Speculation – What *IS* Causing all the iPhone 3G Performance Issues
Posted on 25 July 2008, at 11:16 am, by Christopher Spera
Chris Gavula and I have been beating this issue up over the 2 weeks since the release of the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 2.0 firmware. Both of us are Windows Mobile veterans of many years, and have bumped into problems like those that iPhone 3G users have been experiencing, before.
This morning, both of us are goggling it up, trying to get the skinny on who manufactured the iPhone 3G. What we’ve found is that MANY different companies made all of the different components. However, like the original iPhone, FoxConn (Han Hai), out of Taipei is the assembler. What neither of us have been able to nail down, though, is who made the 3G radio, and who wrote the radio ROM.
After using HTC devices over the years (they made many of the original iPAQ’s, like the 38/39/5000 series, the Treo 600/650 and 700/755, as well as all of imate’s devices until they went solo), I’ve come to expect radio issues from my Windows Mobile devices, especially when it comes to 3G here in the US. Issues with 3G/2G signal switching on a 3G/2G border, tower handoffs and excessive dropped calls are all symptoms of a buggy radio stack, and can also lead to POOR battery life. (Honestly, I can run through a battery cycle on my iPhone in under 2 hours (i.e. the train commute home) and be doing NOTHING more than just reading an eBook.)
For example, did you know that a device’s radio stack controls ALL communication on a mobile device? Items like the GPS receiver, WiFi radio, Bluetooth radio as well as the cell radio are all controlled by the device’s radio stack. Did you further know that depending on how well the radio handles communication with external devices, including cell towers, GPS satelites, access points and routers, and other COM devices (like BT headsets and headphones), that the processor in your device (whether an iPhone, WM device or feature phone) will work harder to correct or compensate for problematic/weak signal?
Many of the problems and issues we’ve been seeing on the iPhone lately, like -
- Application Crashes
- Device Instability
- Dropped Calls
- Poor Signal Strength
- Weak GPS signal/Inaccurate GPS fixes
can all be traced back to a poorly written radio stack. The device WILL try to compensate for these problems and consume additional resources (processor cycles, RAM, etc.) as it tries to stretch to keep communicating with a cell tower, struggles to establish communication with the next cell tower, handle a cell tower handoff, establish/keep/handoff communication with an access point, get a 3D GPS fix, etc.
Do I know anything for certain? No. As the title of this post clearly states, this IS pure speculation; but all of my experience with cellular, mobile devices over the past 4-8 years tells me that we may indeed have a (relatively) stable OS in iPhone 2.0, but may be dealing with a poorly written radio stack.
I am also going to FURTHER speculate and say that the radio stack in the iPhone 3G is COMPLETELY new. With the addition of 3G in the device, the stack was likely rewritten from the ground up instead of built upon the existing EDGE radio stack. How the 3G radio swaps towers and switches between EDGE and 3G (communication modes) would likely necessitate enough revision on the 2G/2.5G radio to warrant a commplete rewrite; but again… I’m speculating.
Chris Gavula further pointed out an interesting article on Apple Insider that suggests that a great deal of work is being done on the iPhone’s software. Apple is working on 2 different updates, 2.0.1 and 2.1. We’ll likely see 2.0.1 fairly quickly, and then see 2.1 (which is reported to include updates to both GPS and Background Push Notification. The feature lets third-party native programs receive data, such as alerts or new messages, without actively running. The feature saves processing power without interrupting some apps that depend on constant access to the Internet). The 2.1 release is rumored to hit the streets some time in September, though an official announcement has not yet been made.
So, what do you think? I’d love to hear what other people think may be causing all of the iPhone trouble we’ve been seeing. Please join in the discussion and let your voice be heard!
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[Merged] 3G iPhone Reception problems worldwide? - Page 12 - MacTalk Forums Says:
July 25th, 2008 at 11:37 pm[...] Speculation – What *IS* Causing all the iPhone 3G Performance Issues|Gear Diary __________________ MacBook Pro 17, iMac 24, iPhone 16GB Black, 80GB Classic Black ipod [...]
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HTek › iPhone 3G heeft moeite met de ontvangst Says:
July 29th, 2008 at 3:25 am[...] volgende artikel op Geardiary geeft er een mogelijke verklaring voor: [..]After using HTC devices over the years (they made many [...]
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[Merged] 3G iPhone Reception problems worldwide? - Page 16 - MacTalk Forums Says:
July 29th, 2008 at 8:29 pm[...] Posted by kevinnugent Speculation – What *IS* Causing all the iPhone 3G Performance Issues|Gear Diary even though I don’t understand all of this article, it was the most reassuring thing I have [...]
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Nokia N97: there is more to come Says:
July 9th, 2009 at 2:23 pm[...] iPhone when it finally came out in 3G. But then there were the problems with voice call quality, 3G radio issues, the bugs, yes, the bugs, and the MobileMe(ss) disaster that the strongest iPhone supporters now [...]
July 25th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
The stack in the 3G iPhone would likely be new, but the stack in the 2.0 upgraded first generation iPhone shouldn’t be, yet many of the problems exist on the original iPhone (upgraded) as well.
Personally, I see problems with tower handoffs and signal strength response time (remember, that guage is near real time, not real time). In my neck of the woods, there are a LOT of different small tower operators and handoff is critical. There were problems until Apple released OS version 1.1.4 which seemed to improve things greatly. Now, unther the 2.0 update, a lot of things have reverted to their pre-1.1.4 state. Old issues have reappeared, etc. I don’t think that the 2.0 upgraded iPhone is using a new stack, but the 2.0 development track, which may have started even BEFORE the release of 1.1.4, may have failed to pick up on some of the updates introduced in 1.1.4.
The conversation that Chris mentions was around the fact that a LOT of different devices have been released that had initial radio problems, so we wondered who made the unit in the iPhone and who wrote the stack for it? Parts lists on the web indicate the manufacturer of nearly everything except the radio. Weird!
I personally suspect that at least some of the 2.0 instability is caused by poorly written 3rd party apps (or updated Apple apps) that don’t properly clean up memory when they close. We still have some of this problem on the WM platform due to the poorly designed memory management in that OS. Since Apple is currently not allowing background processing, they could sort of quick fix this by forcing a memory clearing routine of some type when you press the home button. Of course, that wouldn’t work well if/when they start allowing for background processing.
There are a lot of factors at play here, but I think Chris and I agree that Apple does need to resolve these kinds of problems fairly quickly if they hope to make inroads into the enterprise, where this stuff can be make or break for device acceptance. Consumers will be more forgiving, but IT groups considering purchases likely will not.
Apple’s ability to stamp out problems quickly will go a long way to indicating how successfully they’ll obtain IT acceptance/adoption since it’s all part of the support model. It’s likely more important than whether or not a particular feature exists. If they don’t respond quickly, and the problems linger, they’ll have a much tougher enterprise battle ahead.