Verizon Wireless people will tell you that they turned Apple down. I mean, everyone in the company knows this, which makes me think no one knows anything (I worked for them, as a contract employee, for over seven months). Apple, according to someone who worked at Apple, had spent three years working with AT&T;on this phone, so the odds than any company turned Appple down for lack of 3G support are pretty slim.
EDGE is slower than 3G, but more so on paper than in reality. Give me two bars on 3G, and I will take four bars in the same location on EDGE, as the latter will be faster a good deal of the time (yay, packet loss!). Lack of Wi-Fi on most phones (see ads for the new Shadow to see how important Wi-Fi is) leaves them way behind the iPhone, at least when in major cities. Out here in the Seattle area, we are packed with Tullys (a local competitor for area companies Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, Terrafazione, Stewart Brothers, almost all of which are really Starbucks anyway) coffee shops that all offer free Wi-Fi (and, as the original banner along the I-5 read, “Not Willy"). Given that Tullys makes Starbucks come off as a giant company with hiring practices and a training program that join to leave customers with mediocre company, my wife and I prefer our coffee com from the big T. This means Wi-Fi access. Zip!
Comparing companies is a tricky business. When Verizon Wireless claims to have the “Nation’s most reliable network,” there is plenty of evidence to back it up. Every company sends out dozens of test vehicles with banks of phones plugged in and talking to other phones in other test vehicles. The quality of the calls is measured by the clarity of a set of linguist-created sentences called the Hardvard Sentences (see this article for more, noting, in particular, the second left inset). Verizon Wireless does actually score the best in this. Unfortunately, some large patches of the U.S. are entirely off of the VZW coverage map (and probably off of every other major carrier’s maps too). Where you live, where you work, and where you travel are all important in determining which service you should get, and even then the phone plays a huge role in your reception (our RAZRs are better than the garbage LG phones we had for a couple weeks and better than our V60 and V60-S phones).
Jobs announce 3G as part of the original iPhone roadmap, but you are right, battery consumption is an issue. I have to say that I am a bit surprised, though. It is possible to set up a simple bypass, leaving the 3G chip entirely unpowered when not wanted or needed. The old analog/digital/best-signal switching is not exactly the same thing, but if you wanted a longer battery life in those days, you used anything but dual sensitivity.
Anyway, my greater point is this. The iPhone, which was getting cautious reviews, full of praise with caveats, in CR, is pretty close to tops across the lists, and it is leading its category.
