

The “S” in iPhone 3GS stands for “speed,” but it could very well stand for “slow” if you look at the dated chip it uses for uploading data.

At Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the company proudly boasted that the new iPhone 3GS supports 7.2Mbps High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) — a faster, next-generation network standard that many carriers plan to adopt. However, downlink only refers to download speeds; the company made no mention of uplink speeds, or how fast users will be able to upload data.

That’s probably because Apple didn’t want anyone to know that the iPhone 3GS contains a 3G chip with a surprisingly low upload speed — a Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systemchip High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (UMTS HSDPA) chip, one of the earliest 3G technologies that phones were using years ago, according to Tero Kuittinen, an MKM Partners telecom analyst.

A teardown by iPhone repair company RapidRepair revealed the UMTS HSDPA chip, whose upload speed is capped at 384 Kbps — significantly slower than its 7.2Mbps downlink capability. A combination of a high download speed and a low upload speed was typical for most mobile chips two years ago, but today, most high-end smartphones offer 2 to 5 Mbps upload speed, Kuittinen explained.

Kuittinen believes Apple purposely kept the uplink details of the chip secret to help its wireless partners.

“Carriers are frantic on this issue of how to prevent consumers from overloading the mobile data without creating obvious obstacles,” Kuittinen said. “They have to somehow clamp down on heavy mobile users without telling consumers they’re being hamstrung.”



When marketing their broadband services, carriers and internet providers typically advertise their downlink speeds and care little to highlight uplink. And it’s clear why: The average consumer cares more about how quickly he or she can receive rather than give. However, for iPhone 3GS owners, slow network uploading speeds will likely discourage them from taking advantage of one their phone’s major new powers: video recording and sharing.

Then again, U.S. consumers typically aren’t keen about uploading video, Kuittinen said. He noted that 90 percent of Nokia smartphone users don’t use video-sharing features. Video-sharing has been most popular among Japanese consumers, who tend to be more multimedia savvy thanks to the complex feature sets in their cellphones, Kuittinen said.

But a large consequence of slow uploading is that it stifles the iPhone 3GS’ potential to make the rest of the globe more interested in mobile video, Kuittinen said.

“How many people are going to spend 10 minutes uploading a 30-second clip?” he said. “That’s going to take real commitment…. People are going to buy the device and only then are they going to figure out is basically undoable.”

In a previous report, Wired.com examined the implications of Apple and AT&T prohibiting a TV-streaming application called SlingMobile from working on cellular networks. Apple asked Sling to revise the app so it only works on a Wi-Fi connection rather than 3G networks, and AT&T said this move was necessary to prevent network congestion. In that story, Ken Biba, founder of wireless consultant firm Novarum, said that after performing a stress test on 3G networks in the United States, it was clear that AT&T’s network was overloaded.

“The new iPhone 3GS is going to have a massive upswing of people uploading video, and it’s going to stress both the downstream and the upstream network,” Biba said. “When you begin to add video you’re adding even more high congestion.”

That upswing is already occurring. Video-sharing site YouTube said in a blog post that uploads to YouTube were increasing 400 percent a day ever since the iPhone 3GS launched. YouTube officials Dwipal Desai and Mia Quagliarello said video-enabled phones with streamlined video-sharing tools were driving 1,700 percent growth in uploads in the last six months. In that story, Wired.com pondered what Apple and AT&T were going to do to address upstream traffic for the iPhone 3GS, a particularly popular phone with a very easy-to-use video-uploading feature.

Kuittinen called the slower chip an elegant solution for Apple and AT&T to avoid overloading networks with the iPhone 3GS’ video-savvy powers.

“It’s kind of clever, I have to say,” Kuittinen said. “This is more elegant than doing the capping from the operator. Now that it’s a hardware limitation, you can’t do anything about it. You can’t call AT&T and say, ‘Why are you slowing down the upload speeds?'”

Despite his testing confirming that uploads are capped at 384Kbps on the iPhone 3GS, Biba does not agree with Kuittinen that Apple purposely used this chip to appease to networks such as AT&T. He said that significantly boosting the uplink capability would hurt the iPhone 3GS’ battery life, which is probably why Apple opted not to upgrade the phone with faster uploading capability. (Enough consumers are already complaining about the iPhone 3GS’ battery life to begin with.)

“We can talk about the future of doing video, but there aren’t a whole lot of people doing it,” Biba said. “I doubt they did it for AT&T. I think it’s more power consumption.”

Apple did not return phone calls seeking comment on this story. AT&T declined to comment.

Why do you think Apple used an old chip in the iPhone 3GS? Add your theories in the comment section below.

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Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com