The context of this story

Year: 2009
Products: iPhone

iPhone 3GS and the two-year upgrade system

By addressing most of the most problematic issues with the original iPhone, Apple turned the new iPhone 3G into a bestseller. Each of the first quarters of 2009 saw sales of over three million units, and although Apple seemed preoccupied with the success of its App Store, it was also busy with other aspects of the ecosystem.

Image: iphone-3gs

The first issue, which he couldn’t do much about, was problems with the AT&T network, which was crucial for the iPhone because it was the only network on which the iPhone was officially available in the US. However, the AT&T network had problems with the 3G iPhone. The reason was simple: iPhone users were accustomed to using the mobile network significantly more than users of other mobile phones. While at that time, the average monthly data usage for smartphone owners was reported to be less than 100 MB of transferred data, for the iPhone it was five times that amount and often easily ten times as much. Why? In addition to the fact that the iPhone was used to accessing the network for a range of data and allowed, for example, the installation of applications up to 20 MB in size directly via the mobile network from the App Store – an innovative approach at the time – it also used full versions of websites, which could be read comfortably on it. However, a single page of a content website was half a megabit of data. Add to that various automatic synchronizations, and you can immediately see why the iPhone was significantly more demanding in terms of data transfer.

However, AT&T was not prepared for this, and customers had poor, slow mobile data availability in many locations, with numerous results. And because the problem was subjectively most noticeable on the iPhone, as it was the device on which data was used the most, many customers considered it to be a fault with the phone. Unsurprisingly, AT&T did not try to dissuade them from this misconception. It took Jobs a lot of effort and intervention before he managed to accelerate the further development of the 3G network at AT&T, but since then, the so-called “iPhone effect” has been a nightmare for mobile network planners in Czechia as well – an unpredictable increase in the use of a service that was priced completely differently for other usage patterns. Planners argued that the existing “unlimited” data transfer tariffs, which were based on average usage as with old smartphones, would not be sustainable on the iPhone platform, and at the turn of 2009 there was intense debate about changing the pricing model for mobile data. In the end, however, nothing visible happened. This was helped by further development of capacity and reduction in the price of 3G infrastructure, as well as methods of eliminating the most demanding users, such as the unpopular FUP application in Czechia, which dramatically reduces transmission speed after a certain data transfer limit is reached. AT&T, for example, began to reduce the speed of customers who were among the top five percent of customers using the mobile network the most, in order to remain with an “unlimited data plan[.”]{dir=”rtl”}

Here, too, the “iPhone case” required a creative approach and a change in the established business model.

The second problem was Android, which Google officially unveiled in the fall of 2008. Although the first models with usable features did not hit the market until 2009, Steve Jobs took the battle with Google over the mobile operating system seriously. He considered Android to be a serious competitor. Google had previously had access to his visions of the mobile phone of the future, and Eric Schmidt even sat on Apple’s supervisory board. Jobs believed that the companies could complement each other well on the market. In fact, he didn’t mind the Android project, which Google had purchased, because he believed that Android would compete with RIM’s mobile business platform. The Android device prototypes originally copied the RIM system, but shortly after the iPhone was introduced, Google made drastic changes and began to systematically imitate the iPhone with the Android platform. Android lost its hardware keyboard and focused on a virtual touch interface and multimedia, with much of the user interface based on the iPhone concept, which Jobs considered a betrayal.

The third aspect that Apple was working on was the development of the iPad tablet. Although the tablet was supposed to be Apple’s first foray into the mobile world, the company ultimately gave pragmatic priority to the development of the iPhone in order to secure its revenues from the iPod music platform. And in doing so, it clearly managed to strike gold again. Apple could achieve the same thing again with the tablet, based on the same concept and built on an existing platform already used by developers. That was exactly what Apple had in mind and began working on intensively at the turn of 2008–2009.

Add to that the necessary work on new computer models, further development of the Mac OS X operating system—including the sinful idea of bringing the App Store to desktops—preparations for new versions of the iPod music player, expansion into new regions… In short, Apple had more than enough to do. But it was clear that a mobile phone couldn’t stay the same for two years. Apple was used to its devices always being available with the highest possible specs, which is why it dared to keep its prices premium. However, the iPhone 3G had most of the specs of the original model, and in 2009 it wasn’t as overwhelmingly hi-tech as it had been two years earlier. New and more demanding features required more power, and with the update to the next version of iPhone OS, it became increasingly apparent that the processor, underclocked to 412 MHz, was struggling, and that the RAM, camera, and other components needed to be upgraded. And so the iPhone 3GS was born, where the “S” stands for Speed. Most of the phone’s external layout remained the same, but the processor was upgraded to 600 MHz (again underclocked), the RAM was doubled to 256 MB, and a 32 GB version was added to the storage capacity options. The camera lens offered a respectable 3.2 megapixel resolution at the time, autofocus, and the ability to shoot VGA video. A digital compass was added to the assisted GPS, promising a number of interesting features in navigation and especially in augmented reality. Battery life increased from 7 to 10 hours, and support for fast HSDPA data transfers reached speeds of 7.2 Mb/s. Simply a very nice update.

