CTIA Conferance; Apple iPhone

In the Economist's wrap-up coverage of CTIA conference of Florida, the publication came out swinging against the much hyped Apple iPhone:

But though not available until June, the $500 iPhone is as mouth-watering today as yesterday’s cold pizza. The phone that stole the show at CTIA Wireless 2007 was the “Ocean” from Helio, a youth-oriented newcomer to the cellular business.

In addition to giving high praise for the Ocean's interface and design, as well as noting the disparity in price ($295 for the Helio vs. $500 for the iPhone) the article continued,

But it is the Helio Ocean’s EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimised) wireless technology that renders Apple’s iPhone an also-ran. Mobile experts have been mystified by Apple’s decision to use Cingular’s EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution) network when far better wireless communications methods abound...Cingular’s version of it provides data speeds of between 75 kilobits per second (kbps) and 135 kbps—not that much better than a dial-up internet connection, and often much worse...

By contrast, the EV-DO networks used by Helio (as well as Verizon and Sprint in America and KDDI in Japan) offer 450 kbps to 800 kbps, rates similar to those of DSL broadband connections. EDGE’s slower data speeds mean that iPhone users must rely on Wi-Fi to do anything more than make phone calls or send the odd e-mail...

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