A reality check on the day the new iPhone is announced

I’m on the train this morning on the way into London for the Mobile Marketing Association Forum event near Tottenham Court Road.

It’s a frustrating journey, because I had expected to get some decent work done. I’ve got to be in Texas next week so I need to plan out some flights and whatnot. Unfortunately, despite the fact the train doesn’t tend to exceed 30mph and we’re crossing some fairly urban environments, the mobile signal is patchy.

It’s so patchy that nothing actually works for more than 2 minutes. You get a 3G signal for a few moments, the page loads or the app retrieves some data… Then it’s back to nothing or worse, Edge. Or even worse, GPRS.

I wouldn’t mind GPRS if it meant stuff beyond BlackBerry email worked.

About 15% of my Orange iPhone 4 battery has drained in the last 20 minutes as a result of me constantly watching the sodding signal and re-trying Google queries repeatedly, whilst the phone switches back and forward from 3G to Edge to nothing.

It’s not an Orange problem per se. It’s all the phones I have — Vodafone and Three are just as bad. This is why I’ve opted to write a post — it doesn’t need a consistent data connection.

All my plans for this journey have been shot to shreds because I forgot how poor the connectivity was on this line (Ascot -> London).
It doesn’t say much for the future of the mobile industry if you can’t do anything on the train beyond BlackBerry email because the signal is so limited.

Don’t get me wrong about BlackBerry by the way. Their email platform seems to work on any signal strength provided there’s at least one tiny bar. That is impressive. That’s compression for you.

By Clapham Junction I should be able to actually do something beyond email on my phone.

Increasingly I’m finding that mobile phones aren’t actually mobile. That is, you need a WiFi connection for any of the cool stuff to work properly. Or you need to be sitting still in an area of low contention mobile signal.

I will be aiming to remind myself of this sad fact when I’m watching the Apple keynote tonight.

It doesn’t matter how whizzy the device or the services are if the basic connectivity is flawed. Operators would do well to invest in some basics now and again.