Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Network congestion and the iPhone

I love my iPhone.

It suits me down to the ground. It's "smart" enough that I can do all the things I want to do that aren't "phone" things - Twitter, electronic password wallets, contact/address lists, emails, to-do lists, camera for quick snaps, notes, sat-nav, internet browsing, games, utilities....the list goes on and on.

However, some people argue that in itself, it's not a very good phone. Call quality could be better etc when compared to Nokia's or Blackberries so it's said, though I rarely have cause for complaint.

One area I do have some issues with though is trying to use the thing when there's any degree of congestion on the network.

This is most apparent at what is probably an extreme end of the scale - when I'm at a football match. When I'm in the Cardiff City Stadium with anything between 14,000 and 24,000 other people, there's very little point in me trying to tweet, text, check emails or use the phone, because it just ain't gonna work - or it'll take forever refreshing Twitter for example to get anywhere.

Although it can be argued that at least immediately before the match, at half time and just post match there are thousands of other people in close proximity using their phones, so therefore it's not surprising I have problems, what's strange about this is, that it doesn't seem to affect anyone else!

I can see hundreds of other people with their phones to their ear, or texting away whilst I struggle, even though my signal meter is showing wall to wall O2 and 3G signal strength. My son sitting next to me has no problems with his SE candybar phone, though admittedly he doesn't use data. But even texting/voice for me can be an issue.

I'm beginning to think it's down to me and my "karma" - or lack of it. It's difficult to know if this is an iPhone thing, or a smartphone (data - as opposed to voice) thing. Most of the phones I see at football are standard feature phones, so it might be.

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