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iPhone Speed Demons
iPhone Speed Demons
Is the iPhone as fast as its ad suggests?
By Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans
Posted Thursday, December 11, 2008 - 10:40am
YouTube BrandWatch invites you to vote on whether iPhone's brand is affected by this side-by-side look at how the phone performs in real life, compared with the zippy model in Apple's jingly new ad:
| Name: | 3G iPhone Ad vs. Real World: A Performance Comparison |
| Stats: | A staggering 31,000-plus videos about the 3G iPhone have been posted to YouTube. Occasionally, there is the odd gripe. One of the most popular of these is a YouTube user's test-drive to see if the blazing speeds depicted in the 3G iPhone TV ads stands up to the real-life performance. Cue 533,986 views since the video was posted in August, generating 344 comments and no video responses. |
| What you see: | It's an iPod video, so the star is the gadget. But first the viewer is greeted with a brief text introduction chiding Apple for its misleading ad, then explaining how he conducted his side-by-side performance test. What we see next is the test-drive. The original TV commercial, prominently featuring the iPhone, is on the left depicted with a heading "Advertising Land." On the right is some cruel place called "Real World," again with an iPhone on display. All the time, the audio from the TV ad can be heard laying out the virtues of "twice as fast" 3G technology. The ad on the left ends while the iPhone in "Real World" mode still plods along trying to pull up Web pages. The author flashes the warning: "If you buy an iPhone you will find yourself waiting (a lot)." The tasks performed in the 30-second TV spot take close to two minutes in actual practice, the video demonstrates. |
| Takeout/Takeaway: | There is no better forum to challenge the superlative marketing claims of a company than YouTube, where all and sundry can debate the messages we hear in "Advertising Land" and how they compare with "Real World." |
| Social Media Effect: | Of course, this being YouTube, there are scores of people who come to the defense of the iPhone, generating a healthy debate about the merits of this technology. Have you tried to conduct your test with a home wi-fi, one asks? The results are better, we're told. It's still better than a Windows-based phone, another chimes in. And still another reminds everyone, of course it's not as fast as in the ad; it's an ad, after all. |
YouTube BrandWatch is The Big Money's exploration into how the world's best-known businesses, so adept at managing their images offline, are being perceived online, where control is harder to come by. Every week, The Big Money features a corporate-themed video that's had significant viewership on YouTube: some approved, some unapproved, some mashed-up combinations of the two. And we'll ask our readers to vote on how the video affects the brands. We think the responses will surprise you, and provide a window onto what is fast becoming the most important playground for corporate games. (Note: This feature has no official relationship to YouTube or its owner, Google.)
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Comments
iPhone is fast enough
I think 'it is an ad' sums up the rational response to this issue. And, Apple has said the 'twice as fast' decription is a comparison between the first generation iPhone and the 3G iPhone. That information should have been included in the blog entry.
Of course, the iPhone's fastest performance is on Wi-Fi. No cell phone has been proven to be as fast, partly because of the design of the Safari browser.
iPhone browser speed
I have two iPhones and have had them for about 15 months. I live in the middle of nowhere on the Gulf of Mexico. The page load speed of both phones is great. It is not as fast as my MacPro or MacBook Pro or PC connected to Cox Broad Band but adequate for every task I am likely to do with a palm sized device. The Apple adds are showcasing a wonderful capability. They are not intended to reflect the real world anymore than adds for other products, like weight loss programs, or teeth whitening systems, or, or, or.
Griping about the iPhone and Apple in general seems to have become a hobby for some. Seems like you would want to take up cooking or surfing or maybe just learning how to be nice and how to praise outstanding innovation.
RC - Santa Rosa Beach, Florida
iPhone Speed Test
For purposes of comparison, there is now an iPhone compatible online speed test available at: http://i.dslr.net/iphone_speedtest.html
And the speed test for mobile browsers is available here:
http://www.dslreports.com/mspeed
From what I can tell, the speeds implied by the commercial are only available on a PC or Mac over FiOS or similar bandwidth internet connection. I don't think they have Verizon FiOS available on the iPhone quite yet...
;)
...well, unless you consider wifi... heh.
but wait! Here's the full resolution commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bym-sbmX44 I haven't ever seen that connection logo! That's not a 3G, WiFi, nor Edge logo up there in the top left corner to the right of the AT&T logo. What gives? What magical network was the iPhone in the commercial connected to?