worth me forking out the extra money just to get 3G access and I certainly don’t regret not waiting. The limited capacity (64GB would be ideal) and the stupid headphone socket that only seems to fit Apple headphones are far more of an irritant.

To my mind, people are too hung up on the technical stats. What makes the iPhone so great is its functionality. In fact, I’m much more interested in the software roadmap and getting connectivity to Exchange servers – as a business user that will be invaluable.