Last week O2 suffered some network problems which affected many iPhone users and I was one of them. It is a frustrating experience when there are network issues, and this is the first I have ‘ever’ had with O2, but it did highlight how much the latest smartphones require connectivity to work.
The iPhone is the most obvious example and application after application was rendered useless with no connectivity. In the end I left it for a few hours until the problems were sorted and managed without my iPhone. The iPhone needs connectivity as much as any other new smartphone and this brings with it complete dependency on network data coverage.
It should not be seen as a problem though because the network reliant apps do something that could not be done before, and the only advantage of the older style of loading content (AvantGo etc.) was being able to do so with or without wireless connectivity.
The fact is that we are ever more dependant on wireless connectivity and when it goes wrong it all goes wrong. This is why you should ‘always’ check the coverage and network capability of a provider before you buy a smartphone. Sadly that is something very few people do.
I still use one offline news app (go-news from sbsh) as it is convieniant to schedule it to download all the news I need at say 7am (when I know at home I have fast 3g connectivity) and not have to worry about the fact my office for example has some nasty black holes where I can only get 2g…
I suffered during the outage too, and it did mean a few of my apps didn’t work. Games still did of course
Mine has been down all day:(