Project PDA

There's been talk the last couple days about the fact that there really isn't anywhere in the States to take advantage of the blazing 7.2Mbps downlink connection supported by the iPhone 3G S - except for one great hope, one diamond in the rough that could become a shining destination for 3G S owners the world over.

That destination would be Chicago, where AT&T fired up 7.2Mbps trials late last year, and the hope was that they might be letting lay folk (like us) in on the action in time for the 3G S release. Well, on a  side-by-side tests today, and the short answer is that we're clearly not accessing 7.2 -- granted, the 3G S is getting marginally faster speeds both up and down, but we figure this can easily be attributed to the new model's faster processor because a doubling of the downlink pipe simply doesn't account for a 100kbps bump in speed (latency was all over the map on both phones, for the record). If you're holding out on upgrading from a 3G to a 3G S, go ahead and crack a smile -- because for now, anyway, this is one spec bump that means precisely zilch in the real world.