Settings » General » Network will get you to the 3G On/Off switch. This does require the phone to drop the 3G/UMTS/HSDPA and then connect to GSM/EDGE, which takes about 8 seconds on average for me. Not really a big deal considering the juice I save, but it is a hassle. Apparently, EV-DO phones use CDMA for the call regardless so they waste less power by having their 3G enabled. I'm not sure if this is a protocol limitation or an AT&T limitation.
This could be done, but as stated above it would require the 2G network to dropped and then reconnected using 3G and vice versa, which would incur an extra time delay so there is no way Apple would do it.
UMTS covers both voice and data. EV-DO only covers data. So it is physically not possible to use GSM for voice and UMTS (3G) for data, it is just not how it is done and has nothing to do with AT&T. The switch for turning 3G off should be used really only if you are in areas where there is obviously no 3G signal. That will save you some battery life. But in theory the phone should handle it entirely by itself. My current (not Apple) phone does it without a hitch all the time and it can switch from UTMS to GSM seamlessly while I am on a call.
But it does sound as though Apple is inventing some huge complicated system just to handle background apps for no reason at all. This supposed problem with battery life is going to be a temporary glitch in the long scheme of things, so it seems pointless to make some quick hack now when the real goal is to just support background apps like every other real smartphone OS does. And don't give me any crap about stability. We have all seen how fantastically stable the current 2.0 OS is. Under no circumstances should the phone go down because of some crappy app. My Symbian based phone rarely crashes under such cases, it just kills the app.
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Settings » General » Network will get you to the 3G On/Off switch. This does require the phone to drop the 3G/UMTS/HSDPA and then connect to GSM/EDGE, which takes about 8 seconds on average for me. Not really a big deal considering the juice I save, but it is a hassle. Apparently, EV-DO phones use CDMA for the call regardless so they waste less power by having their 3G enabled. I'm not sure if this is a protocol limitation or an AT&T limitation.
This could be done, but as stated above it would require the 2G network to dropped and then reconnected using 3G and vice versa, which would incur an extra time delay so there is no way Apple would do it.
UMTS covers both voice and data. EV-DO only covers data. So it is physically not possible to use GSM for voice and UMTS (3G) for data, it is just not how it is done and has nothing to do with AT&T. The switch for turning 3G off should be used really only if you are in areas where there is obviously no 3G signal. That will save you some battery life. But in theory the phone should handle it entirely by itself. My current (not Apple) phone does it without a hitch all the time and it can switch from UTMS to GSM seamlessly while I am on a call.
But it does sound as though Apple is inventing some huge complicated system just to handle background apps for no reason at all. This supposed problem with battery life is going to be a temporary glitch in the long scheme of things, so it seems pointless to make some quick hack now when the real goal is to just support background apps like every other real smartphone OS does. And don't give me any crap about stability. We have all seen how fantastically stable the current 2.0 OS is. Under no circumstances should the phone go down because of some crappy app. My Symbian based phone rarely crashes under such cases, it just kills the app.