….. or are certain apps on the iPhone just not very good at connecting to the network? Let me tell you my story…
The other day there was a particular track that I fancied listening to, but I was out and about – normally I use iTunes via the Mac, but on this occasion it wasn’t an option – so for once, I fired up the ITunes app on the iPhone.
I enjoyed the user experience (well done AGAIN Apple!) – finding stuff, previewing it, and buying is SIMPLE – the only criticism I could possibly level is that perhaps the fonts and graphical bordering are a bit big – it would be nice to get more results/text on-screen in once go.
However I then purchase the track I wanted (Britney, obviously…!), and waited for a sluggish download – but I was shocked – the rate of download was incredible – seemingly only 20 seconds after I hit download, 7MB had shot down to the phone!
But how could this be? When I use Safari and Mail, the rate at which the network connection is made, and then rendering/email download occurs is slow – in some cases almost intolerably slow – and I know I’m not the only person that thinks this, it’s widely reported.
For some reason though, iTunes download traffic seems to be prioritised on O2s network – and to test this theory, I had a go at downloading a 15-track album – oh my god – it absolutely flew!
So this tells me one of two things:
1) Either iTunes data traffic is prioritised on the O2 network – via IP, APN, or even at HTTP request level – something is going on….
Or
2) Mail and Safari are really really bad at implementing their calls to network access / protocols for download
The disparity is quite amazing – I’d suggest you give it a go if you don’t believe it. Go to a 3G area (let’s at least give the network a chance to shine), and then try out collecting say 20 emails (or whatever is in your inbox to download), and then trying downloading a track. Now bear in mind a single iTunes track will probably be orders of magnitude larger than ALL the emails you download – what gives?!
Answers on a postcard, or better yet, in the comments to this post….!