Steve Wozniak: battery life is cop-out for 3G on iPhone

Why didn’t Apple include 3G on their current-generation iPhone? Obviously because the 3G radio would sap battery power like it was water – Apple said it, so it must be true. Right? Actually, I’ve thought about this a good deal and I’ve come up with my own conspiracy theory as to why Apple didn’t bring 3G to their initial iPhone launch.

Apple could have failed to license the appropriate tech to launch the iPhone with 3G. Apple could have been stretched to their design limits and a 3G chipset just didn’t work with their expectations. Apple just didn’t have the technical savvy to integrate 3G into their design. Or, the exclusion of 3G could have just been a marketing ploy to sell more second-generation iPhones.

Now, all those theories are the most unreliable kind – conspiracy theories borne of a paranoid geek’s mind. But, it seems that Steve Wozniak is also in doubt over Jobs’s “battery life” concerns with 3G. The Woz was recently quoted as saying,

“I don’t understand why it would be a battery issue. I get as much life on my 3G phones as I do on my non-3G phones. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m not paying close enough attention. But I don’t think that’s it though.”

Was Apple really just citing iPhone battery life as a cop-out to cover up the real reason that 3G wasn’t included? Or does a 3G chipset really drain the small, sealed battery that fast?

Who cares, I’ll have a 3G iPhone soon enough…

[Via: Macworld]

About The Author

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...

Kashif

I want to know what 3g phone he’s using, if he’s realy getting the same amount of battery life as a non 3g. Although I don’t think battery life is the real reason, its a very solid excuse. Go to phonescoop.com and look up a few 3g phones… many of them have battery life listed in both GSM and WCDMA. There is definitely a difference. I would charge my 8525 every 3/4 of a day using heavy internet. And then you realize theres also a music player thrown in as one of the primary functions. I’d say you’d get les than half a day using the current iphone on 3g.
L

the fact is that Apple wants to be able to sell second generation iPhones
Steve

“the exclusion of 3G could have just been a marketing ploy to sell more second-generation iPhones.”

Gets my vote.

Plus it gives AT&T a larger window for the 3G upgrades
Jimmy

No, phones using 3G transmission consume battery power at a significantly faster rate.

I would say it has a lot (or everything) to do with marketing. Apple is brand new as a mobile phone manufaturer/licensor and quasi-network operator. It built up the idea and brand of the iPhone with the initial 2.5G version. Now that they’ve broken the ice they’re ready to release the big guns and move to the more multimedia-capable 3G standard.

It could also have something to do with their simulatenous launch (well within 1 year) into the US, European and world markets. The US has a relatively immature network infrastucture, and only recently has started to adopt GSM over more unreliable proprietary standard such as CDMA. Qualcomm has been trying to push its weight with WCDMA and Apple probably reckoned “there is no way we support GSM, UMTS and WCDMA chipsets, let’s release the iPhone and ease the operators into jumping ship onto UMTS”.

Now that the operators have seen the potential of the iPhone as a sales and revenue driver, they are much more willing to invest in building up a UMTS 3G network.