Jobs unveiled the new iPhone 3GS on June 8, 2009, emphasizing the speed of the new ARM A8 processor. The phone responded faster with the new version of iPhone OS 3.0, displayed web pages faster, and synced faster with iTunes. With this, Apple also introduced a strategy of major hardware changes every two years and annual iPhone hardware updates, which was not very clear to some. From now on, major hardware changes will be released in even-numbered years as the main version of the iPhone, and in odd-numbered years, hardware improvements will be released to keep up with the times. The reason for this step is not only the heavy burden of developing a fundamentally changed phone platform, but also commercial pragmatism. Customers of large operators such as AT&T buy iPhones with a two-year commitment. So it is enough to offer them a major change once every two years, when they are considering whether to buy the next model and extend their contract for another two years. Apple repeated this approach with the iPhone 4 and 4S models a year and two years later, respectively. In this case, too, it retained the design of the previous model in the improved model, although in the case of the iPhone 4, it had good reason to choose a different solution. But more on that later.

The iPhone 3GS was indistinguishable from its predecessor. An important new feature was the third version of the iOS operating system. It was released on July 17, 2009, along with the launch of the iPhone 3GS, and the main new feature was the introduction of copy & paste, i.e., the ability to copy and transfer data between applications on the iPhone. It is true that users of other smartphones considered the absence of copy & paste in the iPhone a good reason to mock it, and over time it was also the last of the really serious reasons, but the iPhone had to deal with touch control. It coped very well, and its method was later adopted by other mobile operating systems for touchscreen devices. For example, the Windows Mobile 7 operating system did not get the copy & paste function until 2011 in version 7.5 Mango.

Another, this time pseudo-essential feature was MMS support. When the iPhone was launched in 2007, Jobs was quite sarcastic about MMS messages: “Who needs paid MMS messages when you can send emails for free?” But in the end, it was a bit of a handicap. Not that MMS messages were used extensively, but operators demanded support for them, and denying them was not commercially prudent. Apple relented and added support for MMS messages. Features were also added for the iPhone 3GS camera, which could record video.

Apple also attempted to address sharp criticism from developers regarding the ban on multitasking for third-party applications. The iPhone used a fully multitasking system—after all, with a kernel from Mach and BSD, there was no other way. However, Apple did not allow third-party apps to switch between tasks or run in the background. Only certain Apple apps could run in the background—for example, you could play music in the background at any time.

The reason was strategic: battery life. Apple engineers realized that running multiple tasks would place heavy demands on the battery and on the management of access to system resources. Apple began working on the principles of enabling multitasking, but it was a huge problem. The solution was to define and limit the API functions that could be used in multitasking with a slightly different system than had been customary until then. But that was going to take some time.

Instead, Apple prepared support for notification functions for third parties. From the third version of iOS onwards, every app could use notifications, an extensive system for exchanging messages between apps and the internet. How did it work? Basically, it was simple: the app sent a request to Apple’s internet server asking what to do if the internet service responded. For example, the Skype app tells Apple’s server where to check for incoming messages from other Skype users and how to notify the user if there are any. Apple’s server then waits for the message and notifies the mobile app via the system notification function. Information about the arrival of the message appears on the mobile screen, and the notification allows Skype to be launched in the foreground.

With this simple procedure, Apple wanted to bypass the need to enable multitasking for third-party applications in the first phase. It even built an extensive server infrastructure for this purpose, and considered multitasking so important that it made the notification option available to developers free of charge.

Notifications first appeared in iOS 3 and were a significant improvement, but their widespread use also revealed weaknesses in the system. Most notably, one notification would overwrite another, and there was no way to return to the old one. If you missed it, you were out of luck. Apple later had to add the Notification Center, which we will discuss later.

Another special feature of iOS version 3 was that, for the first time, some functions were not available in all phone versions. For example, support for the hearing and visually impaired, such as VoiceOver, is not available on any mobile phone other than the 3GS. After two years, support for the iPhone 2G is slowly coming to an end, and with it, support for the oldest version of the iPod Touch. The latest version of iOS that these devices can handle will be released on February 2, 2010, under the number 3.1.3, which is also the last revision of the third version of iOS for iPhone and iPod Touch. Version 3.2 is now only intended for the first iPad tablets. The fourth version of iOS will only be available for iPhone 3G and newer models.

Perhaps there is a small space here for a brief personal aside. I was the owner of one of the first iPhone 2G models with 4GB of storage, which was the weakest iPhone model ever produced. It served me well until the end of 2010, when I sold it. Since the development of the 3G network in Czechia was very slow, there was no need to worry about the phone becoming obsolete, and the only thing I really missed was GPS with navigation. Even at the end of 2010, it was difficult to find a phone that could match the old iPhone 2G in terms of ease of use and range of services, and that would not cost so much as to justify buying a new version. And immediately after I surrounded myself with a plethora of other smartphones, I realized the advantage of the original iPhone for the Czech Republic: thanks to the lack of 3G network support, the phone lasted significantly longer without recharging. Firstly, it did not use the untuned 3G network, and secondly, there was no need to transfer so much data with the slower EDGE connection. So why did I finally get rid of it when nothing was forcing me to? Most of the programs I used and needed to use began to require support for the fourth version of iOS, and it was not possible to update them to newer versions. And since this is a system limitation, that was that.

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