The most interesting discovery about the iPhone was the performance on the EDGE network. Using CATTRAX (which uses MapQuest maps) in real time with zooming and scrolling was excellent. While some of the updates took a few seconds, there was nothing that was a show-stopper in the performance. It was much better, in fact, than the Q with EVDO and Opera: that might be the AT&T network enhancements alone, but the end result was excellent. Even El Reg popped up quickly and was easily navigable, unlike sometimes on the Q where style sheet problems make the page hard to read.
The real surprise was the integrated Wi-Fi. The fact that the phone will pick up Wi-Fi on demand and use this for the "heavy lifting" data transfers eliminates the need for HSDPA in many (but not all) situations. (This is still a toughie for me, as I have no wired WAN connectivity and eschew using hot spots. However, Pat also has the same set up as I do in his motor home, with an EVDO rev.a modem feeding a Wi-Fi router, and this works very well for the higher speed downloads as needed.) It appears that the iPhone does a superior job of scheduling data transfers between foreground (web pages) and background (large downloads) thus keeping the EDGE speed available for immediate use.)
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