1. Too Hot to Handle
"3G technology will be so revolutionary that it will sell itself."
The promise of experiencing a true multimedia experience - most notably full-motion video - over a handheld device is seductive. That's what 3G technology has long promised: a bridge across the chasm between cell phones and PCs. Consumers know that cramming such rich capabilities into a cell phone is a tough task, and the mobile companies have admitted the challenge, all the while promising that the delays in bringing 3G to market lie mostly in the software.
But skeptics suspect the delay hints at a darker truth: 3G technology doesn't work.
Jack McCue, former CEO of BellSouth (BLS) Europe and now a senior adviser at UBS Warburg (dossier), predicts connection speeds for 3G will be nowhere near as fast as they need to be to deliver the data-intensive transmissions that have been promised. He bases his prediction in part on the claims of Arto Karila, who until recently was a computer science professor at the Helsinki University of Technology. "I don't think the 3G operators have thought about their battery problems," Karila says. "There is no solution available."
According to Karila, the problem would be obvious to anyone who used a 3G phone: The device would become unbearably hot. A battery for a 3G phone operating at 2Mbps would burn out every few minutes, and would make the phone too hot to handle. Karila says mobile engineers have admitted the problem to him and now project maximum speeds of 256Kbps or 512Kbps - which may not be enough to deliver the streaming video 3G companies have hyped.
In late May, when Japan's NTT DoCoMo (dossier) gave away trial 3G handsets, analysts speculated that they operated at speeds lower than 200Kbps. That was the least of DoCoMo's problems. Last week, the company recalled 1,600 handsets following customer complaints about the new 3G service, including reports that the phones generated excessive heat.
Even if 3G works flawlessly, it will be adopted at different times in different markets. This means that many consumers are going to need "hybrid" handsets that allow access both to 2.5G and 3G services, possibly for several years.
There's only one problem: No one has yet seen such a device.
